How Google Calender helped?

I used Google calender app to help manage my project and it was very easy to use it because I can see it in front of me and that way I can never forget what I need to complete by what day so I can stay on top of the work. Google was also accessible from any place, my phone would alarm me with every event at 11am what I need to complete today.

Google calender stays on my desktop so I can never miss it. Thanks to this I was able to deliver a very proud worthy project. The most useful part of this app was the fact that it really helped me nail the starting of the project; the very initial stages. The base of the model was the harder to make than the other parts of the model because it had to be perfect for everything else to sit on top of. Using the calender I was able to create the base model within the one week and it was in great shape.

I prefer to use this calender over others because it is easily linked with my phone, computer, browser, blog and every other Google thing. I found a app I used to always stay updated with my calender. The image below is the Google calender app for desktop.

Without Google calender I probably wouldn't be able to deliver the same project as I have with it I would rate this 10/10 its a perfect app.

Final Evaluation!

The project overall was great I liked working with Maya although not as planned but close enough to make me proud. Creating a historical ship was quite challenging but using the whole 6 weeks to take a gradual approach to modelling and reusing models which I have created. A lot of new and very completed skills were learnt during the process, I learnt a lot about CV curves and how they can be such great help. I also learnt how to model fast and this project also polished my modelling skills to produce clean typology models.  Reference was the key to my project and I think I found very good reference, enough to get my idea flowing and into a 3d model.

Some problems in the model are that very small things don't line up properly in the -X axis because the ship wasn't mirrored correctly so the small mistake at the start caused a huge distress at the end which is something I learnt from. I did my best to try to keep everything in line. Another problem was that the modelling process took too long even though I worked on it pretty much everyday since the start of the project. But the target of getting the ship textured and presented in UDK had to dropped because it would take too long and if I get time after the project I might consider texturing and presenting it properly. Also, I wanted my ship to be very low resolution at around 30k maximum which unfortunately was almost fifteen times as high. Mainly due to the CV curves and the cannons (cannons were 10k triangles and I have 12 in the scene). If I wanted to drop the resolution dramatically I would start with cutting down some of the extra rings in the rigging and than focus on the cannons because this could half the resolution (449k triangles at the moment).

I liked working alone n this project if I had any sort of help that would be with texturing and I would be able to deliver the project perfectly textured and also modelled. If I was to do this project again the main focus would be on modelling faster and also focusing on UV's earlier rather than at a later stage. If I UV'ed each model I created than when it was to be duplicated and positioned somewhere else it wouldn't take long to just get a texture on it. When going back into a scene to UV it becomes very tedious to think about where to start because for example the barrels in my scene could of been uv'ed and then textured easy now it seems impossible. Also, I would not set myself such high targets which are unachievable this is something that I also learnt during this project.

Rendering was also a issue which I will overcome soon because it's something that I never looked into so closely before. If I had some more time about another 4 weeks than I would definitely have the whole ship with every component textured and presented in a very high standard way.

I am very pleased with the result and I have put together a render for my FMP. The first video which is around the ship didn't turn out very well the lighting wasn't that good and it created a very awful render but I still put it in because it shows some highlights of my model.

To help my work and to keep on top of the work I used Google calender which was great help it did help me a lot so I didn't fall behind my work. It also helped me organise what I need to get done first and what can be done after. I did fall behind on the last week of the project was not able to finish the model and I supposed to be able to export the model into UDK but that idea was dropped but I still tried to import it into UDK which didn't work out. That was very unfortunate.

Fail!

I tried to import into UDK, but the ship would just break I exported the ship into 8 segments each below 50k polygons and still it does not read the files maybe because there are just simply too many objects in the scene. I might later try to import the objects in a lot lower quantity so it doesn't bug the engine out. Hopefully that would work. I am still pleased with the look of the bugged out version of the ship too it looks very interesting with the lighting in the scene (last picture in post).

Newer Renders!

Here are some mental ray renders, there is some problems with it but they look decent enough to be displayed here. I also put a turntable of the ship using mental ray.

Some renders!

Today I supposed to have the ship in unreal and have the collision done so it is available for walking around, I tried to export it but it would take too long because nothing above 65k triangles can be exported into unreal engine and also there is too many objects combined which makes it hard for unreal to read and it gives very bad results.

Almost Finished!

 

Today I got the straight ropes in the rigs done first, so that would complete the whole process of the rigging. There is now nothing left to do. There was some problem with making them in the perspective view I had to make it in the side view which had a little disadvantage it didn't sometimes line up properly because the curves need at least 4 points to make a curve excrude. The ropes didn't need that much points which made some problems with the positioning.

This is the rigging almost finished just straight ropes to be mirrored on the other side which won't take that long. Now after completing all of this, I noticed the deck didn't look as populated as I wanted it to, so I needed to fill it up which I also done today. There was a problem making them straight by hand so I first made the curves and then I had to straighten them up by scaling it downwards which straightened it.

