Category: COLLABORATIVE

CRITICAL EVALUATION FOR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

Starting with the collaborative unit, I was enthusiastic about the upcoming challenges in the project. This was a project which was a creative approach, as it was a mixture of Virtual Reality, Computer Generated Elements, and Reality.  In addition to this, I got an opportunity to evaluate my knowledge in the field of Special effects and Modelling. This project has helped me in knowing about the future field that I would like to pursue in the mere future.

For this project, I got to model different types of models. The theme for the project was Cinderella as well as a hospital. So as per the themes I created various models such as a Pumpkin cart, a Music box, Virus Cell, Syringe, Stethoscope, an IV Bag, and a thermometer. After seeing the final output of the project, I am not impressed by it, as it fails to showcase my capabilities in modeling. Due to some reasons our models, its textures and the FX done in Houdini are totally missing and are not showcased in the final output. You can refer to my blog to take a look at the various models and its briefings. From this experience, I would be more careful about such problems and make sure that the elements that are created by me are properly utilized and communicated in a much better way.

During this, ‘Time’ also played an important role for us. As the final output of the project was just a day prior to the submission deadline, we could not tell the VR students to do the necessary changes that would demonstrate our modeling work. Due to the ongoing assignments and projects along with the collaborative unit, we have work piled one on top of the other. It was difficult to meet ends with the deadlines as the renders took a lot of time, and hence I had to reduce the quality of the renders to finish the project on time.

While working on this project, I understood the importance of communication among the team members. Due to language barriers, we had trouble understanding the requirements of the team members in the group. For example, I had a really hard time while making the FX for the model Little Girl in Houdini. These problems were caused due to the errors in the Model that were given to me. These errors were causing the geometry/model to collapse or disappear on any random frames which gave me various artifacts while making the FX. So, when I was trying to make them understand the errors, it was harder for them to understand what was going on. If the circumstances were different, I would definitely change my approach to making the FX needed in Houdini. I would have opted for various other techniques, which were more ‘refined and effective’ and would have given better results. It was indeed frustrating to work as I had to keep on finding various techniques which would go along with the FX. It cost me a lot of my time, and I could not keep up with my expectations. Due to this, I was unable to showcase my full potential in this field.

Even though we had enough problems during the project, it helped me evaluate the level of my skills in the field of modeling and special effects (FX). And this would help me a lot while working in the future in the industry of VFX.

Let’s start with the concept of this FX Scene. This FX was made in Houdini and is going to be used in the Unreal Engine for VR. So basically as our project brings together Virtual Reality as well as the real world, we decided to insert/import the FXs which are created in the virtual world. After hearing the concept the first things that hit my mind were Unique and different. Combining the FX of Houdini in the virtual world was something I never thought of for my project.

The instructions for this project were that The geometries would be floating in the air which will, later on, come together and form the model of this Kid (geometry). These geometries would be Cells, Viruses, Fungi, etc. Except for the geometry of Girl all other geometries are for the project of Cell Animation while the girls are for both the projects i.e. Cell Animation as well as Disintegration. The following are the geometries that I received especially for the FX purpose:

After taking a look at all the geometries, I started with doing the FX. To begin with, I tried the technique of creating a volumetric geometry of the Girl with the help of ‘VDB Polygon node’, and later boolean the new vdb geo in such a way that it deletes all the unnecessary objects and also fills the geometry inside. But unfortunately, as the geometry had a lot of errors while doing the FX the geometry used to split up in a weird way which resulted in giving me various artifacts. Hence, I was not able to create a suitable smooth FX that could be done along with it.

Hence, to overcome this problem, I went along with the ‘Color Transfer’ technique. In this technique, I gave the girl a “0” value i.e. a black color, and made a roughened sphere geometry and colored its red value to be “1”. Following this step, I gave animation to this sphere so that over time it changes the girl’s color, i.e. black to red. This color change happened due to the node of “Attribute Transfer” which transfers any attribute that we select from one geometry to another. So for this instance, I transferred the attribute ‘color’ to the girl so that she will have the color red. Later on, I deleted this red color to carry on three further processes. The processes were:-

1. Delete the geometry which was affected by the color “Red”. (combined for both the project)
2. Emit Particles from the color “Red”. (for particle disintegration)
3. Attracting the particles to this “Red” color. (cell animation)

For Cell animation:

First I emitted particles from a Sphere with the help of a pop network. But, the default settings make the FX for these particles too dull. Hence to make it interesting, I added a bit of turbulence as well as swirl, so that it has a natural movement similar to the dust which floats in the air.

