IMD 3901 : Milestone 6 - noreenqureshi/TermProjectBlogposts GitHub Wiki
March 16, 2021
Overview
I made lots of progress this week! I finished up modelling the scene, applied materials to all objects, and applied an automatic UV map to all objects. After applying an automatic map to all objects, I noticed that there were no major concerns because the topology of each mesh was good. Since I may be texturing in Substance Painter, I do not think I need to create a 2D UV map for all the textures. However, I will go back and further inspect the UV Shells, and cut / sew anything that may need tweaking.
Final scene:
Front
Back
Side
Top
Challenges
The biggest challenge for me this week was modelling the tree. I tried many different approaches; first I tried attaching individual leaves onto the tree branches and adjusting them, however using this method would have taken far too long and I was not happy with how it looked. Next, I tried using polyhedrons to quickly populate the tree branches with polygons to resemble leaves; however doing this strayed too far from how the original reference painting looked. Thirdly, I tried using Maya Paint Effects to quickly create trees using one of the default Tree Mesh brushes provided in Maya. While this looked very nice, I could not figure out how to alter the materials/textures, and that would create a new problem which we may not be able to solve (Since I am unfamiliar with Maya Paint Effects, I am unsure if A-Frame is able to load the textures and I do not know where to find the actual materials used in the Paint Effect). Lastly, I decided to combine polyhedrons with individual leaves. Rather than placing each leaf one by one, I assorted them into a small bunch, duplicated the bunch, and placed it around the tree. After the leaves were placed, I combined them into one mesh so I would not have too many objects in the scene. I am happy with the result, and I hope that everything will run smoothly when we combine the models with the code.
Successes
I think my biggest success for this week is finishing the scene! I am happy with how it turned out and am looking forward to seeing it incorporated into our project. I also think I will render the scene for my own personal portfolio, as it is something that I am definitely proud of.
Total hours spent this week: 15
Next steps
Before putting all our energy into Substance Painter, my group and I decided that we should import our models into A-Frame the scene and see how everything fits together. Judging by this, we will determine whether it is a good idea to apply high quality textures, or if it will only slow the program down and make it less efficient. Depending on our observations, we may alter the scope of the scene. Additionally, after doing this we will be working on our Beta Presentation which is scheduled for Friday, March 19th.