Category: Advanced & Experimental

Week 6

This week I worked on improved on my terminal given feedback on ftrack, and worked more on my control desk.

First, I decided to extrude inwards the faces on the outside of my control desk, mainly for shading, and added details.

I then worked on the texturing on substance painter. I worked with metal textures for a while, but after a group meeting and communication with the CGI Lead, it was mentioned to me that a plastic creamish texture would be more fitting for our aesthetic, rather then an all metal sci-fi look.

I brought my model over to substance painter and added a ‘rough plastic’ texture. I played around with the height of the bumps, and colour of the texture until I got a fitting look for the material.

I then added scratches and small details, making the edges look worn.

I then added this texture to the control desk on Maya. I had some trouble attaching the normal map to the texture, but with some guidance realised I had to add this on the hyper shade window, add an ai normal map node and make the material was set to ‘raw’.

The feedback for my terminal was that I needed to add more details on the side on the terminal.

I began by creating a plane with holes in and converting it to a soft shape using 3. I implemented the holes by deleting every other face whilst on this mode. I then extruded it slightly and sized it to be placed on the side of the terminal, this acted like ventilation of some sort, and a mini fan for the terminal.

I then decided to make a bigger ventilation fan that would sit on the extruded face of the terminal. I did this by using the mash tool. I created a cube, sized it down and turned it into a soft shape by switching to 3. I then used mash to replicate this upward and to the side so I had many of the same shape at equal distances. I then used boolean with another bigger cube to take away these shapes from within the bigger cube, to act as holes for the fan.

I inserted this on the terminal.

I then made simple other details such as buttons on the side of the terminal with simple extrusion and sizing inwards.

I then made some extra changes and details on the control desk.

First, I created a button that would go either side of the desk. I made this button red with thin plastic under it. This would also give more colour to the control desk and act as an ’emergency button’.

I then extruded inwards the faces on the inside of the control desk. This dimple detail will just give more shading to the control desk and fit the rest of the desk better.

The added details make my models look a lot better, but I still need to add more next week.

Advanced & Experimental Thesis Proposal

Week 5

Please scroll through this template I have filled in updating my thesis proposal plan.

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Advanced & Experimental Group

Weeks 4 & 5

Throughout these weeks I have developed my models for my terminal and started on the control desk. First, I worked on my origonal terminal to optimise the topology and visually improve it. I changed the screen shape and made the border of the creen bigger and more shaped to the terminal itself.

I then started working on the control desk. I wanted to make the topology simple to ensure no problems with UVs and to decrease the heaviness of my overall model. I started with a cube and with mukti cut, edge loops and extrusion, created the base simple shape for my control desk.

I then added a brushed metal standard surface to my desk work with termporarily.

I then added more small details to my terminal consisting of buttons to fill in empty space before I moved onto adding details to my control desk and panels.

To start with the details, I created simple buttons and lights to various places on the desk. I also used extrusion to create panels on the back of the desk.

I then added mini screens to the control desk. I wanted to make this model to be the centre of the ‘technology’ aspect for the room, so details like this are exactly what me and the group had in mind for this model.

I implemented these by duplicating the screen oof my termonal and sizing it down for aesthetic consistency.

I then began to change the texturing of the screen. I wanted a different visual media for these screens so I used an oscillator screen. This fits into a lo-fi aesthetic and gives variety to the technology within my model.

This model will definately need more details and proper texturing before submission. Our next group meeting is next weeek where I will predent my model to the CGI lead and progress with any feedback.

Advanced & Experimental Personal

Weeks 4 & 5

Throughout these weeks I have started researching tutorials on modelling fantasy swords to find the best way to go about this project in terms of technique and skill.

I found the video below extremely useful, and from this will be using the technique of modelling from a 2D perspective and extruding the model out afterwards to ensure symmetry and accuracy.

https://youtu.be/nCi-hcT0-L8

I then started to work on modeling the blade of my sword. I went ahead with this reference image that I used for my concept sketch of what rough shape I would like the blade to be.

I started by switching to the side-facing view in Maya, and created a plane. I then turned on X ray view so I could see the grid as reference lines for the geometry.

