Introduction to maya:
During this section we got to practise with simple maya sills o that we can then continue and create a new york rooftop with far more detail. at this stage i only created a simple house by building cubes and cylinders and extruding facs and endges to create interesting shapes therefore creating interesting shapes so that we can create an interesting house. by experimenting with rendering we also rendered this house into mental ray and introduced a sun into the picture to create shadows.
Research:
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These are the images for inspiration that I colleted by researching real life , game and film interpretations of a new york rooftop so that I am cappable of using these to inspire my actual representation of a new york city rooftop. From the images i am able to collect idea for objects to model and what kind of textures are appropriate and would work well with a new york city rooftop.
New York - Rooftop Unit 4
During the very begggining of the project i got to experiment with maya and try to create a rough looking new york rooftop rather than the more modern ones, taking this into consideration allowed me to understand what to create and place into my project one of the first thing i tried ceating was a water tank which is shown in the picture above this was one of my starting points in creating a complex new york rooftop.
after researching all kinds of new york rooftops from films , games and real life images i understood what else could be placed on my rooftop such as crates , planks of wood pipes and bricks which were all modeled seperatly and placed within the map in a way that made sense. I wanted to create more of a construction site in my project therefore I started builing a construction for a half built builing, A half built building with frames on the outside didnt make much sense therefoer ei also created a crane which is shown further down this page.
Another thing that i had to focus on is what needed more detail than others, such as the buildings in the foreground needed more detail than the buildings in the background .
After modeling most of the buildings and items within the map i started to focus on creating a realistic texture for my map therefore I searched up all of the different textures that i needed to use and saving them on my pc so that i can use the lambert textures which were the best option due to being able to be moved into unity so that i could animate and walk around my map without loosing my textures. One after another I textured the buildings in the foreground individually to create more of an intricate design and the buildings in the background had a very simple building texture on it just so you can see that its a building. When creating the textures we had to focus on making sure the scaleof the texture is right such as making sure that the bricks on a building are far smaller than the windows or doors this is so that I can make my project look far more realistic. I also had to incorparate scale in the modeling of my new york rooftop so that things looked realistic such as my water towers had to be much bigger than the door
These were my original images which i wanted to use for my final ones but i decided not to as the lighting was not used so that it created different shadows and lit up areas in my shots also i thought that the angle was not very created as it did not have much happening in the for ground , midground and background therefore i decided to change the lighting in the map and alter its brightness i also tried different angles
Final images:
I like the angle that this image is taken in because it shows depth within the image as the foreground of the image midground and background have something going on it it. The fact that its fairly dark and has limited shadows creates this construction looking site as you see planks of wood and pipes skattered around
Unfortunetly the horizon is visible in the backround therefore makes it look like the map is floating in space.
I like the idea that you can see the differene in size as the items in the front like the oil can is much bigger compared to the pipes in the far end of the image this creates a very realistic feel as items far away are seen smaller.
I like the difference in the dark and light objects such as the fence in the foreground is very dark but the pipes are really dark which creates the illusion of the objects being much closer than the other. The angle of the image creates somewhat of a view finder as you are forced to look throught the gaps of he image.
I find these two pictures to be slightly weaker as they dont have much of a structure its just photos taken randomly. The one thing i do like about this is that the shadows are interesting in both of the images created unique shadows.
Final Video
In this video i combined my final images on the software called imovie where i placed them in order chaging the time for each image and changing the transitions around to make it look appropriate and not just be a slideshow of images. Overall i think my project has a good amount of detail but i dont think its enough to be considered a proper game level but on the otherside my new york rooftop did take a very long time to texture and has alot of different textures in it while trying to create an appropriate scale for it. I believe one of my biggest weak points is the scale of some of the objects in game.