After the group wrote up a bunch of different ideas on the board we settled with the idea of a science laboratory. For our environment we are hoping to produce a 360 version so the user can see the entirety of the room just from standing in the one spot. We each went off and created a few mood boards and looked at different pieces of concept art for inspiration and ideas. I began looking at environments with a futuristic tone but the group was steering more towards something set it the past eg. Victorian era. Michael suggested looking at the Art of Bloodborne. I looked a gameplay that goes through locations like 'Iosefka's Clinic' and 'Cathedral Ward' to what what the backgrounds look like and what the architecture is like. I also still liked the idea of including some plants- possibly ones held in containment chambers as experiments so I included some of those in my research as well.
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Taking inspiration from the art I previously looked at I put together some basic thumbnails. Most of the rooms have a pretty basic layout which is something we need to look at- how our room will actually be laid out. Along with the kind of narrative we are going for which is mad science. So whether or not the lab will be in working condition or abandoned because something happened. I put a lot of focus on the centre of the room to show that's the main experiment in the room (the centre of the story) but if that's where our camera is positioned the point of focus would have to be somewhere else. Below is coloured version showing that something escaped the lab and killed it's creator in the progress. We where thinking of the room having a second level so we can model pillars and banisters but considering our camera is set on the first floor we don't need to put anything on the second and just put fog and shadow. The room will be a lot more clustered than this- this was just to show the kind of narrative we might use. The group wrote up a bunch of different props for us to include in our scene as well as the artistic direction of our models and they don't strictly have to be realistic. Models I'm interested in making are things like a grandfather clock, lab setup (jars, chemistry setup) experimental plants etc. Another I think I looked into was Orgone Theory created by Wilhelm Helm. Based off Alistar's research I thought it would be a good idea to include real life experiments in our environment like Easter eggs. Orgone Theory is supposed to be a substance that represents universal life force- so I wanted to make a model of this substance being contained. Our group also took time into researching layouts of old labs and to it helped to see what other assets it would have in it. This further developed the atmosphere of our scene and helped make the narrative more clear. Looking a these very busy and clustered drawings of mad science labs made us want to include a similar type of 'mess' in our environment. Alistair did a lot of research into real life scientists and crazy scientists from TV shows or movies. Understanding the character that lived in our environment would help us understand the kind of work he would have collecting in this room- and although it looks chaotic and messy there would be some sort of sense of organisation that leads to the main attraction in the room- the broken test chamber. I tried watching many different tutorials before diving into UV wrapping but in some cases I just got more confused and in the end had to take the plunge. Below are a couple of videos which I used to help guide me throw the process along with some notes I picked up from Alec during class. There are still many processes and techniques I don't really understand but I feel more confident now on the basics after doing a few tests on my more simpler models. In most cases if something didn't look right when I would unfold the uv and ended up cutting edges and reshaping parts of the wrap then sewing them back together to make it more smooth. It's just something I need to keep practising over and over again til I can figure out how to fix up little errors. Below are my models which I tried to keep more low poly. The only exceptions being with some of the plants and the generator. For the grandfather clock I had a lot of issues with the uv as there was errors with the mesh. I wasn't entirely happy with this model and given more time I would've created a new one with better topology. I also struggled with the generator the most as it is my most detailed model. Some parts became distorted and I tried my best to correct them. I would like to get a better understanding on how to effectively use the planar and cylinder options. References used for models:
My ModelsRoom LayoutAs we started to finish up with our models we began finalising what the layout of our room would be and tried to figure out a rough placement for the items. We took a lot of inspiration from ths blog page: http://fengzhudesign.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/old-school-rpg-room-designs.html and picked out a few that we could use as a rough reference. This one was the particular favourite: Concept piece by Alistair that was used as a rough base:
(Credits to Mark and Michael for initial lighting and render shots)
(Credits to Leanna for post production renders and set up) Team credit:
A very stressful yet very valuable learning exercise which helped me develop new 3D modelling skills. It gave me the opportunity to work on creating models with a lower poly count as well as trying to improve on my mesh topology- something I am keen to improve on as errors more often than not seem to show up on my models. Given more time I would've tried to perfect the UV wraps for my models, or at least bring them to a higher standard. Daunting as UV wrapping was and still is, I feel more confident now that I can actually understand the tools in Maya which will help me UV wrap in a less time consuming way. My team where extremely helpful and everyone's contributions really pulled the final scene together in the end. I feel like we achieved the tone and atmosphere we set out for our science lab, along with the narrative which can be seen through the layout of the room.
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