I made sure the verteces were the same either side and that the faces were four sided (thinking of the UVs for the future). I then began extending the blade, and adding details, such as extra faces and edges that I knew would be extruded in to create indented details on the sword.

I then checked how this looked so far, by extruding the object out and extruding inwards the details I had made.

This was exactly the look I was hoping for, confirming this technique of modeling would be appropriate for my sword design.

Side note: During these two weeks I had to take time off to be with family due to loss of a family member so wasn’t able to complete as much progress as usual. This will be accounted and made up for in the following weeks.

Advanced & Experimental Thesis Proposal

Weeks 3 & 4

Throughout these weeks I have really been thinking about what I can write about that will both be something I am passionate about, and something that links to my future career aspirations.

I have always been interested in combat within games as it is such a vital element of video games and the experience. Visual effects is a huge part of this and so the opportunity to explore it’s impact will be a perfect thesis topic for me.

I am also working on weapon design for my personal project, and my FMP will hopefully be along the same lines as this path.

The working title at the moment is: “Enhancing the Gameplay Experience in Video Game Combat through the Implementation of Visual Effects”.

I am currently using Google scholar to research this topic and will list some sources found below.

With this topic, I can explore:

Game mechanics
weapon design
types of combat
final boss battles
combat with creatures
ethics of combat experience
inspirations from film combat
magical combat effects

Some keywords are:

Weapon design
combat
technique
weapon choices
opponent design
ethics

Sources

“Creating illumination, either by post-processing effects such as bloom or adding a glow to your texture, can add to the magical feel of your effect. This can make your effects feelmore alive and give the illusion that they are light or power sources”

“Attacks and spells that don’t affect the player or game in a dramatic or significant way should visually indicate they are less important than the mechanics that have a significant effect on the gameplay.”

“Level of importance can be controlled and adjusted by modifying the size, shape, saturation and opacity of the effect.”

Mattila, M. 2018. “Visual Effects for a 3D Action Game”. https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/151308/Mattila_Meri.pdf?s

–

“In Resident Evil (2015), when the player’s health is low or critical, the “Danger” condition state activates. Although the player is not in any immediate danger, this low-health state is visually exacerbated.”

“The main factor that creates an engaging chase sequence is the assertion that the player must feel that they cannot directly defeat their assailant. The player must feel powerless in the face of an insurmountable challenge, prompting theplayer to conclude that escape is the only means of survival.”

“In the reimagined Resident Evil 2 (2019), the player is periodically chased by a seven-foot creature called Tyrant, colloquially known as Mr. X, who happens to be impervious to most weapons and artillery”

Smith, L. 2023. “Creating Tension through Game-Centric Design in Survival Horror Video Games”. Bachelor’s Thesis. Tampere University of Applied Sciences.

–

Through this research I have discovered game mechanics such as spell casting effects, chase sequences and effects when a player is low on health, even though these are small elements, will be so interesting to talk about within my thesis.

Advanced & Experimental Personal

Week 3

This week I wanted to create some concept art for my sword. This will help me visualise the creative aspects of my model, as this project for me is primarily about creativity and applylying this to a VFX model and animation.

First, I started with designing the orb. I wanted this to be illuninous and bright to stand out from within the sword.

I then started looking at more images to inspire my sword design. I put three elements from three different swords I had seen for inspiration, and added them together, tweaking some design aspects to create my first design possibility.

I added annotations for the animation techniques I will be using.

I then made another design using the same method.

This design has two blade design possibilities, one thicker and one more slender.

These are all at concept level and aren’t certain to be my final designs, Some challenges I might face with these designs are:

Difficulty level; these designs are very complex and might need to be simplified. There are a lot of sharp edges and detailed components which may be easier to draw than to model. I am striving for a sucessful model and if this amount of detail is posssible then that is a bonus.
Origonality; seeing as these are taken from inspiration I may need to tweak them even more to eleborate that this project is about my own design and creative input, and what I can make from this.
Texturing; these models, especially the first, seem to have complex topology and geometry, equalling is typically dense and hard UV mapping and texturing, another thing to consider about how complex the detail is on these.

