Evaluation

I believe that our group worked well we kept on top of everything and has done a successful job. I have personally enjoyed doing this module, I am happy that I have learnt new skills as well as the ones I picked up from the head module, which has encourage me to use them in upcoming modules. I really enjoyed seeing fellow students’ work at the end of the semester. I am inspired with new ideas for future work on 3d and hope to learn new skills and techniques in the nearby future.

Contribution to Group Work

In our group, we had meetings most days on Skype due to the group members living far apart from one another. We just demonstrated and talked about what each member had done and what they are going to do next and made sure everything was carried out successfully. I also helped out with general ideas, problem solving, editing materials, rayfire, rendering, Premiere Pro, as well as doing my own work.

Demonstration of New Skills

Five new skills I have developed are:
Inset tool I had never used the inset tool till I started this module. I used the inset tool to help me create my castle easier and made it looked more effective and realistic structure.

Multi/Sub-object in the material editor helped me out a lot by letting me add different materials to the same model/object as long as I had set up polygon ids to the parts of the model.

I learn how to use the cloth modifier so that I can make my flag (plane) flap but to do that I need something to make it move so I also learn how to make wind by selecting space warps> forces> wind.

As a group we decided to do some unusual that has not been done before we decided to go with some rubble that will form into the builders so the effort that we found that was right was the Rayfire plug-in. I looked up tutorials and played around with the settings I found that the best setting for my castle was 300 Iterations fragmentations.

Final Castle Samples

Rendering & Premiere Pro

Rendered at 1066 x 600px We used 5 lights, 1 skylight and 4 omni lighting with a slight yellow tint. We used mental ray because of the arch & design material templates.


In premiere we reversed the clips by right clicking and selecting speed/duration and then selecting 'reverse speed' and we used fade to black, cross dissolve and wipes for the transitions.

Rayfire

After playing around with the different settings in rayfire I came up with the best one for my castle, in fragmentation options I used a lot more then in the test I selected 300 Iterations, chaos 65, detalization 10 and noise strength 0.6.

Rayfire Test

Using the Rayfire plugging I produced some tests in an attempt to understand how the program works and how it copes with the castle demolition. In the rayfire test for the fragmentation options I selected 60 iterations and 20 chaos settings.

Flag & Wind

I used the cloth modifier tool so that when I animate my work I will have the flag flapping but in order to so I need to make some wind. I selected space warps> forces> wind. From there I played with the different setting like force strength, turbulence and many more.

Wall & Plant

I used a sphere to start the plant off I then edit it and moved and scale different parts to get it in shape. For the wall I used a box and did the same thing as the plant I then set polygon ids for the different place were there is stone wall and plants. I then added the materials to the wall I used the multi/sub- object and added green plant and stone wall textures.

Stair Handrails & Materials

With the castle all material I went back the stairs handrails and started extruding different polygons and moving them in to place. I added a dark wood texture material to the hand ride and a stone slab texture to the stair to finish it off.

Castle Materials

With the castle modeling done it was time to add the materials. As you can see from the pictures I had a bit of a problem with the materials as they would react and effect with one another. To overcome this problem I split the castle polygons up into five parts, front, left, back, right and top. I gave each part its own Id. Then I had to make a multi/Sub-object in material editor so that I could add material and assign it to an id.

Modeling – Top, Flag & Door

Next I model the top of the castle by using the bevel, inset and extrude tools to get the shape right. Then I model the flag and pole. I used a plane for the flag as later I will make the flag into a cloth to get the flag flapping for the animation. For the door I used the same technically using the; extrude and inset tools.

Modeling - Stairs

With the shape of the model done I marked out where the door was going to be as I started to model the stair for the castle. I played around with the different stairs and the settings that 3Ds Max had to offer but the best one that I could get looking anything like the castle one was an L type stair. I then had to go in to edit poly and edit the L type Stair to get it looking like the castles. I used the stair setting to make the handrails but they were not like the castle one so for the moment I left them as they were.

Modeling – Sides & Bottom

I created some guides to help me get started with the modeling of the castle but they were not the helpful so for most of the modeling I used my own judgment. I started modeling by using a box. By selecting polygons at the side of the box I used the bevel, inset, extrude and the uniform scale tools on different parts on the model. Doing so I was able to get the boxes sides and bottom in a way so that it looks like the same shape of the castle.

Hedingham Castle

Hedingham castle in Essex is a Norman mote and bailey castle with a stone keep. It may occupy the site of an earlier castle believed to have been built in the late 11th or early 12th century by Aubrey de Vere, a Norman baron. Hedingham was one of the largest manors among those acquired by Aubrey I by circa 1080 and it became the head of the Vere barony by the later 12th century.

Group Work

New start New Project as a group we each are planning on making a model;

Lee - Chelmsford Cathedral
Phil - South end Pier
Me - Hedingham Castle
Arnas - RSPB Environment & Education Centre

Each of these models will be constructed from rubble, reversing the effects of the Rayfire tool. The environment is going to appear from out of the ground and the model will then crumble away to form the next model.