Following this, for making the particles attract to the geometry (red color), I added the node called “Pop attract” by which I could bring the particles closer to the object or attribute that I specify. Simultaneously, I also gave it a bit of Drag so that I could manipulate the speed by which this attraction is done.

Furthermore, after the step of Particle generation, it was time for particle instancing. A particle system can be used to create multiple object copies (so-called instancing). This technique simplifies scene authoring and also reduces loading time and memory consumption as compared to the use of single objects. The benefit of the particle instancing is that we can instance more than one geometry and that too in random order.

For Particle instancing, we have to give an attribute called as “Class” to each and every geometry that needs to be instanced. We can give this attribute to the geo with the help of the node ‘connectivity’. Hence, these attributes are further carried forward to the attribute from pieces as well as the node “copy to point”. And hence we get these variation in the particle instancing.

For the Disintegration Effect, I had to take Two things into consideration.

1. Particle emission
2. Geometry (surface affected by the color red) gradually disappears following that of particle emission.

The Red color attribute helped me in giving a smooth particle emission. To make it more interesting I gave it a bit of turbulence as well as swirl. Along with this, to make this thing more interesting and natural, I made the particles affected by wind (generated with the help of pop wind node).

As the theme of this project is ” Cinderella”, we decided that the vehicle has to be a Cinderella’s Pumpkin Cart. This model would be much more effective and creative for the theme of our project. For reference we had this real life model that was created by ‘Beneath the Ferns’. Beneath the Ferns specializes in the making of Fairy houses, fairy gardens, miniatures and more. they never fail to depict and copy the cartoons and their concepts in real life. Miniature fairy gardens and the houses and accessories that go in them have always been fascinating to me! Hence, we decided that we can take this reference and build a model through this.

To begin with, I modeled the basic shape of the pumpkin. For this, I took into consideration the tools that were taught to us in term 1, for the project Balloon Festival. Starting with, I took a sphere and with the help of a brush tool I deformed it in various places so that it doesn’t look like a sphere. After the brushing process, I grabbed the vertical edges of the pumpkin, and with the help of the “Creases tool,” I obtained these sharp edges which you can see in the bottom image. Creasing is a powerful and non-destructive way to create SubD edges. It works by applying a creasing value (creasing parameter) to the edges and this parameter controls at which subdivision this edge will start to have a sharper look.

After this step, I added noise to the geometry so that I can get the “Bumps” on the surface similar to that in the reference. For getting this, we have to use the Transform surface and increase its ‘randomness’ in its settings. The only drawback of adding bumps to the geometry is that in order to get a lot of bumps or noise the geometry has to be high poly, which results in making the file extremely heavy.

Coming next to the window designs, I created them in the software of Houdini. It was much more effective and also I had a lot of control over the parameters while working with Houdini compared to that Maya. Firstly, I had to get a black-and-white design, by taking into consideration the design and the requirements.

After this step, I gave the grid which was extremely high poly, this black and white color of the texture. Houdini comes in handy with the next step, where we can delete any face, or geometry by its attribute. So for this instance, I deleted the attribute ‘Color’ or ‘CD’ to get the design. The vex (coding language for Houdini) that I used for this was “$CD>0.1”, which depicts that delete the color if its value is greater than 0.1. And later on, I extruded these remaining faces and got the following results of the Door Frame as well as the foot stand. Later, exported it in the format of ‘.abc’ which is an alembic format that can be imported into Maya as well.

Along with this step, I also created a door by taking some torus and a circle, and manipulated its faces by adding extrude to some of the faces as required.

Coming to the wheels of the cart. I started by taking a Torus polygon and by extruding alternate faces I got the desired geometry, simple and effective. For the rims, I took a tube object which also is connected to the wheels. Then by doing the same technique, i.e. extrusion, I was able to get the rims for the wheels along with the chassis for the carriage.

For the Circular chassis, I drew a curve that would be the shape of a curve. After this step, I selected a face of a disk geometry, and the curve I extruded it. When I added more divisions to this extrude I got this geometry of the chassis.

