This blog shows my learning process throughout the second year and how much i have developed as an artist in many different ways.

Windmill research

Our group’s idea is to do an environment on a windmill, which will be located on top of a hill. The difference between our windmill and an ordinary windmill is that ours can transformer in to a flying machine.

Windmills

The earliest attempt at building a windmill was back in Ancient Greece around the twenty-first century. Around 400 years later the Persians developed their own version, coming up with the windmill, which were seen by Europeans during the Crusades. The Crusading knights then brought the technology back to Europe, and then Europeans started building windmills around the 12^th century, making slight changes to the design.

Windmills haven’t changed that much since the first century. A windmill has a set of blades or slats that are mounted on a central axis that is designed to rotate as they are pushed by the wind. The axis is connected to a system of gears to turn machinery that can do things like turn a millstone to grind grain, or pump water.

In the 14^th Century, people started to construct tower mills, windmills with a fixed tower base and a rotating top. The development of the tower mill allowed for the construction of facilities directly beneath the windmill. Maximizing energy.

This picture shows a windmill and how the sweep aka blades are slanted and the shaft can be adjusted so the blades go be put in the direction of the wind.

These two pictures show the inside of how a windmill parts work and also gives you the names of each part. This will be very helpful when it comes to modelling and getting a good understanding of how the parts all fit together.

Different windmill types

Flour Windmill

Flour windmills also know as Gristmills have been around for centuries, since people have been using flour for quite a long time. Livestock, water, slaves, or windmills powered the early gristmill. The wind would turn the sails, which was attached to loads of cogs that turned a huge millstone.

Water Pump

A wind pump is a windmill that pumps water from a variety of water sources. This method is used to help provide people with clean drinking water, irrigate farmland or feed livestock. They can also be used to alleviate flooded areas and produce salt from salt water.

Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are used to make electricity by using the kinetic energy in the wind. The blades on the top of the turbines spin which then turns a generator, which generates electricity. The electricity is then delivered to peoples home or business and the advantage of wind power is its clean power.

Steam-punk

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, which is set in the days when steam was still highly used; this was during the 19^th century and Victorian era Britain. Steampunk often feature anachronistic technology, which the Victorians called futuristic technology. Steampunk is also associated with cyberpunk. They both have considerable influence on each other and also share a very similar fan base. The difference between steampunk apart from the time period and level of technology, steampunk settings tend to be less dystopian.

These are some steampunk images.

Grass

To help bring our scene to life i attempted to add grass to our cliffside to give it more of a realistic effect. So i thought that i would research into grass to get a better understanding to help me to create a good grass effect.

Pictures of different grasses.

Reference

Websites used for information

http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/web/corporate/pages.nsf/links/358dbcf64e96265780257102004ee88f

http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Dutch-Windmills-3D-Screensaver-Screenshot-129964.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Different types of windmills and how they are used

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html- 5th November 2010

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-wind-pump.htm- 5th November 2010

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-windmill.htm- 5th November 2010

Videos

http://www.ehow.com/video_4951985_do-windmills-work_.html

This video shows a test render of grass that i have been working on inside of Maya using its Fur system.

This video shows a test of Maya's ncloth system that i have been trying to get use to.

This video shows one of our final renders

This video shows a final render of our scene.

This is a video of a test render of my scene.

This is a screenshot of the basic cliff model that i created in maya with polygons. Once i had the basic model i then used the sculpt Geometry tool to make the detail and shape the cliff to how i wanted it to look.

This screenshot shows the ocean that i have added to the scene to finish the look of a cliff side. To do this i used Maya's own ocean system to get the look we were looking for.

This is a rendered view of the ocean shader that i created in Maya. It is also animated as well so you can see the waves moving.

This is another view of the ocean that i have created in Maya.

This is a screenshot of the rendered view of the Maya Fur grass that i created. When working with the Maya Fur system i had quite a few problems with getting the right look. It took me a while to get use to the Fur attribute settings and knowing what one did what. Once i had the right settings i then did a test render which took a long time, It took around 15 minutes per frame to render out.

This screenshot shows a different camera angle of the grass, ocean and the cliffside with textures. The render time for this scene was about 10 minutes per frame but i am working on getting the time down.

This screenshot shows a front view of the cliffside with grass, ocean and textures as well. This scene took less time to render because the camera is further away.

This is a screenshot of the cliffside facing towards the ocean, which took around 10 minutes to render out. I am using mental ray to render out and using mental ray's physical sun and sky system. This is not the first time i have used it and i am very familiar with its attributes and being able to get the look i am looking for.

Here are some more screenshots of different angles.

This is a screenshot of the rendered scene with the windmill and grass. This scene took only 5 minutes to render out what isn't to bad considering using mental ray and Maya's Fur system. The windmill doesn't have any textures yet but will look much better when they have been applied.

This is a screenshot from a different angle in Maya this is to give you an idea of what it looks like from off shore.

Textures

These are the textures that i used to texture my cliffside model to give it the final look.

This texture was used for the cliffside on land.

This texture was used for the cliffside leading into the ocean.

This texture was used for the tree.

Pictures taken from trip to museum's

These are some of the photos i took while visiting the V & A and British museum. I took pictures of cogs and how things work and link together to get an idea on how to construct our windmill.

When it came to the lighting the outside of my scene wit the grass, water and windmill. I was looking for a way to make it look realistic. I remembered when i was back in college and i had to do an environment and had to find way to render an outside scene. To do this i used mental rays physical sun and sky system what gives you a really good outside lighting effect and if very easy to use as well. The only downside to this was the render time. We had Maya fur to create the grass and using the mental ray renderer and its physical sun and sky it put some of our render times up to like 2o minutes a frame and some were only 5 or minutes. I think that using mental ray and its lighting system it has giving us a really nice piece of work and i am happy that i used it to render out our project even though the time was quite insane.

