Hagrid's Hut

Animesh

Hey all, I started working on this new project. It's Hagrid's Hut from the Harry Potter series. This is the reference scene.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9nErD0lnaMk/Tx2c8wd8aTI/AAAAAAAAANQ/V-rEIR3TFJQ/s1600/Hagrid%2BHut_front.jpg

What would be your process of modeling the pillars in the front?

Goeddy

....scale a cube.
or do 10 cubes sculpt them bake them to a scaled tube and do the texturing...

be more specific please.

c22dunbar

- make 3-4 boxes of the same size using zbrush
- stack them on top of each other rotating them to avoid visible repetition
- group them togheter(optional) using ffd modifier with custom defined lattice move around the brick/stone edges so they are not paralell horizontally
- select whole pillar and using 2x2 ffd modifier scale down the top control points
- make a simple low poly(but avoid making a simple box, cut the edges and bigger holes in)
- UV & bake
- rotate 180 to get a second pillar

cdevens

I would make some base stones and roughly shape them. Then bring them into a sculpting package and rough them up and make them look like stone. You only need to do a few stones, then you can rotate them to look like different stones when you assemble them into pillars. Decimate them, bring them back into your modeling package and bake onto your low poly geometry.

Seirei

*cough* embedding *cough*

Well I'd suggest you make a box with the rough shape, subdevide it on every edge between 2 stones and ad a little detail to the silhouette. Reading your previous threads I'm certain you can't use z-brush.
Well and after that you should go for your typical normal-bakig process in photoshop I guess?

I realy don't know how I should such simple processes... don't expect that people take you by the hand and give you a step by step walkthroug, that's what tutorials are for. Just sit down and do what seems right, if that doesn't work then you'll have hopefully some good critics to rely on.

Animesh

thanks for the helpful advice. Do you know of any good tutorials that may help? Can you recommend a good brush to use in Zbrush?

SgtNasty

Snader

Try make it in a simple style, for instance like in Torchlight. Based on your previous threads, you don't have the chops to make a highpoly, bake it, paint diffuse, specular etc yet. Walk first, run later.

Animesh

I can't figure out how to fix this, I tried adjusting the envelope and baking it in XN but nothing changed. Any suggestions?

Render
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QNmNthqPPKs/Tx3lSc5hDwI/AAAAAAAAAOA/kVIXiJBJT74/s1600/nml_problem.png

XN Map
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aqgnkPWNDNY/Tx3nfrKje1I/AAAAAAAAAOM/mGmSE938vwU/s1600/XN_cornerStone_NMLmap_normals.PNG

Seirei

Please please pleas, embed the images... you already got it right in your last thread, what happened to that.

Also you're wasting alot of texturespace, but considering that the whole texture is just one or 2 stones that may be just for testing.
Btw are you trying to build this house stone by stone? Why don't you just build a low poly and let the texture do the rest, for the normal you could use the texture too, it might not look all that well, but considering you can't use ZBrush this might be alot quicker.

gsokol

Seirei wrote: »

Please please pleas, embed the images... you already got it right in your last thread, what happened to that.

To be fair, he never actually got it right, Jesse Moody fixed his posts.

Animesh..I think you might be better off learning to walk before you run. Maybe using Zbrush right now is introducing one too many concepts.

For the pillar, You can just model the shape you want it to be. Most often, it won't be modeled brick-bye-brick, so just get the overall shape, then add the bricks in texture. So like others said, in this case it would just be a scaled cube kinda, but since it isn't exactly straight, you can add in some wider/narrower parts to it.

Animesh

I have Zbrush I just haven't had the proper training for it. Zbrush was not covered when I went to school. I am trying to train myself and get feedback so I can get better at it since it seems to be becoming a necessity in the 3d art industry.

Unfortunately I can't embed photos without an error.

Snader

Have you had proper training for modeling?
Have you had proper training for textures?
Have you had proper training for composition?
Have you had proper training for lighting?