Advanced & Experimental Group

Week 3

This week I worked more on my terminal model, adding details and rough textures ready for our draft submission to our CGI lead next week.

I started by bevelling the bottom part of my terminal to suit the top peice.

I then added wires to the back of the terminal. I did this by scaling down cyllinders and increasing the subdivisions so I could sculpt them to be curved and bend in the way I wanted.

Some details at the back of the terminal

I then worked on adding a keyboard base for the keys. I did this by adding multiple edge loops on the baord to where the keys would be. I then extruded each key face so they came up from the base.

I then decided to add a texture to the screen. I got an image of green neon writing on a black screen, reninicent of our inspiration pictures and lo-fi styled terminals. However, wehn I went to put this on the screen, I figured it sould be easier to make the actual screen a seperate plate. This would make adjusting the texture on the UV editor simpler. I sculpted this plate slighly to make it seem risen.

I also added screws to the top of the terminal for extra detail, and added colour to the button below the screen.

I then added a plastic texture to all of the base on the terminal, and a rubber texture to the wires.

I also added the bulb texture to the lights, and duplicated the wires round to the side, creating a box for them to come out of, making sure these details would be shown in the final render.

My next task was to work on the keyboard. I tried to texture the keyboard using an image of a keyboard, however my key alignments didn’t fit with the images used, and it looked stretched. I originally wanted to 2D type the letters and numbers directly onto the keys, but Maya only has the option for 3D lettering, and this would increase the heaviness of the model in terms of geometry for rendering. Seeing as texturing wasn’t working and didn;t look the way I wanted, I decided to scale 3D meshes of type down and see how this would look finished. I will then consult the CGI Lead to see if this would cause an issue in rendering my model in the future.

Using duplicae special, I was able to duplicate the meshes with the same font and size so this made the process much more swift.

Whilst I was doing this process, I decided to add better textures using AI standard surface. I used brushed metal for the base, and a darker plastic for the keyboard. I also made the wires slightly darker.

I then finished the keyboard which ended up looking just how I wanted it.

I then scaled the terminal to the size of the model given to the group by grouping all the parts together and fidning an appropriate scale next to the model.

I then made some adjustments to the topology of my model, straigtening some edges and sculptimg the screen to look smoother, and I was ready to show the group my draft model. After this has some finished touches, I will be modelling a control panel and another terminal to be an addition to my models.

Advanced & Experimental Group

Room Camera Tracking: Part 1

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 1st May 2023
No Comments on Room Camera Tracking: Part 1

After our camera tracking workshop, we were all given the task to camera track the room using 3D Equaliser that we were going to be using for our Group Project.

I started by opeing the footage on 3D equakiser, setting the image input settings such as the gamma level to what we were taught to set it at, and then began tracking the tracking marks.

Tracking the marks sucessfully individually took roughly a few hours, as I made sure each mark kept within the green area of bar when tracked. This meant changing the contrast, saturation level and brightness for different areas in the room, for example some areas have way more shadows within them, and the pattern of the cross and the green need to be emphisised to make tracking more accurate, so it can easily recognise the pattern through movement.

I then calcualated the tracking and viewed the camera movement in 3D.

There were no breaks in the line, and you could see where different parts of the room were. I decided to use result and then bring up the deviation browser to see the average accuracy level.

As you can see the accuracy number was quite high and needed to be brought down to as close to 0.5 as I could. Also, I was unsucessful at tracking the top of the table as it always turned out to be innacurate, these were the two factors I needed to change before exporting this scene.

I then remembered I could apply the lens distortion to the footage which would create more accuracy, I changed the lens to the correct camera option and copied the data of focal length, lens distortion and quartic distortion to be adjusted in the Parameter Adjustments tab. I then clicked adjust and this brought the accuracy to 0.7.

I then went through the waves on the deviation browser to pick out the points that were lowering the average accuracy, andn re-tracked these. I also decided to track the top of the table which was difficult but with changing the image levels such as contrast I was able to track them.

This brought my average to 0.6 which was much better than what I had started with.