This is the deck inventory as I like to call it, using these I populated the decks by placing these objects in different places to give the ship a lot much more better feel. Below is the wire-frame for the assets. As it is quite low and I tried to keep it as minimum as I can. It didn't take long to create these assets some of these assets were made in college and than worked on a little to be placed in the scene.

Above is the wireframe view just to show that I did try to optimize the resolution to minimum. Below is the deck without the sails to show the deck inventory in action. It really made the scene look at a lot more alive.

This is the deck inventory isolated very small repetition around some places. But this finished my ship of which was a great feel. It gave the ship life and this was a great and quick step I did. I tried my best to my the deck look realistic by tilting and positioning each asset correctly so it acts properly upon gravity.

I added rails going from the end of the ship to the front using curves and snapping it to edges which was very easy. It also gave a great effect. The first curve wasn't straight like how it supposed to be like the second one, this was because of the typology of the ship which was kind of disappointing but than looking at the effect of the extrude it looked quite stylish so I decided to leave it like that.

Tomorrow I will try to render the ship using mental ray so it is finished now. A great relief. I need to work on the texturing and making the ship a lot lower res which I might do for my summer holidays.

Mirror Rigs!

Today I mirrored and fixed some placement of the rigs as my ship doesn't mirror perfectly because of the middle "backbone" of the ship. So it took longer then expected to get the placement perfectly right.

The sails were not the same from both sides so it needed repositioning on the rigs which I had to do for every part manually. I started with doing the front of the first two sails tomorrow I will have it all finished and ready to move onto finishing the ship.

Above is a image of a small case of the mirror problem very small but I still couldn't leave it. There must be still some parts which might not be intact properly but I tried my best.

Its into the last week now so I really need to move fast with the modelling process. I supposed to be ready and started exporting today which I don't think will be happening I rather finish the ship to a perfection than put it in unreal which won't really do me that much of a benefit.

Rigging... Done!

A small problem the curves don't mirror in the perfect position so to get around that I thought I should extrude them first because it will save me a lot more time then extruding twice. 

The nurb circles are great because I can adjust the size of the wire at any-time I need to, which is great. Because looking at some of the reference images I saw that some of the wires are thicker than the other so I made two nurb cirlces and extruded the right ones with the right circle. Above is the thinner wires and below are the thicker ones. It got a little hard to select the circles again and again because they were very small.

This video is showing the process of me extruding the curves 

This is a image of the whole ship with some of the rigging done. I will have it done today hopefully.

It looks great I also saved the curves so I can modify the curve which will modify the tube, so this way I made prefect riggings.

Above is an image of all of the curves extruded with the right thickness ready to be mirrored.

This is an screenshot with the extrudes and the curves on one side. I supposed to have the mirroring done today too according to my organiser which means once again I have fallen behind, also I need to start exporting soon which I don't think will be possible due to time. So instead I think I should just create good renders to compensate for the unreal placement.

Started the curves

I mirrored the rigging mounts to the other side first which I forgot to screen shot. But as it is one object it is easy to tell. I also finished placing the curves on one side of the ship today. This took a lot of time but it involved a lot of repetition which was good. It also makes the ship look like a real ship.

Below is a Video of me working on with the curves and how I create them and position each curve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrxS7ULN1_I

Now tomorrow I will mirror and curves and start extruding, at the moment it looks great !

Time closing in!

This is a new element I made today using the rope for the mast. Using the tie and a simple box with a torus shaped properly I made a small hooking type of element to hold the ropes along the ships side.

This is the image of the rope it is used on a lot of times all over the ship.

  I pretty much finished with the placement of the rig tomorrow i will mirror these and get started on the curves. It is almost the end of the second last week. Sadly I supposed to be texturing right now but due to time I couldn't finish the modelling stage. But I will try my best to make a good model at the end and at least get couple of good renders in udk.

Rigging Tools!

To make the rigging work looking at some reference. The rigging of the ship to hold the sails and to steer the ship are quite complicated. To make it work I first positioned the rigging tools in the right places which are the same from a section of the ship to the rest. So a lot of copy and pasting was done to make this.

This image was a great help along with the one below, it shows where the main rigs are placed. Using these images I made the ships rigging places first so I can easily connect them using curves and extrude them all at one time.

I started from the front of the ship so I can work my way to the back. The rigging mounts stay the same as they do for every-sail a part from the last one so a lot of positioning was needed.

Above is a image with the mounts without the ship which can make you get lost and it surely made me get lost some times even with the ship on.

I made some more small mounting elements and starting moving towards the middle of the ship hopefully tomorrow I should be finished with the placement. I need to work faster because time is the enemy here and it is getting closer.

Starting the main !

On the rigging I unintentionally made a perfect point to snap the cv curve to. From that on top of each rigging element I linked it to the top and the middle of the masts. I also found reference for this which was great.

I did this to the top of the mast connecting into the mast connectors so it doesn't look weird when looking at it from close.

This is a zoomed out screenshot, I still need to make a lot more rigging lines. Using the cv curve tool I can extrude using a nurbs circle which I found out on google. I also need to mirror it on the other side which might need some altering on the positions.