Comin to the last step, i.e. Texturing and rendering. For the pumpkin, I took a ‘phone-e’ texture. I specifically used this texture because of its adaptability to reflection. In the color section of this texture, I created a “Ramp” which would give me a mixture of the colors that are needed. The colors were the gradient of orange and dark yellow. After giving this color gradient, I also applied a noise effect to this texture so that I get an uneven color texture as an output. And by doing the same technique I textured the Stem of the pumpkin.

With the help of Arnold Surface Shader’s Gold preset, I textured the Door frames, foot stand, chassis, and Rims. Along with this I gace a Lamber to the wheels and gave it an additional of roughness so that I get the rubber feel to it.

After all the process this is the Geometry that I modeled.

Coming to the Fourth medical equipment, i.e., The Thermometer. A thermometer is an instrument that measures temperature. It can measure the temperature of a solid such as food, a liquid such as water, or a gas such as air. The three most common units of measurement for temperature are Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin.

To begin with, I thought of modelling thermometer with basic shapes and surfaces. For which, I started by using a box to create the main body of the thermometer. I wanted to keep this model low poly and as simple as possible. Hence, i started by aligning the shape of the vertices and edge so that it resembles more and more to the real one. After that I beveled the outer edges so that I can get a ‘smooth’ effect. Beveling edge is a really effective technique to make sharp edges rounder.

After the main body, I started to model the components of the thermometer. As the screen of a thermometer is slightly inside, with the help of the beveled edges of a cube I got a smooth and easier void where the screen or the dial on which the temperature would be seen. Similarly, for the buttons, I took a cylinder and beveled it with the box so that the buttons can be allotted over there.

For buttons, I took a circle and beveled it along with the same beveled cube that I took for creating a dial, modified its scale, and created the gap in the circular handle. Following this, I used a copy of this beveled box to make the button.

For the end part, i.e., the Cap, I created a curve and extruded it to form a polygon. After that, I again beveled the sharp edges of the cap to get this desired shape.

For the frontal tip of the thermometer, I used a polygon sphere and manipulated its scale, and transformed a few of its faces so that I could get this smoother Tip.

For texturing, I used a Phong-e Material. It was much more simple for getting this rough but elegant texture. I used the same material for all the parts of this thermometer and it gave me an amazing result.

The third medical equipment had to be modeled as the “Stethoscope”. This is an instrument that is used by Doctors in determining and studying the heartbeats of a patient. A stethoscope can be used to listen to the sounds made by the heart, lungs, or intestines, as well as blood flow in arteries and veins. This was the reference image that was been allocated to me for modeling purposes.

To begin with, a stethoscope has various parts which include Ear piece, ear tube, Binaural spring, tubing, stem, and chest piece.

To begin with, I started modeling the earpiece also called an ear bud. I modeled it by taking a curve that depicts the piece of that earbud, followed by revolving it 360 degrees to get a circular shape.

After the earpiece, it was time for the ear tube. For modeling the ear tube, I took a Poly Tube object and added the tool “Bend” to it. What the tool bend does is, that it circularly deforms the object as per needed by the user. So for this reason I gave the tube a bit of bend and formed the ear tube.

Then coming to the Tubing, which was one of the trickiest parts of this process. I took a poly Torus for the start and deleted the unwanted part of it. After that just like the of ear tube, I took another tube and deformed it by giving it a bend. But specifically for this tube, I made the bend a bit more to get the spiral effect to it.

Now here comes the trickiest part, where we have to join the upper torus to the deformed tube. Firstly, as the torus was not in a shape that would join the tube, with the help of sculpt tool, that I used in the IV bag project, I pulled the faces and surfaces of that tube and made it so that it aligns perfectly with the end of the tube. Later on, I merged the vertices of the tube to this deformed surface which helped me in getting a combined model. But after doing that, I still got some jaggy edges to the combined geometry. Hence, I again used the sculpt tool to make it look like it! object.

And coming to the final modeling part i.e. The chest piece. To start with I took a circle cut in half and filled the hole init. Along with it, I gave it a lot of segments so that I can manually do the changes that are needed. I selected a few center faces of this filled part and with the help of smooth editing (when the points are selected press ‘B’), and pressed in down. Thanks to the smooth tool I can bend the faces systematically.

Later I grabbed the bottom face that is in a line and extruded it to I can get a tube-like thing on it, and carried the same technique for getting the desired chest piece shape. After this a grabbed an edge on the side and gave it proper extrusion which would resemble the Tube which connects to the Main tube of the stethoscope.

Coming to the final part: Rendering and Texturing.