Animesh

I have had proper training for modeling and texturing in 2008. No lighting and no com positing. I have a certificate in 3d art and animation. I later realized animation was not my thing but I found I have a great passion for 3d art. I chose to go with what I was passionate about. Unfortunately my school focused on animation more than 3d art.
I've had many friends and coworkers that went to Expressions, Art institute and even Academy of Art and have had crappy reals also. I met them through QA testing after they were placed there by the job placement program at their school after graduating. So I have come to the realization that the best training is training yourself. I t is unfortunate to see someone working in QA hundreds of miles away from the designers and yet they have a BA degree from Expressions or Art Institute.

Anyway that is my rant but I'm moving on with a positive attitude and looking forward to getting better.

Gannon

Composition =/= Compositing

I think it would be a good idea to maybe set any personal projects on a backburner for the time being. Just dig into the Wiki and any other tutorials. Make a single thread, and update it as your progress through them. Start with some basic traditional fundamentals. IE, Forms, color theory, composition. etc.

Any questions you may have can be cleared up there.

Animesh

This is the tutorial I am attempting to do for the Pillars in the front. For the rest of the rocks surrounding the hut, I will probably use the bump-map technique. What do you think? Would this be a recommended approach?

c22dunbar

well here's a little scoop of great mystery of 3d:

why don't You try and see if it works

WarrenM

I agree with c22dunbar ... Part of learning is failing. Try something. If it doesn't work, try something else. Trying to nail the perfect approach on the first shot is the path to never getting started and never learning anything new.

"Ready, fire, aim" is a solid strategy when learning.

cdevens

That is a great tutorial, but that is a small part of it. Also, nowhere in that tutorial does Kevin unwrap and bake a single stone. He makes a few different high poly stones, assembles them in max, and bakes the wall sections out. Look at the tutorial as a whole and take his process and apply it to your project. Also, you UV layout is totally messed up for a box, you should not have triangle sections and odd X shaped islands with holes in the middle. You should really get a good, THOROUGH tutorial video and take it from start to finish. Don't take a small piece of a tutorial and try to apply it by itself. Eat3d has some great videos that may help you.

Try this one:
http://eat3d.com/pillar

You should really solidify your foundation, you are kinda all over the place at the moment.

Animesh

I wish I can find the actual full length tutorial but I guess this pic will do for now. I think I get how he did this.

jeremiah_bigley

Animesh wrote: »

I've had many friends and coworkers that went to Expressions, Art institute and even Academy of Art and have had crappy reals also. I met them through QA testing after they were placed there by the job placement program at their school after graduating. So I have come to the realization that the best training is training yourself. I t is unfortunate to see someone working in QA hundreds of miles away from the designers and yet they have a BA degree from Expressions or Art Institute.

This is for a lot of reasons probably. Probably the main reason is that they could have slacked off through all of school and slid out on a "crappy" reel. People tend to not put all their effort into school until the last semester/quarter.

School is what you make of it. Really what it should be is financial coverage while you live off loans to learn everything that you can on your own. If you are lucky you have some awesome teachers/mentors that build your character, design skills, and give you a couple of tricks here and there. I think there are some people that need school because they need the deadlines and responsibilities to force them to learn.



A little off topic but...

I think one thing I would try to stray away from is trying to find a tutorial for everything you want to accomplish. If you can get basic principles and theories from watching a tutorial then great, but part of learning is translating what you have learned into your own art/work and just trial and error as has been said.

I do think there is a lot of talking going on... and to be honest you should start a thread showing what you have done not "hey I am going to do this! k bye!"

Would really like to see some work and effort. People could also quit trolling the thread and just let you get back to work.

Animesh

Hey all, I've been working more on the pillars and I started a sketchbook thread.

Tobbo

Is it supposed to be leaning like that?

I'm having a hard time making out the detail as well. Can we see the texture map?

salacious_Crumb

Yeah, what Tobbo Said. Can't really give you much comment without seeing the texture maps. How did you go about making it? Its a little blurry. Did you use crazybump?

