Wednesday 30 November 2011

Humble Beginnings...

It has certainly been an interesting journey, here is quick render of how the scene looked at the beginning of my second day of room-set production.



By this point I had roughly modelled the walls, a basic door & window and the yellow (was supposed to be gold, had only just started learning Cycles materials) box on the window sill.

Since I didn't have any scene measurements, I placed cubes roughly where the furniture would eventually be, this was for two reasons, to try and help gauge scale, also to see how the shapes and colours interacted with the lighting.

94 different modelling stages...

Call it belt and braces but I wasn't taking any chances, because work is for my BA (Hons), I didn't want to get part way through and loose everything through some silly mistake on my behalf, plus I wanted to generate course work evidence, so, instead of just overwriting the same file, every (what I felt was a) major change, I saved a new version.  Consequently I now have 94 different modelling stages saved, this do not include a few furniture items I modelled and saved separately (Hey I did say "belt and braces"!).

For those who may not have heard of the term... Belt and braces means being overcareful, you don't just rely on one source of support to hold your trousers (pants) up, if one breaks you have another method of support.  Quite an old but illustrative term.

4 comments:

  1. This is a really nice showcase of the learning curve of the software. I would like to know more about your technical and artistic background, if that's possible.

    Being familiar with photography and lighting certainly helps, but were you using other 3d softwares before?

    Congratulations for the work.
    -
    Dalai

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting posts and blog !
    I can't wait to read next episode ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Dalai,

    Thank you for your kind comments!

    Bit of background about me...
    As well as a photographer, I am also a qualified PC technician, I don't want to just know that something works, I like to know why it works and could it possibly be improved. I always strive for more and really enjoy learning.
    People say I am meticulous and I would agree, I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, this can be both good and bad, as an example, there are still so many things within the scene that I would like to improve but there comes a point, especially so because of degree time constraints, where you just to stop and say “This will have to do!”, then move onto the next piece of work, otherwise nothing would ever get completed, although whether something actually ever reaches a level of completion is of course in itself subjective.

    I consider lighting to be one of the most important aspects of any image production; it is possible to produce the most amazing models, or scene only to destroy it with ineffective or uninteresting lighting, the same goes for photography. Being a photographer has been a huge benefit in this area.

    Before Blender, I had a few months experience modelling with Art of Illusion and producing scenes with Sweet Home 3D, which I am sure will have been advantageous in easing Blender’s learning curve.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Thread,

    Thank you for your encouraging input and feedback.
    As for your last comment... I feel the same way! :)

    ReplyDelete