UV Mapping of the mountains

For the UV Mapping of the mountains, I applied Spherical Mapping, which I then exported to a PSD Network.  The main focus with the texturing of the mountains, was to retain the distinctive looks that mountains and hilly terrain of the Serengeti had; which is largely green but becomes darker and browner towards the top.

I looked for images of mountainous terrain in the African wilderness and I came across this image.

I copied the Mountain terrain over to a PSD network and moved it so there was a balance between the light and dark areas.

In Maya, this texturing initially looked very attractive on the mountain.

However, when I rendered this mountain, the outcome was not satisfactory.

The geometry was bumpy and rigid.  I tried softening the geometry but that made it worse.  We soon decided that this was a modelling fault as opposed to a texturing fault so I requested the Environmental Modeller, Alex to model this new one, which I UV mapped using the same method as before.

This was the rendered outcome.

Incredibly smooth and slender in contrast to the previous rendered model and could perhaps be made more bumpy through a few extrusions of faces or edges; but it certainly works better than the previous attempt and there has been more effort put in to shaping the model, which allows my texturing to stand out better.

UV Mapping of rock

I started off the UV mapping by producing some textures for the rocks.  I began by getting an image of a rock off the internet and then cropping it so I just got this basic texture

In Maya, I applied Spherical Mapping, seen as the rock was roughly a round shape.  I then created a PSD network in the UV Texture editor and opened this in Photoshop.  I then copied the rock texture that I had obtained from the internet and pasted this into the PSD Network in tiles.  I reversed some of the tiles to make it look more like a continuous pattern.

When I had finished producing this texture in Photoshop, I went back into Maya and clicked the Update PSD Network button in the UV Texture editor and it applied these changes to the UV Map.

I then scaled it so the texture would fit around the whole rock.  Here is how the rock now looks.

I also made a brown one using this texture.

I applied the texture to another rock model using the exact same method and here is the outcome.

These textures have a very different feel to the cell shaded look that we set out to achieve, but we feel that this may give a more open and less saturated feeling to our project.

Creating sky in Maya

I have just come across a tutorial on producing a feasible sky in Maya.  This tutorial can be found here and involves producing a sky by applying an Environmental texture called envSky to a camera.  This will mean that no further modelling will be needed to produce a sky and I will be able to apply these effects once the set decoration and camera set-up is complete.  Furthermore, the advantage this has over something like mental ray is that you can apply this effect with or without a floor.

The envSky texture also comes with settings for a Sun and Clouds, which can be animated using keyframes.  The colour of the sky is easier to texture as well, allowing for us to create a red effect.

The likelihood is that we will not assign a floor to the envSky and apply little Floor Altitude, as we will be modelling the terrain ourselves.

One thing which the tutorial failed to mention, was that in order to produce any clouds, I had to configure some of the settings in the cloud layer, namely the Contrast, Amplitude and Ratio.  The tutorial just stated that I needed configure the Density settings under the Cloud Attributes of the envSky texture.

I have also done an animation test so I can see the sunset in action.  It is very quick but it demonstrates how I can reduce/expand the number of clouds, along with change the colour of the sky through the course of the sunset/sunrise.

The texture of this sky is cloudier and conveys a more open space than a cel shaded sky.

New texturing methods

Yesterday, our group had an assessment for our Environments project.  Much of the feedback I got was that the cell shaded effect that I had applied to the models was flattening out the sense of perspective.  I was asked to look at de-saturing some of the background textures. i.e. the textures of the sky and mountains.  I can perhaps understand this, because we were trying to link our project to African art and if you study some of works of African art, there tends to be a flat sense of composition, characterised by the warm colour schemes and smooth texture.

But the in other pieces of African art, the artist succeeds in creating depth through using foggier shades of colour to put certain parts of the composition into the background and warmer, cleaner colours to bring elements to the foreground.  This artist, has also begun to experiment with shading and using that to create a wide sense of space.

In order to bring up my grade for the project, I will need to use a greater variety of textures and not just commit to the clean, bright style of cel shading.  I will need to consider other methods of texturing the scenery and I will also need to apply some UV Mapping, which I have yet to do in this project.  Most of the texturing I have done so far was produced before I became proficient in UV Mapping.  Over the past weekend, I have vastly developed my ability to UV map and I feel I can now use this to fulfil the needs of our project.

Applying a greater range of textures will also mean that we will be able to convey the Serengeti as the vast wilderness that it really is; rather than the flat, claustrophobic feeling our current texturing scheme produces.  I am also using Ocean Shader to texture the water in this project and I think using other methods of texturing would be more complementary to the ocean shaded lake.

Another thing which I must get on to soon, which I have neglected is the creation of the daytime sky.  This will be an important element in creating the sense of openness as the foggy blue colouring will add a sense of depth and space to the project.