Completion of the project

Today I finished off the last of my work for this module. The main things I accomplished today were light mapping my digger, creating a new scene with different lighting and then rendering the scene whilst organising the last of my files for my CD hand in. 

The light map for the digger caused me a lot of trouble. I originally tried to automatic map my digger and simply give each piece some padding. Whilst in theory it's not a bad idea, it went horribly. There were a lot of artefacts and the whole thing had black seams everywhere. I was shown today a quick and usually effective method of light mapping it by using the layout option in Maya's texture editor. This shrank them down but kept them in resolution to each other, giving them equal space and padding all over. This worked really well and saved me a lot of hassle. 

The broken lightmap

The working lightmap

I then made my last scene. It was pretty similar to my previous attempt but with different lighting and slightly different angles. As for the final renders I'm really happy with how they came out. If I had to redo the assignment I would change a few things. I would spend less time modelling and UV'ing and get the texture work going a lot earlier. I would also research more about light maps, since it's not been a strong point here. But overall, I'm very happy with my performance and look forward to future 3D work. 

Final Render #1

Final Render #2

Gantt chart

This is a GANTT chart showing my progression through this module compared to what I expected it to be (which was guided primarily by certain deadlines we had to meet). All in all, I feel I did quite well with it. The texturing of the digger took me quite a while (including UV mapping) because I lost some of my drive when I started creating the UV map for the digger which let me down. I don't feel that I fell behind on anything else, I even feel that I did better than expected too when it came to timing, especially in modelling areas of the project.

Importing into UDK and light maps

The last week has been spent preparing my diorama for rendering in UDK. The first thing I did was import all my models as FBX files into my own saved package. After this I moved on to importing all my texture images. These were then slotted together into a single material for each model (barring the digger which had two, one for the vehicle itself and then the decal map). I didn't have any trouble putting them together apart from for the digger itself. I struggled to get my alpha map working correctly at first. Eventually I found that I had missed an import check box on the import screen along with having to change the blend mode of the material itself. With these done I then applied them through the static mesh editor so that they were applied to all instances of the model that I would create. 

After all this I decided to start light maps. I quickly found that they certainly aren't a strength of mine. The reason for creating one is so that models light correctly and display nice shadows. The process of making a light map doesn't actually involve making a map itself, more just creating a new UV set for each model in Maya with very specific rules. You cannot overlay UV's, have red UV's, they must have 2 pixels of padding (at least) to not have strange issues, cannot be connected if on a corner of 90 degrees or more and should be placed on the pixel lines of the grid as much as possible. All of this together makes for a lot of stress, especially when you don't know what you have done wrong on it so far. I have made light maps for all of my diorama now, I just need to make the diggers set. However the problem is that I don't know how I will fit it all on one map as much of my UV's are overlayed or connect around 90 degree corners. All in all I don't have a clue of how to do it but am getting assistance this Wednesday so hopefully I will be able to make one before the deadline else I will lose marks.

As for the scene itself, I like the layout I have yet I think that I will change the lighting quite a bit, it's just like this to check the shadows and things. 

UDK scene

Standard UV's in channel 0

UV's for the light map in channel 1

 My Material set-up in UDK

My content browser