P1 (Modelling Process)

3 Modelling Techniques

1)    Sculpt Geometry Tool – this is used to lift a polygons surface, with this tool the user can quickly manipulate NURBS (Non- Uniform Rational B-Splines) with a single brush stroke, this effect is similar to sculpting clay. The 6 operations one can perform are push, pull, relax, smooth, pinch and erase and these will all alter the position of the control vertices.

2)    Extrude Tool – this is used to create additional polygons on an existing polygon. This tool is also context sensitive meaning only the currently selected component is effected (faces, edges, vertices).

3)    Connect Tool – this is used to multiply the amount of sections a polygon has and also allows the user to connect vertices and/or edges. The three changeable options available with this tool are slide, segments and pinch. Slide specifies where the edge is inserted on the mesh; the default is 0.5 (middle of face). Segments are the number of connected segments contained within the mesh; the default is 1, and pinch determines the distance between outer edges and connected segments.

a) A polygon is the basic starting shape in Maya, these include a sphere, cone, cylinder and prism, once selected a will appear in the work area, either in the center (default size) or you can create one from scratch depending on which setting is selected. These are straight-sided shapes (3+ sides) defined by vertices, edges and faces. When multiple faces are connected together this is known as a ‘polygon mesh’ which are then used to create 3D models. Once in the work area you can navigate around the object and using the rotate, move and resize tools you can begin to create a basic starting shape. This polygon can then be manipulated further using techniques such as ‘sculpting’ and it can even be duplicated or grouped together with other polygons to create an environment or character. Right-clicking within the program will bring up menu which allows the user to

b) Extruding is a tool found in the ‘Edit Mesh’ area in the toolbar in Maya and is used to add polygons onto an existing shape. First a mode in which to view the polygon is selected vertices, faces, edges or an object as a whole, which ever is selected is what the user will be able to isolate and extend. Multiple areas of a polygon can also be selected; meaning a whole collection of faces, edges or vertices can be pulled out and shaped. This tool is particularly useful in 3D environment creation as it means one particular object can be easily altered without interfering with others, for example a tree could be made taller or a door frame could be pulled forward to avoid a collision.

c) Lighting can greatly affect a scene, whether it’s a single textured surface or an entire environment, for example to give the impression that in the scene it is noon you should use short sharper shadows. Various moods can also be created using a mixture of light and shadow; a dramatic and tense scene would need harsh lighting and dark shadows to possibly hide some of the characters’ facial features.

d) 3D models are used in a variety of industries including in games, animations and live action movies. 3D models are widely used in video games, particularly to create realistic and believable characters, for example in Rise of The Tomb Raider (2015) the artists wanted Lara Croft to feel as real as possible so the audience could relate to her and fell empathy throughout the story.  In order to successfully achieve this, an actress was used for motion capture then this footage is then used to create an accurate 3D model. Another way in which models are used is in animated films and giants such as Disney and PIXAR are no different, with PIXAR’s Toy Story (1995) being the first ever CGI feature-length animation. Disney’s most recent success ‘Zootropolis’ (2016) contains an entirely animal-based cast, which of course meant a lot of fur and a big project of theirs was researching how light reacted with these furry textures. A new ‘grooming’ program was created and allowed the artists to really capture the various types of coats each animal has. A Hyperion rendering system was used in creating the lighting affects and was particularly useful as they would be able to see what the scene would look like very early on. Software known as Bonsai is used for tree generation and to populate the environment with realistic looking trees that also move and wave in the wind. All these individual techniques and features, created both by persons and generated by computers, help create an extremely life-like and engaging environment.

These computer-generated images are not only used to create entire movies and worlds from scratch but also used and intertwined with real life actors and sets. For example in the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise beginning in 1992, a combination of physical props and CGI were used to bring each dinosaur to life. First an artist would figure out the proportions and where each joint would be placed then these drawings were translated into software called SoftImage 3D where a wire frame would be rigged up. The skin mesh is then added over the top of these frames and because movie is 24 frames per second and it took ‘…pretty much 10 hours to calculate one frame,’ it took a huge amount out of their production time. However once it was all rendered and composited into the scene, the result is extremely effective and makes Jurassic Park one of the most memorable movies of it’s time to use CGI. 24 years later a fourth movie ‘Jurassic World is released using similar, but improved technology and in fact the same company that work on the first three films worked on ‘World.’ As with the majority of cinematic uses of CGI it begins with motion capture and in this case, human actors were used to act as some of the smaller dinosaurs and in other scenes green screen covered shapes were incorporated. Each dinosaur was then given various layers of body structure, including a skeleton and muscle layer, a skin texture was then placed on top of these to make them look as realistic as possible. Each scene would’ve been shot several times, with and without the actors in order to correctly position the dinosaurs within the environment.