Week 9

This week was quite a surprise as our tutors revealed that they have given us an extra week to tweak and modify our buildings. At first, I was quite apprehensive to this revelation as to make sure I complete my building in time I spent a many late nights and I felt drained from this project. However, our tutor Mike Kelly showed us a way to see if our 3D models were interesting visually by applying a material/texture onto them making have the appearance of a white silhouette.

 From this I realised that one major problem with my model was that its shape language was quite boring and uninteresting. In addition, I was given other criticisms such as adding more divisions with my wood beams, making the bottom beams more s like to make a more aesthetically pleasing form and most importantly adding more blacksmith like elements to actually convey my building as a blacksmiths. I was also criticised about my wood texture as its details were too large and too few, which made it obvious that, the texture would repeat in areas of the wooden beams. Another one of my criticismS was that my top beams were too big and attracted too much attention away from the main form. However as the image below illustrates I had some disputes with this criticism.

Another reason why I decided to keep the large beams was because when my tutors gave me this criticism they viewed a version of my blacksmith model which didn't have any of the new form adjustments I made in reaction to finding out my buildings silhouette was quite  for lack of better term boring. Hence I was attempting to make sure the shape language was interesting overall as they had pointed out. This meant I had to make an alternative adjustment to resolve the problem and balance out the shape language.  Firstly, I would like to point out I didn't want to come across that I'm not open to taking criticism. However, this was a moment in which I felt in order to successfully follow one piece of criticism, i.e. my shape language  being not that interesting I, had to make a conscience decision which meant dropping one piece of criticism for another. To follow each of my criticisms I firstly rendered my model with the white silhouette like texture and imported it into Photoshop. Then I applied a warp modifier to the silhouette changing the form and making the silhouette more gestural like. I made four variations to choose from and then proceeded to choose the one I felt was strongest. I applied the same work process when attempting to get a design of the building, which had more wooden beams/divisions. Using photo reference from the web and the clone stamp tool I painted over a render of my building experimenting with different patterns.

Tudor beam reference

Reflecting back I feel like this was a good starting point in terms of readjusting my design however, I rushed to get to fix these criticisms as at this point as emotionally I felt drained by this project and thus I wanted to get it over and done with. This meant when I was iterating on my design I only made myself a limited selection to choose from. I feel that  if I just took a break from the project for a while I could've come back and made more iterations with both the beams and the silhouette and made possibly a stronger design. I feel that is error can be best seen on the front and back of my final product, as it seems too blocky and dull to convey a stylised building however, on the sides it's much more gestural. This is partly because I only iterated on the side of the building not the front and back, which as a result created a weaker design.  This can be tested out by applying a silhouette below.

For the adjustments to the 3D model itself I edited the overall shape of the model using the FFD 4X4X4 modifier as well as painting a new more detailed wood texture in Photoshop.

In addition, I fixed any geometry errors that was caused by the FFD 4X4X4 modifier as well as modelling a sword and an anvil to convey more of blacksmith environment for my building. I also reflected the Blacksmith look in my textures by creating a sign out of my old wood texture and a vector graphic, which was produced by both my group and me.

While I was re texturing my building I adjusted the stone texture of my blacksmith in reaction to some criticism I received about the stone texture looking too clean but I also produced a tutorial on creating a hand painted texture of lava as seen below. The tutorial goes through a basic workflow I use when making hand painted textures. Although I'm nowhere near the level to start creating tutorials, the initial idea was to get people on board with sharing any knowledge they have to create a learning atmosphere with the students. Hopefully although there are many errors with the tutorial it could kick-start a more collaborative environment among students to produce and share resources and knowledge.

Click to zoom in

Moreover, I used this week to catch up on previous unfinished projects such as working on my Bradgate park studies as well as re-doing my canal final piece. For these pieces, I wanted to finally make a start with using colour since my James Gurney book on colour and light just came in this week. For the first three Bradgate paintings, I worked directly from painting with colour this proved to be very difficult in terms of choosing the right colour to create form as well as mood. After producing these three studies, I decided to ask my peers for help via DMUGA and first hand interaction. One of my peers provided me with a live demonstration, which gave me the tip to work from value first and use an overlay layer to add a basic colour and then make a new layer onto to add more detail. I applied this process to my final Brad gate painting and my canal painting and you can see a change in terms of quality. I owe it my fellow students for this revelation and I plan to paint like this more often until I become more sensitive to value in colour.

Colour study1

Colour study 2

Colour study 3

Bradgate and canal final using tips - one can already establish the change in quality after using these tips as there is an improvement in terms of form and depth readability due to the variety of values creating a sense of volume within the environments.

Final render of Blacksmith

Rock and Building in engine with improved lighting