-I too had a bad experience with University here in the UK some years back. It was a pretty badly run place, which is really disapointing when you want to work hard. Lecturers would be late, or not turn up at all. We had a Maya guy teaching us Max, who spend most of the time saying "well in maya theres a button right here for it...". Then he quit after a year. I could go on. Basically though, you just gotta pick yourself up and make an effort to get on with it. So keep at it.

artquest

Hey man, I've been following some of your other threads as well. It's great that despite your bad experience with college, you're still at this. Keep that attitude and it will take you far.

I'd suggest that before you get into any sculpting or detailing of these pillars that you take a minute to block things in. Just like in traditional art you sketch your construction lines first and then build the final piece out of that. Grab some simple primitives, don't worry about edge flow or triangles and just get the entirety of what you're trying to build with as simple geometry as possible. Once every piece is in place, then go back in and detail things up.

You're really jumping around a lot. That eats up a lot of time. Model it all, UV it all, sculpt it all and then texture it all. Switching tasks really slows you down and doesn't provide any benefits to offset the downsides imho.

Animesh

I found a closer reference of the hut reveals the pillars are shaped differently. I think I'm going to go with this reference because it looks more interesting and it shows more texture detail such as what type of rock is being used.

Animesh

I also like how this reference gives the model a hearty stone look. However I think I'm going to replace the rocks under the stairs with some wooden stumps.

Animesh

Here is the scene blocked out so far. I'm thinking of adding the stump next and maybe some wooden crates. Advice is welcome.

Animesh

Here is an update on how the hut is going. Thanks to those who have given me the encouragement and who have helped me get this far. Still have much more work to do so feel free to give any advice.:)

artquest

Looking much better! I just noticed the steps are a bit different than in the reference. Seems like there are rocks in between each step in your ref. Right now it looks like some sort of wooden beam holding up the steps. But if they are supposed to be rock steps it seems wood wouldn't be able to support them.

Animesh

Here is the scene again with some work done on the terrain. I'm also in the process of modeling the rocks under the stairs.

Animesh

Project is still active, just waiting on some comments and advice to continue : )

Orangeknight

Well there is not a huge amount to comment on until you have more texture work.

Sharvo

Yeah, just because no one comments doent mean stop. You wouldnt do that at work would you?

'Lead hasn't commented on my work today, better wait until he comes over' - it dont happen, from what i can see the only update is the grass.

The texture is very blurry and looks hard is it grass or rock? What size is your map? Are your uvs stretched, is this a tileable texture?

As you said yourself you have a long way to go, i think you need to add some more geometry in places, more props and i dont want you to get ahead, but think about foliage as welll as that will help with the ground.

Animesh

This took me an hour to render so I can't update too often. My major dilemma at the moment is that I would like to delete the grass around the campfire but I'm not sure how to do that without deleting the entire grass. I used Fur/grass in maya to make this grass. I applied the fur to the plane which also has the texture underneath. Please ignore the edges, they are going to be out of the shot.

http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s395/animesh58/grassTest_02.png

SgtNasty

So, this is definitely not how most people would go about this. I'm just going to tackle this in terms of game art, as this is a game art forum.

So, first, you should just be blocking everything in. You sort of did that, but you only did the foreground. Try to block in every little bit of geometry, and get a composition going. Yes it's 3D, and it's supposed to be viewed from all angles, but it still has to have a good composition.

After EVERYTHING is blocked in, I would suggest getting things set up in UDK or Cry Engine or Unity, whatever you feel comfortable with. A lot of people here know UDK, and there are a lot of tutorials for it, so that might be a good option. Start doing/using tutorials that are applicable to whatever you are working on, don't just wing it.