Conclusion

This project was to create a digital environment in 3d with a group. In my group was Sam, Russell, Jerome and Joe, at first i thought that we had a strong group. We started off really well but then as a group we started to have problems and finding it hard to work with each other. I got on with my work by myself and let the others do theres, but still kept in contacted to see how everything was going. I thought everything was alright and everyone had there work finished to come together and render it out. Then in the last week i found out that some people didn't finish their work because they had problems with the model. So in the last week other team members helped to work on the model to get it finished because it was the main building in our scene. The model got finished with two days or so till the deadline and it was time to render. We then discovered it was going to take a lot long to render then i had thought because i was the dealing with rendering everything out and getting the rendering settings right. We were able to get most of it rendered but some was abandoned. I feel that if we had worked better in a group our final film would have looked really good, but things don't always plan out how you want them to. I would work with this group again because we all have different skills and would produce some really nice work together but this time it just went wrong.

Industrial exercise

Sky Arts

The Sky Arts project is to create a 10 second clip which represents the Sky Arts channel. Sky Arts what use to be called Arts world and was owned by a private partnership but was later bought out by Sky. The Arts world was then changed to Sky Arts in 2007 and Arts world HD became Sky Arts HD.

Different Sky Arts Logos

Here are some of Sky's own adverts to promote the Sky Art's channel

This video was one of the Sky Art's adverts that got me inspired and helped me to create my idea.

My Idea

My idea is to have an old camera projector on a tripod with a film reel going through the camera spelling arts. Then have the Sky Arts logo projected on to a screen. This idea came to me when I starting watching other Sky Arts commercials they would spell arts with different objects. I then thought that I would do the same thing but something relevant to Sky Arts so I chose a camera projector because Arts can be just about anything from film, music, dancing ect.

Film Projector

The first projector was created in the United States that showed animated pictures or movies was a device called the “wheel of life” or “zoopraxiscope”. This machine was invented in 1867 by William Lincoln, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope.

The Frenchman Louis Lumiere is often known as inventing the first motion picture camera 1895. But the truth is, several other made similar inventions around the same time as Lumiere. Lumiere invented a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector called the Cinematograph, three functions covered in one invention.

The Cinematograph made motion pictures very popular, and it could be better to say that Lumiere’s invention began the motion picture era. The Lumiere brothers were no the first to project film. The Edison Company successfully demonstrated the Kinetocope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving picture. Then later on in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S.

These are some of the references i used to help me with my research

http://www.astra2d.com/skytv.html

http://corporate.sky.com/about_sky/timeline.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Arts

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/skytv/skyarts.html

http://www.skyarts.co.uk/art-design/

http://www.retrothing.com/2009/08/nikon-s1000pj-cameraprojector-not-the-first.html

http://www.ehow.com/about_5048420_history-movie-projector.html

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmotionpictures.htm

This screenshot is of two film reel cases which are located on top of the film projector. This is only early stages into the modelling side of my project.

This screenshot shows the beginning of my projectors body which will hold the word Arts inside. There will also be cogs that will finish the look off to give the impression of a working projector.

This screenshot shows my the top part of my projector, which still needs more geometry added to it.

This screenshot shows the top part of the projector what is finished and ready to be textured. Inside the body of the projector the word Arts has been spelled out what will have a film reel texture added to it and to give it the animation effect as well.

In this screenshot you can see the word Arts spelled out with the cogs to help form the letters so you can see the word. The cogs are animated as well using expressions, this is to give it the final look and make it seem more real. There are still a few more stages to go through before it is finished. It needs more geometry added to the scene and also textures still need to be added to give it a more professional look.

This is screenshot shows more geometry which i have added to the scene.

In this screenshot i have finished my texturing and have only textured what you can see in the final video as well. The reason for this is because if you not going to see it in the final video there isn't any point in worrying abut how it looks. The projector screen has an image sequence of a video i made in after effects with some help from a friend. It is a very basic model and scene but when rendered it looks totally different with the lighting added to it and using mental ray.

In this screenshot you can see the film reel texture inside the body of the projector. This was probably the only problem i have come across through this whole entire project. I had to find away to get the texture the animate around the word i had made in 3d. To do this i used a polygon plane and stretched it out and then added the texture to it. Then i animated the planar mapping attribute to get the texture to move along the geometry. Once i had done that i then had a long process of taking each vertex and moving it in to the right position to spell out the word Arts inside the projector. Overall i think that it was very successful and worked really well.

Here are some screenshots of the render view and the quality of the work.

Textures used in project.

This texture was used to create the wooden floor in my scene.

This metal texture was used on the projector machine.

This is the texture i used for the film reel inside the projector

Pictures of 3d printing

This is a quick test of the animated film reel i did in Maya.

This video shows a Sky Art's film reel on a projection screen which i created in After effects with help from Russell Pointer.

When i first got this project i didn't really understand what it was asking me to do. Then when i read into it more i understood that the word Art's can mean a lot of things. Art's is anything you really want it to be from a movie to a building even music. Once i had researched into Sky Art's and the meaning of it and what the channel is about i then understood what the project was about. I looked at different Sky Art's adverts and got some ideas from there. I think that the work that i have produced is of good quality and is also a good idea. I wish i knew how to more within Maya because i feel like it would of helped me to achieve a much better quality piece of work. I didn't come across too many problems except for the film reel being animated and also trying to get the rendering time down but still keeping the quality. Overall the project has helped me to learn new things within the software Maya and get a good understand on how to break project briefs down.