Textures and Shaders

For this week's blog post, I went into Maya 2014, and played around a little big with the many textures and shaders available in the Hypershade menu. The results were as follows:

Phong Shader

The Phong shader gave the sphere a shiny looking surface. The light source can be clearly and brightly be seen on the surface of the sphere.

Blinn Shader

The Blinn shader made the sphere look like a plastic material, it isn't as shiny as the Phong shader, but you are still able to slightly see the bright light source on the surface.

Lambert Shader

The Lambert shader made the sphere appear as a shine-less surface, like wood. There is no reflection of the light source on the surface.

Anisotropic Shader

 The anisotropic shader make the sphere looks a bit strange, as it is intended for cylindrical objects.

Brownian Shader

Cloud Shader

Crater Shader

Granite Shader

Leather Shader

Ocean Shader

 This shader pleasantly surprised me, I've always been a big enthusiast of water like shaders and materials eve since finding out about it when I was working with Blender. This is so far my favourite shader.

Pioneers of 3D Graphics, Democratization and Ptex

Pioneers of 3D Graphics

3D Graphics as we know it today has come a very long way since the start of modern technology. Many amazing and talented artists have played vital parts in shaping the way that games and films look today. However, behind every great digital artist, is a great computer scientist that made their work possible. These computer scientists are often artists themselves too. Some of these people created the foundations when the industry was only starting to sprout many years ago. Some people take this foundation work and refine them. A couple of the pioneers were:

Ed Catmull - Texture Mapping, Anti-aliasing, Subdivision Surfaces, Z-Buffering

Subdivision Surface

Texture Map  

Jim Blinn - Blinn-Phong Shader Model, Bump Mapping

Blinn-Phong Shader Model

Bump Mapping

Loren Carpenter & Robert Cook - Reyes Rendering

Ken Perlin - Perlin Noise, Hypertexture, real-Time Character Animation, Stylus Based Input Devices

Pat Hanrahan & Henrik Wann Jensen - Subsurface Scattering, Photon Mapping

Arthur Appel & Turner Whitted - Raycasting & Raytracing Algorithms

Paul Debevec - Image Based Rendering & Modeling, HDRI

Krishnamurthy & Levoy - Normal Mapping

Normal Mapping

Ofer Alon & Jack Rimokh - Founded Pixologic, created ZBrush

William Reeves - Motion Blur Algorithm

For more information, see this link.

Democratization of 3D Graphics 

Democratization in the 3D graphics industry means that the divide between the larger studios and freelancers is becoming smaller. With more and more tools becoming easily affordable for not just studios but freelance artists, the lone ranger that are freelance are able to create equal quality work as a large studio could produce. 

Until very recently, freelance artists could own well-equipped workstations but be restrained by the specs. Their ability to render scenes would be severely crippled by this, as was the amount of polygons they could use before their system would struggle to load it all. Recently, the option for freelance artists to send your files off to a dedicated render farm after having done test renders.

Ptex

Ptex is a texture mapping system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios for production quality rendering. Ptex does not require UV assignment, as it applies separate texture to each face of a subdivision. I think Ptex will allow future assets to have higher definition texture and make creations look even closer to being life-like. By what I have been reading, it sounds like a lot more effort than texturing as we do it now, because of the possible need to texture every single face individually instead of assigning a single plane of texture to several faces using UV mapping.

Current Trends In 3D Modelling

I struggled with this one, to be quite honest. When I google'd "trends 3D modelling" I did not know where to start looking.

Techniques of modeling

I guess I'll start by saying that there are many ways of modeling an object, and the popularity of one specific way may depend on what the artist prefer, and what is most cost efficient for the client. There are 7 common modeling techniques used in the industry. They are:

• Box/Subdivision Modeling: Box modeling is a polygonal modeling technique in which the artist starts with a geometric primitive (cube, sphere, cylinder, etc.) and then refines its shape until the desired appearance is achieved.
• Edge/Contour Modeling: Edge modeling is another polygonal technique, though fundamentally different from its box modeling counterpart. In edge modeling, rather than starting with a primitive shape and refining, the model is essentially built piece by piece by placing loops of polygonal faces along prominent contours, and then filling any gaps between them.
• NURBS/Spline Modeling: NURBS is a modeling technique used most heavily for automotive and industrial modeling. In contrast to polygonal geometry, a NURBS mesh has no faces, edges, or vertices. Instead, NURBS models are comprised of smoothly interpreted surfaces, created by "lofting" a mesh between two or more Bezier curves (also known as splines).
• Digital Sculpting: In digital sculpting, meshes are created organically, using a (Wacom) tablet device to mold and shape the model almost exactly like a sculptor would use rake brushes on a real chunk of clay. Digital sculpting has taken character and creature modeling to a new level, making the process faster, more efficient, and allowing artists to work with high-resolution meshes containing millions of polygons. Sculpted meshes are known for previously unthinkable levels of surface detail, and a natural (even spontaneous) aesthetic.
• Image Based Modeling: Image based modeling is a process by which transformable 3D objects are algorithmically derived from a set of static two-dimensional images. Image based modeling is often used in situations where time or budgetary restrictions do not allow for a fully realized 3D asset to be created manually. This method was perhaps most famously used on The Matrix.
• 3D Scanning: 3D Scanning is a method of digitizing real world objects when an incredibly high level of photo-realism is required. A real world object (or even actor) is scanned, analyzed, and the raw data (typically an x,y,z point cloud) is used to generate an accurate polygonal or NURBS mesh. Scanning is often used when a digital representation of a real-world actor is required, as in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where the lead character (Brad Pitt) aged in reverse throughout the film.

Source

Examples of the 3D modeling pipeline

Some amazing examples of the 3D modeling pipeline are some of the brilliant models made for the project called Dominance War. This is an annual game art competition where for 3 months ever year, artists world wide come together to participate in a friendly 2D, 3D and Animation challenge between communities. 

Above, is the winner of Dominance War 2. This character has been named Bigun, and is the creation of Taehoon.

The winner of the previous year's DW, was Vitaliy Naymushin. His creation was a Necromancer named General Corum. 

http://www.dominancewar.com/1/finals/team_2/7_mrRockstar/3.htm

Here you can see the blank model, the model with a normal map, and the final render of the model with textures.

3D Production Pipeline

The 3D Production Pipeline. It is the process which every 3D product goes through in order to reach final cut. This pipeline has many stages, and cycles. The first part is the start: the research. It is almost impossible to continue at all without first researching and coming up with ideas. This research can be compiling a bunch of pictures together, doing sketches, and writing down thoughts and ideas.

Source: http://dpa860.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/production_pipeline.jpg

Once research is completed, and you have a solid idea of what you want, you can model the character, props background etc. Often during this process, there will come issues with the character or props that will cause the need to go back to the first step, and conduct more research. It's completely normal for this to happen, trial and error is the best way to get that perfect looking character, props and background.

Source: jkuo.deviantart.com/art/Twin-Crescent-Knight-Selene-Character-Model-350618242

Just before the final cut is made, there are a couple of things that need to be considered. Lighting, composition and posing. Even though you could techincally take a character in a standing pose, slap on some light from a random angle, and take a head on render, this is incredibly boring and does not look good. For a truly interesting final cut, take some time to put the character in an interesting pose, related to the theme, work out a light angle that show what you want to show in an interesting light and put the camera at a crazy angle! 

Source: http://www.richardcrouse.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/how-to-train-your-dragon-2-wallpaper-3.jpg