I bring this stuff up because you said your renders are taking an hour, which is completely insane. You shouldn't be doing the grass like that in the first place, and you shouldn't be wasting an hour rendering something like that at this stage in your project. If you need more info please please use the wiki, it's got tons of stuff. You should just stop what your are doing and just read the entire wiki.

http://wiki.polycount.com/

Animesh

I read the wiki again and I do not see any tutorial pertaining to modeling grass. When I search for grass modeling in Maya over the web, the only tuts I see are about how to model using paint effects. That is why I used this technique. If anybody has a more efficient way to model grass in Maya than please do share because the wiki is pretty limited pertaining to this

artquest

Oh man, I didn't realize you were using maya fur like that. So you can still use maya fur to get you started on grass but you'll need to do something similiar to this. Render a few small patches out onto planes then duplicate and rotate the planes to get your grass looking good.

Animesh

Thanks artquest! I think I will go with the reference you posted. Fur is a pretty cool effect but it just slows my laptop down way too much. Even when I just use it on small planes. I think I will go with this method http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingHairUsingAlpha.html and just rotate the planes vertical 90 degrees and in six directions.

Animesh

This appears to be the best texture for grass i can find at this moment. My plan is to erase the white background then attach this to a plane in Maya. I would then rotate the plane 90 deg vertical and duplicate, then rotate the same plane horizontal and duplicate. Does this sound like a good start?

-Em'-

If I were you, I would create my own grass texture with some grass brush in photoshop.
You can re use colors from this picture, but if you want to learn you'll have to get your hands dirty

This will allow you to create better variations of grass.

Don't you think ?

Animesh

Sure would if I knew how to. Do you know of a tutorial on that?

fearian

You need to step out of the phase everyone goes through of needing a tutorial or a guide to do something. Take photoshop, paint some grass blades as simple silhouettes or shapes, anything, on a transparent background. experiment! Use the wiki! http://wiki.polycount.com/

Animesh

Without going into a long complicated story I had some technical difficulties, anyway here is the outline.

Technical Difficulties: Switched from Windows to Linux, Importing scene to Wings3d. working on scene with Wings3d from now on.

Update will be posted soon

artquest

Animesh wrote: »

This appears to be the best texture for grass i can find at this moment. My plan is to erase the white background then attach this to a plane in Maya. I would then rotate the plane 90 deg vertical and duplicate, then rotate the same plane horizontal and duplicate. Does this sound like a good start?

Oh man, We'll I'm glad you're able to keep workin on it though. For the grass I'd suggest using the maya fur grass you already rendered. Just do an orthographic render of the side view of a small patch of grass on a flat plane.

Animesh

I found this tutorial on game grass, I think this may keep the polycount to a managable size. Using Maya's fur is no longer an option since I'm using Linux and Wings3d now. I think it is possible for me to do this in Wings3d but I do have to figure out how to only display the alpha channel.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7IZStYmImY"]Low Poly Grass Tutorial Part 1 - YouTube[/ame]

shadownet752

If you're looking to make your grass for cheap, i would suggest alpha plans over a nice ground texture. Though I wouldn't just erase the white around your grass texture. .

Instead, make your alpha channel, and paint over the white with a fill color a bit lighter than your grass. Putting this fill color in will help with the fuzziness you get with alphas, while also making sure you dont get any white noise.

Here's a quick example if you've never done any plants alphas. Exuse my horrible cropping, but you get the idea.

specsowl

Wait. My question is why are you doing grass now? There's a lot of people in this thread saying you need to block this out. If you want to make Hagrid's Hut, that's fine. But you are straying away from the original reference for no discernible reason. Like everyone else has been saying...walk before you can run. Watch some more tutorials on Youtube or buy some from Eat3D or go on Digital Tutors. There's so many places to learn how to do this.

Animesh

What else is there to block out. If you look at the original reference I have everything blocked out that I see needs to be. The trees are going to be a backdrop and there are no shots behind the house. Did I miss something that I should have blocked out?

Animesh

does anyone know how to take a render shot in wings3d? : D

Animesh

Just to give you a heads up, I finished the grass and I'm trying to figure out how to take a rendered shot of the grass shrub I made. As soon as I do I'll post a render for you all.