Rounding off the texturing

Today was spent finishing up the textures, which at the moment im pretty happy with except for a few little glitches that im sure are easily fixed, i just dont have the know how... I spent alot of time trying to work out the glass textures for the diner windows, and ended up using 2 mental ray nodes linked together to get a glass that is opaque from the side, but clear from straight on. I thinnk it worked out pretty well in the end. Other than that, asphalt was a big one, i used a layered shader with some noise and cloud textures along with a noise bump to give it some depth... the diner floor was the same idea, except that i used a standard checkered texture for both the colour and bump map. One texture Im paticularly pleased with is on the awning of the deli, i painted some water-damge type effects in photoshop and applied them as a bump map, and it worked a charm. Overall, a good day, ended working on some fog effects to surrond the block, but at teh moment they are being slightly trying to ill leave them to tomorrow. Lighting is the next big step, Ive all ready added a few lights here and there, but i need to focus on making it dark, but visible. tricky buisness. anyway, some pictures below of the work from today, ill update again tomorrow with lights and things! (First picture is the asphalt texture, second is of the deli sign and the third is just of a few lights put in place for now...)

Below is a little render test of the glass...

lightning lighting!

Just working down the alleys of the project today, along with cleaning up a litlte bit or the history/grouping some things together.

whew!

Well alright! a pretty good day today, stayed late but got in early so it all worked out... today has been spent finishing up the alley buildings, they are done now and looking pretty fresh, and i did a few things for inside the diner aswell, mainly the cigarette pack. tex did the outside texture, and i went on to texture the cigarettes with the litlte brand on them.... i hadnt used the UV editor with photoshop before today, and i was really impressed with how easy it was to export a layout of the object, draw over it in photoshop and then import it right back in. anyway, theres a few pictures below, ill update later in the week!

Tea for the Tillerman

An enjoyable week thusfar, just finishing up the larger parts of the scene as well as taking a litlte look at some texturing, especially in the lighting of the windows. I thought it probably best if there werent 100 lights behind each individual window in the larger skyscrapers, so Ive been adding a pane of slightly reflective glass iwth another plane behind it that has a slight glow texture to it, then using a duplicated version again and again. So far, it seems to be working out, although due to time i havent been able to really vary the windows from building to building as much as id like. Below are a few pictures of the whole scene coming together...

Wednesday

Came in this morning for the guest tutorials, chatted with the tutor and spent the afternoon working on more parts of the diner. Added a few new textures and things, added some detail and decided to move the kitchen into an unseen room in the back of the diner... check Jac's blog for more detail on the models hes made, adn to see them all together in the diner..

More Diner Work

Finished up the sign today, added some rails behind it to support it above the diner. Spent most of the morning working on the interior of the building, cleaned it up nad added some walls to cover the back of the exterior model. Tomorrow(or thursday) should be spent working on the roof, adding AC vents and fans, as well as the counter in the bar. The project is really ocming together now, Jac has been working on alot of the details, chairs, tables, cutlery, coffee machines etc, and we are both looking forward to putting everything togehter adn getting it textured... theres a life drawing from this afternoon at the bottom aswell, I was pretty pleased with it and was just getting warmed up when we took a break. No one came back after that though, so it just ended there which was a downer.....

Diner Madness

Been in college all day today, workin on the diners exterior panelling, and then on the neon sign above it. Yaniv showed me a good trick to import illustrator files into Maya as curves, so the sign was pretty straight forward, but a welcome change from working on the building. I also edited the texture from the top of the post box(on the last post) for a nice neon glow. pretty pleased with the way its looking so far....