For tube and ear bud: Arnold Standard material’s Rubber preset.

For the Chest piece and ear tube: I used the metallic preset of Arnold material.

The Second Medical equipment that was needed for modeling was the IV BAG. IV bags are the equipment that acts as a container for the medicines and fluids which are injected into the patients from time to time.

For this model, I took a cube and gave it various segments. Later on, I joined its top by selecting parallel vertices and merging them. The next step was to give it a shape that would roughly depict the shape of an IV Bag. This was done by editing the edges, faces, and vertices from various places.

The technique that helped me make it look like a bag was the “Sculpting Tool”. The Sculpting tools play an extremely important role in the field of Modeling in MAYA. The sculpting tool is an excellent starting point for most sculpting operations. The Sculpt Geometry Tool lets you manually sculpt NURBS quickly with the stroke of a brush. You simply paint the surface mesh using the Sculpt Geometry Tool to push or pull CVs to achieve the shape you want.

This tool helped me a lot in manipulating the surfaces of my model by stroking it win resulted into getting me this final structure of the IV Bag.

For the bottom part, I took a tube and extruded the top faces to get the cap of the pipe. After doing this for the second tube is applied the ‘Bend tool’ which gave the tube a bit of curve. Bend tool specializes in giving any geometry a smooth curve which we use according to our need.

Finally, for rendering, I used the Arnold Standard Surface texture. The preset of glass was used for this. But, as the glass surface texture gives us an 100% transparent look, I increased its metalness slightly and increased its roughness. And finally, this was the model that I modeled.

For this theme Cells getting affected by the virus were also needed, as the patient is in a hospital and is on his deathbed. This cell is going to be copied multiple times in the animation so that is why I had to keep it low poly and less dense when compared to high poly models.

Hence for this concept i took a sphere as the base upon which all the other stems would setup upon.

Followed by this I created the steams and buttons in Maya. For the stem, I took into consideration the same technique by which I created the Fountain in the Musical box project. I drew a curve that would resemble an outline of a mushroom-type figure. After that, I revolved around this curve which resulted in me getting this desired result.

After this steam was created, I exported it into an FBX object so that I could import it into Houdini for further processing. Instancing objects onto points and particles is really good in the software of Houdini. It is much more reliable and we also have much more control over all the settings which we would want.

To begin I imported the steam cell in Houdini. While doing this, I also scattered points onto the surface of a sphere with the help of a sphere node. Along with this, I gave it a noise pattern so that I get the ‘unevenness’ of the points on which we have to instance the steam. After giving these points, I gave normals to the points so that all the steam pointed outward of the circle. Normals play a crucial role in making this happen, or else the stem would be pointing in any random direction. And after this, I copied the geometry onto the points with the help of copy to points node and went to the final step of texturing.

For texturing, I have used the principle shader that is available in Houdini. Principle shader in Houdini has the same physics and same techniques of that as Lambert in Maya. Both are very similar to each other. Hence, I gave it a basic red color which depicts the cell, and a white color to a few stems which depicts that the cell is affected by the virus.

To start with the reference, this was the image given to me by our project lead. This is a typical syringe that doctors use in their day-to-day errands. To open out this model, the components that I had to build are the barrel, the needle, the pipe attached with a rubber which helps in pushing out the meds in it which is also called the plunger, the hub ,and last the plunger flange. The information given to me was that the syringe that would be modeled should have a bit of a cartoony taste.

To begin with, I started by modeling the plunger flange. But to give it a bit cartoony look, I went with modeling a circular syringe, where I reduced the usage of sharp shapes like squares or rods which we can see in the main reference. Usually, for getting a cartoony look we do use a bit smooth circular shapes as it looks much more calming. For example, kids are used to playing along with balls, ropes, and plushies. These shapes are also preferable as they are safe and is children friendly. So taking into consideration these attributes, I went to make the syringe and all of its components circular.

For the finger handles, I took together torus of various sizes. For creating the handles that join this torus, I selected the tangent faces and extruded them to create a rod tube feel.

Coming to the other end of this plunger, I took a cylinder and gave it a few segments of 6. Then by selecting rows of faces alternatively, I extruded them into a negative value which helped me in getting a step like effect.

After the plunger, I decided to model the Hub. For this Hub, the extrude tool made the work simple. Basically, I took a sphere at first and deleted the faces so that I just get half of the sphere. