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

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

Diorama render and updates

So this is my render of my textured diorama (note, not the final one). I'm happy with how it turned out, I'm hopeful that it will look really nice in UDK. Since my last post I added a construction sign and made the fences dips be shown through the use of a normal map and AO instead of geometry as it didn't really need to be made 3D and it took up unnecessary tris. As for the making of the textures themselves, the sign was very easy since there was a construction site with some on the way to university from my flat conveniently. Using photos it was made quickly. The claw was okay but I'm not that happy with it, I think it could use with some more time on it which I may do tomorrow. The fence is fine and I'm happy with how the floor texture came out as my photos of dirt weren't perfect and I thought I would have to do it tomorrow with some new photos but my current ones were enough apparently. I also had a major issue with my hard drive requiring me to remake my decal map and sort out some errors on my digger textures which was very annoying and mostly my fault sadly. But nevertheless, I will be moving this into UDK in the coming weeks and getting some beauty renders of it which will be posted here then.

Diorama design

Just a quick mock up of what I plan to make for my diorama. It's very simple and features several objects present in the environment that I photographed my digger in. It will be easy to model and not too difficult to texture either so I can't see a problem with me creating this.