Originally when I had my track idea I wanted it to go around the towers of the castle multiple times. But when I looked ta my CV path it looked messy and complicated. Therefore I decided to make it simple so that the path would be a better quality. When I was drawing the path it kept twisting and I didn’t know why i saw a video on youtube and the person drew the path from the top perspective then brought the CV point up in the perspective view. The technique worked very well fo me because it helped keep the path straight and even, therefore, the track pieces did not twist.
When design the castle I deconstructed the pre-modelled castle and rearranged the pieces to how I wanted them. I used the didn’t castle as reference ensuring that the towers at the front and the back were the same sizes and the inner section was smaller compared to the rest of the castle.
For characters, i used both Daz and Fuse, models. This was so that I could get a diversity of people. Fuse models enabled me to create models with different skin tones whereas Daz enabled me to make a child model. For the Daz models, i had to rig them, therefore, I used Mixamo to do that. Once rigged I applied animation from Mixamo to the model and imported them into Maya.
I wanted to put a flag on the castle and animate it which is what I did but when it came to rendering (using Maya software) it slowed my computer down and gave multiple errors. I didn’t know why it was doing this, therefore, I came up with an alternative. I created a sign with a bevelled frame to go at the front of the castle. In the UV editor, I reduced the size of the image so that I would fit in the square perfectly and not look stretched.
At this stage, I want to render using Maya software because my Arnold licence would have the watermark and I couldn’t get to uni to use the mental ray rendered there.
Although later on, I decided to not use Maya software because it was proving to be problematic. I decided to use the Arnold render even with the watermark.
Since using Arnold to render, I decided to put the flag in again because every castle has a flag!
For the people, I looped their animation using the graph editor and set it to cycle with an offset so that the loop would be smooth. I did this for all my characters. I then put character animation into the time editor and created an animation track so that I would control when their animation start and end. For the people walking, using the dope sheet to adjust start times of the animation, for example, the kid running had to start before the lady runs, this is it looks like she is chasing him, as seen in the image above.
For the bridge across the water, I selected the outer faces and extruded them upward to make make the bridge look more realistic by giving it a wall.
For the supports, I used cylinders and put an edge in the middle of them so that it could bend. the supports of the ride are attached to the building, some of the supports go through the ground.
To animated the cart I followed the tutorial on SurreyLearn, I had no problem with this and it worked perfectly.
The colour scheme for the castle was gold, bronze and purple. I incorporated this into the castle and selected the faces to assign specific colours.
For the skybox, I used a 360 sky image from google (reference in reference document) and followed the tutorial on SurreyLearn. The only difference I did was use a surface shader instead of a lambert material this was because surface shaders in Arnold act as a light source, therefore, I didn’t need to add that many lights, just one ambient light at the top of the skybox.
I wanted to put water in my animation by using the ocean shader in Maya but this only works for Maya software render and not Arnold. I didn’t have enough time to learn how to make water using Arnold, therefore the water is static.
IMPROVEMENTS
If I had more time I would
- Use Arnold’s shader to create animated water, as I intended.
OVERALL
I have thoroughly enjoyed this model and I am pleased with what I have accomplished and produced. I am glad that that at there are aspects of my project I can improve on because that means I can learn more and gain new skills in 3D modelling and animation.