Building render terrible scene

This was just a render of a terrible scene set up, i am having trouble getting the composition of the buildings and the terrain shape right as i have said. As well as this problem, it is very hard to navigate such a large 3D environment, even if it just mainly for two scenes and only the central point will be used. The scene was very laggy, which didn't help either. The way i have made my buildings is that they are a huge amount of polygons which are instanced objects, but i have them hidden in editor so it doesn't create even the slightest lag, and i have very simple shapes representation the buildings which are hidden in renderer. Doing this lets me position my buildings with as little trouble as possible.

Building pictures

This still renders are various buildings i have, in there non-destroyed state and most of them without textures at that point they were rendered. Of course they will be destroyed and look more fitting for my work, but i made them intact at first so i could re use them as i needed.

Next week timetable 28th feb

This is my next weeks timetable but as i say, i assume that parts of it might change.

last week timetable 21st feb

last week

I didn't get to post earlier in the week like i wanted to as i had some problems with time. I will post the last weeks timetable i was going to upload along with the next weeks timetable. This week i have been working on my buildings and environments, my buildings are now pretty much done but towards the end of the week modelling the actual terrain shape and placing things in the scene has been causing me problems. I can picture the terrain and buildings placement for my scenes later the animation because it is more of a town and easier to get my head around. I am going to have to wait until next week to get some opinions and advice about it.

I also got my email giving me a date for my interview on friday. This means i need to get things sorted in time for it, and it also means that my main animation of the year wont be ready in time for that. Either way it gives me more to do.

Lastly as i really need to get my ppd things done I've been working on that and trying to get it all done which is quite difficult, as i have quite a bit to do and I'm worried about a lot of different time constraints and deadlines at the minute.

Next week i need to get my animation on track finding out what to do with my terrain before progressing. I need to work on what to do in preparation for my interview, and i need to work out finish a lot of ppd stuff along with my CV. I will upload my timetable but i assume that it might change based on what is worked out on Monday.

weekend/monday update

OlD house type with newer sandy looking bricks

New house type with different shape and older looking bricks.

This weekend and today i have been trying to re-do my building in which my coin starts its journey, getting this right has taken much longer than expected but i think after today ill really getting somewhere. Instead of my perfectly square building i have before i've been working on more unusual shapes and extrusions on my buildings. I still haven't decided which on my new building designs to use for my starting house, but on the image i have uploaded here the part sticking out of the right of the house will be made from wood and i have have this collapse as it is only supported by 2 pieces of wood. This will be quite from from what i originally invisioned for this scene, but i think if i do it right it may show off the strange building design of the world and give the viewer a better idea of how this looked in this world. As well as revamping my building desing i have worked on better looking old bricks. I have left behind my sandy looking ones which looked very new, in favour of more pinky orangey brick with two textures layed over all the bricks to add white/grey and darker parts to the bricks to make them look older and give them more imperfections. Although i need to tweak the textures slightly i think doing it this way gives a much better looking and older looking brick than before, and will better suit my works, especially when i get some more textures, plants, and holes in the brick walls going on.

by tomorrow i plan to have several buildings made up and after than i will be putting the first environment together. I will also be doing some of my PPD work this week. I'm really trying to crack out these environments because originally planned to have nearly completed all of them by now, and what i want to get done for hand in will be quite a rush, but i'm making progress with my buildings, despite having problems coming up with some building designs due to lack of reference along with other things. I will upload the weeks timetable tomorrow.

Texture projection tests

Since i have to get a reasonable polygon count while making the bricks on my buildings look quite good, while at the same time making each brick appear slightly different and laying extra effects over the whole thing, I did some texturing tests. I was having trouble getting a flat projected texture to work across al the bricks within my cloner object, in my buildings i play to use this to add things like moss and ivy that might grow up the buildings, as well as dirt or graffiti that might be on walls. I have no idea why i couldn't get the projection to work initially, but I Got it working and can apply a single texture across al the bricks in a wall now.

Of course the bricks aren't perfect because they are too squared and the edges need to be less sharp so they look old, but as a test of textures I think the way I'm doing it will work fine. The bricks all have a base texture on them, and have a very slight alpha channelled red on the top of them all to make them less like sand blocks, the is a green texture that uses ambient occlusion as mask so the creases and areas which would be affected by ambient occlusion have a dirty green texture on them. The last texture is just "LOL" made in Photoshop quickly to make it look like graffiti that is on the wall. I think it definitely does the job and should make modelling my environments easier now that i got this working.

this weeks progress

This week and last i started work modeling my assets to make up my environments for my robot animation. Last friday we made a stop-motion animation in groups using blu-tac, This animation wont upload as there is a missing file stopping it playing, but i will try to get it uploaded soon if i can. So far the modeling of my buildings is going ok, i decided to work on making my buildings out of individual bricks as textures looked rubbish for close up objects. My distant buildings will be textured, but my close up ones will use individual bricks. although, i'm having trouble getting things right, as keeping the polygon count low enough while having a good looking brick is proving difficult, and getting the texture colour right is awkward too.

This example is of a building test i made that uses medium polygon, fairly rounded bricks, and a kind of sandy coloured brick texture. The main problem with this house is that it is 200,000 polygons or so, even though it uses instances.

Animatic

This is the animatic for my main animation of the second year. It isn't perfect as i have decided to slightly alter something that happens in the story. The robot is no longer running low on pressure and looking for coal, but now goes in search of more coins.