3D modelling: rendering and more

Applying textures:

To get the textures back into Maya I needed to export them and then apply them to the baked models.

After I exported each set of textures, I went back into Maya and added an AIArnoldShader material to each of my models and then started to upload the textures files in the correct places. These were base colour in colour, Metalness in Metal, Roughness in Roughness and Normal in Bump value.

I was having issues with my normal maps looking very poor so I went into the bump settings and changed the “use as” to object space normal and I found this fixed the issue.

These are my models after the textures have been applied.

Lighting:

I created a camera and looked through it, placing it nicely in front of my models, then went onto Arnold render to check that it looked correct and created 3 area lights and placed on either side, then one above for 3 point studio lighting. A large plane was also placed below to give the models a surface to sit on in the renders.

I then checked that it looked okay for the rendering and noticed the lighting was very dark so I made the exposure higher on the area lights and this fixed the issues.

Asset importance:

In our team, we got together and decided on the story and after a back and forth we decided on this: there is a small village in Feudal Japan that has a very close-knit community, on top of an overlooking hill there is a blacksmith. One day the village was attacked by an Oni demon, and as he wrecked his way through the village, the blacksmith was caught off guard on his tea break and hurried to get ready for battle. This story is told through the assets from my team, my asset being this family tea set on a bench, and the assets of my three other members being weapons that are displayed or have been used in the fight. We chose an Oni demon as Yokai are quite prevalent in Japanese culture throughout the ages and have a lot of interesting history surrounding them, and we found it was a very unique way to show our themes.

(Foster, M.D. (2015). The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. [online] Google Books. Univ of California Press. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FdzjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA125&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 21 May 2022].)

Feedback:

For feedback, and to make sure our designs were different, we made a discord server to track everyone’s progress and we would post pictures of the progress of our assets. To ensure each asset was unique we were all very open from the start about what they were and each helped each other with critique and advice. I will show some screenshots of the chat.

Video render:

Lit screenshots:

Unlit wireframe screenshots:

Flat light with and without textures screenshots:

In conclusion, I found myself challenged with this assignment as I have never touched 3d modelling before and am very happy and proud with my outcome. I feel as though I have a good understanding of Maya and substance painter now for going into the next year.