Project Work
This week I used Maya to model the mushrooms. I looked at a few reference online before I began and really liked the look of these ones
References
This is a called a death cap mushroom. Not only does it look very interesting, I thought it was quite fitting that for the scene. The experience is about witnessing the aftermath of the destruction of civilisation, death is surrounding the user. I thought this mushroom, the most poisonous in the world, although morbid, fit well though this theme.
Image from: https://patch.com/california/fremont/death-cap-mushroom-warning-issued-park-district
I also loved the look of this parasol mushroom, I liked how gnarled and imperfect these were. I also liked the underside of the mushrooms (or the gill) and wanted to take inspiration from that.
Image from: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/parasol-mushroom
Tutorials
I found some really good tutorials on how to model mushrooms as a rough guide. This was the one I found most helpful:
This person used Blender (I wanted to use Maya) and it wasn’t exactly the style I was looking for. But I used it as a rough guide.
Modelling
I went in to Maya and started with a cylinder which I subdivided and in height. I deleted the top face and extruded outwards like a mushroom head. Once I got to the top I used the tool Fill Hole then Poke to create the top.
At this point the basic shape was complete. I then moved on to the “gills”. I used the Multi Cut tool / Insert Edge Loop tool to create more edges in the circumference of the cylinder. I took the edges that were on the underside of the mushroom and pulled them down using the Move tool. I did at first use the Extrude tool, but that just extrude the edges so it didnt look quite right.
I experimented a few times with it, I had to keep undoing and trying different ways, eventually, I like how it looked below. I had to do some mesh clean up by merging some vertices to remove the N-gons and have quads again.
As I liked the imperfect look of the parasol mushrooms, I went in on Vert mode and used the Soft Select tool bend and manipulated the mesh to make them more like a gnarled imperfect mushroom. I duplicated the original mushroom and change the mesh using the Soft Select tool to make 4 different varieties.
Texture and lighting
Although my group member said that I just needed to FBX through, without a material, I still wanted to experiment and see what kind of colours and textures I could come up with.
I just had a play around with the texture and lighting. I am new to texturing so was a bit unsure on how to proceed. But I managed to get an image of the top of a mushroom and use it as a bump map. For the other mushroom played around and liked this honey material.
I also added a HDRI of a forest to the scene and a pink light to add interest.
After this I exported the file as an FBX. I added this to the Google Drive.
Meeting
In this meeting we shared our progress and prepared for the presentation. I really liked what Neeti had done so far. She had done a mock up scene for us to look at and so far it was looking really cool. We liked the particles but decided to have them going up instead of down. Shizra also showed us more concept art for the Buenos Aires scene. I shared the image of what the mushrooms looked like so far and the others seemed happy. Donatella then complied all the documents and created the presentation. We organised what we were going to say as well.
In Class
In class we talked about the challenges we all had with collaboration so far. For our group and for many others, it was finding a time to meet that didn’t clash with lectures and suited all our timetables.
Other than that I feel as though I understand what my role is in the group and understand what we need to do to achieve our goals for the project.
In class, we looked at our drawing that we created from the exquisite corpse and create avatars. I used inspiration from the brain drawing and created this brain in Blender. I used the Grease Pencil tool and then drew wiggly lines all over the mesh I created. Then I converted the lines into polygons and increased the diameter. I added a subsurface modifier to smooth out the mesh. I then right clicked and selected shade smooth. I did one side and then just added a mirror modifier.
After this I changed the material to a pink colour and decreased the roughness and increase the sheen. I added a blue plain and added 3 lights to the scene.
I then put it into Aftereffects and added a glow effect and contrast and brightness. I added some royalty free music. This is my brain avatar.
Reflections
This week I learnt loads about modelling in Maya through trial and error. I learnt alot about trying to fix mesh so that it didn’t have N-gons. This meant alot of merging vertices to create 4 points. It was also very interesting to get an insight in to VR and what and how they created scenes in Unity.