Now that we're in week 10 I need to model an environment that will be used as the backdrop for my animation, i need to include a detailed castle made from individual polygons so that the material looks realistic, and i can knock part of the wall down using the reactor tool for the final scene. All of my scenes will be rendered from this one environment to make it easier, i will just need to include cameras and animation to certain scenes.
I will be using this image of a castle to base my environment on, i really like the way the bridge and the castle are shown, and i want to use this shot in my animation.
I firstly created an single polygon and made to the size of a stone block. i then held shift to copy the block making sure none of the sides touched each other, otherwise the reactor tool won't work. i then copied the line and moved the block along the z axis then across the x axis to make the bottom of the wall. once this was made i could copy these two lines several times to make the castle wall, i applied the same technique to make the castle entrance that will house the gate. The corner turrets were made by copying a wall and using the bend tool to bend the x axis almost 360 degrees, i used a flat cylinder as a top and made a flag pole and a flag using the cloth modifier which i have previously done a tutorial for.
Once the wall and turret were made i could copy them to make a complete castle wall, then next stage is to make the gate for the front of the castle.
The gate is made up of rows of polygons which i have copied and are equally spread across the x and y axis which will have a wooden material added to them. On top of that i added a thin polygons which sit just on top of the wood and have a cast iron texture to them, i then converted the polygons to editable poly and extended the center of one end to form a spike. For extra detail i added small spheres at each join that look like pins, and added the cast iron material to them. Lastly rotating the gate 180 degrees and moving it and adjusting the size to fit in the arch. I will eventually animate the gate to open in the first scene, and close in the second.
Now that the main castle has been made i need to make a bridge for the castle to be connected to the mainland, and also for the camera to run along in the first scene. I began by making a long box polygon and small box polygons one side that act as a rail. i selected all the smaller polygons and copied to the other side to complete the bridge. I also added a larger polygon at the front of the castle that the bridge rests on and added extra poles, a grass material will be added either side of the path to make the castle look more realistic.
Now that my castle is made i finally need to add a plane, to the base of the castle but making sure it doesn't touch the wall as it will effect the reactor tool later. I added a pebble material to the plane and tiled it 30x30 so that the material wasn't stretched across the plane and kept in size with the castle. I then added materials to all the polygons.
I can now bring in my models that i made which include the renaissance building, machine gun, barrels and target. To import a 3ds max file, go to file, import, and merge and add, making sure you import all the material with the file. i copied the building 4 times and placed two either side of the castle. the target has also been copied and each one placed along the back wall. I then placed the machine gun near the entrance and barrels scattered around it. I had to resize each model that i made to fit inside the castle walls.
The interior of the castle is now complete, i just need to add water, hills, grass and trees. For the water I firstly created a plane and placed it underneath the castle, to create the water effect i selected the materials and mapping, I chose reflection and added raytrace to it, i then added noise to bump and adjusted the options to create a water effect. I tried many tutorials for making water on youtube, but they were very complicated to follow, so i decided to experiment and create my own which i think looks very convincing.
To create the hills, i made a large plane, and converted to editable poly and used the soft selection tool i then selected random parts of the plane to make the hills.
Once the hills were made i could get to work with adding grass, i originally added a grass material to the plane but it made the grass too neat, and didn't look real. So i decided to add the hair an fur modifier to the plane, the render time will be greatly increased but i think it will make the environment more realistic. I added hair and fur by selecting the plane, then choosing the hair and fur modifier, i changed the hair count to 800,000 but reduced the scale and root and tip thickness until i was happy with the look, i also changed the colour of the grass, in the material parameters box. I added a few trees around the hills, which can be found under the geometry and AEC Extended box. Lastly before rendering i added an environment background, ( Rendering, Environment, Environment map) which is a clear blue sky jpeg, i choose this because if i had clouds on the environment, when the scene is rendered as an avi the environment would stay completely still, and make the environment look like it's moving on it's on, rather than the camera moving around the environment.
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