July/August - Normal - JoeD8349 - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 21-07-2005 , 12:29 PM

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July/August - Normal - JoeD8349

Hello everyone. I never new there were competitions on this site, otherwise I would have been trying them. I've been using Maya for almost a year, but I still need to do a lot of learning. I figured I'd give this a shot though. Hopefully I can figure out lighting and texturing a little more.

My idea is to have an elephant in the zoo, standing atop a rock, deathly afraid of a little mouse that is below him, who is just innocently chewing on something. Here is my sketch. I just hope I can find time to finish.

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# 2 21-07-2005 , 12:33 PM

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A test render

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# 3 21-07-2005 , 04:29 PM

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simple yet fantastic idea for a 3D scene user added image

Are you going realistic or cartoony?

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# 4 21-07-2005 , 08:12 PM

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I hope to make it realistic, yet slightly eerie. I would like to make the elephant appear greatly disturbed, and the mouse an innocent little thing.

The lighting would really help the effect, but I definitely need to do some studying up on it and practice ligthing moods in order to acheive the image I want. I also plan to make most of the objects out of polygons and then either convert them to Sub-Ds or just smooth them, since it will be a still image. I am not sure if I will be able to texture the scene either, although i would like to. I would need to learn more about UVs to create a very realistic image, but I'll see what happens. I don't want to start texturing some things and not have evrything textured, so I'll just stick with lighting right now.

I wanted to try and keep the scene simple, yet effective becuase I have a lot of other projects I am also working on.

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# 5 21-07-2005 , 08:22 PM

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hi joed8349,

Nice concept, im looking forward to seeing this one being created.

1 little coment about your scetch, I would maybe try for a more dramatic composition, possibly have the camera very low to the ground looking up so you can see the mouse's face in one corner and towering above the mouse shaking in fear is this huge elephant.

just an opinion and i know its early on in the design but ill be keeping my eye on this one.

good luck

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# 6 21-07-2005 , 08:40 PM

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I have thought about different spots for the camera, so I am playing around with it.

The actual idea behind the scene is that the huge elephant is afraid of the tiny mouse, a myth about elephants and mice (I don't think it has any truth). So I'll be trying to make the elephant look terrified, while either having the mouse turned away from the elephant, not noticinig him, or just looking at him wondering why he is scared. It will be interesting to capture this mood with no animation.

Also, this is my first ever competition of any sort, but I find it fun to look at other people's projects and see the progress. So I will hopefully be entering more of these competitions.

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# 7 22-07-2005 , 10:52 PM

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actually it's partly true, elephants fear snakes, and since they can't see the legs on the mice, rats, etc. the get frightened because they think they're snakes. Probably not as much as cartoons make it look but they do get frightened... that's atleast what I've heard...

edited for clarity

Last edited by baheno; 22-07-2005 at 11:29 PM.

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# 8 27-07-2005 , 03:03 PM

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A little work done

I haven't had much time to work on this project, but I have decided to set up a rock texture to see how it would look. It took me about ten minutes. I used a lambert shader, with leather and mountain inputs. I will have to duplicate the shader and change each one based on the material it is assigned to.

I also instanced the elephant leg and used a smooth proxy while working on the low polygon object to see what the final result will look like. I hope to have more done this week and especially next week. The mouse is also started, another poly object.

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# 9 27-07-2005 , 03:06 PM

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Lights and grass

I will change up the lighting when the modeling is complete. I also want to add grass, maybe a tree or dead log, a rope, and other detail. The final composition will undergo more thought also. Any crits are appreciated.

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# 10 28-07-2005 , 12:14 AM

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texture updated

I was playing around with the rock textures some more. The lighting has also changed to an ambient light, 2 directional lights, and a spotlight, with varying colors.

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# 11 28-07-2005 , 12:16 AM

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another updated render test

I added much more polygonal lines to the large rock/ground in the background, and changed the texture a little more. I'll have to fix it though before it is complete.

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# 12 28-07-2005 , 12:25 AM

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Wireframe of the modeling

Here is a wireframe of the modeling thus far. I am going to focus on finishing the elephant and mouse before completing the lighting and composition. The bump maps on the shaders really reduce the polygon look when rendered.

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# 13 28-07-2005 , 11:19 PM

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Beginning the Elephant Head

I began the head with a polygon cube, then split faces and extruded to get where it is right now. Then I worked on the rock texture in the background because I really didnt like how it looked.

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# 14 28-07-2005 , 11:22 PM

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The rock testure

I changed the leather texture input to a stucco texture and added a noise texture to each stucco channel color. I then played with those noise colors to achieve the image in the top left corner. The other images are all test of varying textures and colors.

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