I then used the 3D model tool to mesh the points together uaing ‘legacy’ and create a 3D structure of the room, camera tracked.

I then exported the lens data to a Nuke node, and exported the scene as a Maya file, including the 3D models.

However, when I opened the mel script file in Maya, there was only the tracked camera, with no models or footage.

This is something I will have to solve and re-export this file from 3D Equaliser.

Advanced & Experimental Thesis Proposal

Week 2

Research Task

Choose a topic of interest: Convex Hull Algorithms

Keywords:

Vertices
Points
Geometric
Triangulation
Mesh
Algorithm
Topology

General internet search:

“We can visualize what the convex hull looks like by a thought experiment. Imagine that the points are nails sticking out of the plane, take an elastic rubber band, stretch it around the nails and let it go. It will snap around the nails and assume a shape that minimizes its length. The area enclosed by the rubber band is called the convex hull of P.”

https://brilliant.org/wiki/convex-hull/

Academic search engine; academically recognised source:

“The determination of the convex hull is an example of a primitive operation which is useful for
many analysis methods and has successfully been applied in application domains such as pattern
recognition [4], image processing [28] or stock cutting and allocation [13].”

“The convex hull of a point set in the plane is defined as the smallest convex polygon containing all points.”

Böhm, C. and Kriegel, H.P., 2001. Determining the convex hull in large multidimensional databases. In Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery: Third International Conference, DaWaK 2001 Munich, Germany, September 5–7, 2001 Proceedings 3. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

These were found by using Google Scholar. I like this academic search engine as you can determine what keywords need to show by uing speech marks, and it is easy to navigate and cite from.

Advanced & Experimental

Camera Tracking Workshop

This week we had a workshop on camera tracking using 3D Equaliser. This software was my favourite to date in terms of using it for camera tracking, as the elemts within the software are easy to follow and enjoyable to work with.

We were given footage within Camden, and we had to use camera tracking points to create the most accurately tracked environment and camera movement possible.

We had to create a tracking point, adjust the boxes to determine what pattern would be tracked. We also were able to adjust the gamma input, contrast and saturation to make sure the patterns were easier to track.

Everytime a point is tracked it gives a bar gooing from green to red. If the bar enters the red area it means the tracking isn’t accurate, and as close to the green the bar stays the more accurate the tracking is. I found restarting tracking points that entered the red or even orange area enabled me to have more of an easy job towards the end of making sure all points were tracked accurately.

We then carried on to track down the path using this same technique.

We were then allowed to see the camera movement in 3D and how stable it was, and if there were any breaks in the line.

I noticed there were a few breaks in my camera line, so I worked out where I needed to add points and this was sucessfuly fixed.

We then added points to the bridge and the back walls to create a more full environment of the footage.

When we click ‘use result’ on the 3D page, it creates a graph called the ‘Deviation Browser’ of all the tracking points, and tells us the average amount of accuracy. The higher the line goes, the more unnacurate the tracking is. This was my graph for my first attempt:

We were told 0.5 was ‘perfect’ so I aimed to improve my accuracy and get it much lower than what I had. This process consisted of getting rid of trackers with really high waves that brought the average higher, and gooing back and re doing some tracking points. This got my average point down to roughly 0.59.

We were then told to add the data of the camera used and implement in ‘Lens distortion’, which would match the camrea tracking more accurately.

This got my accuracy down to 0.3, along with some more tweaking that I did previously.

We then calculated the final environment, and began to play around with using these points and the camera movement to see how we could implement 3D models into the footage.

We then used ‘Mesh points’ in the 3D model tool to make a mesh of all of the tracking points in each area to create the environment that can be imported to Nuke and Maya.

We then imported the lens data for Nuke, and the file including footage, tracked camera, and 3D models into Maya.

From this, we could see the 3D environment areas and the tracked camera so we would be able to include 3D models that would stay in the environment as the camera moves.

This workshop was immensely useful and I learnt how camera tracking can be used alongside 3D models to create scenes we see in films. It was very engaging and camera tracking was found to be satisfying by most in the class, opening my eyes to this being soemthing I potentially could also be interested in doing in the future.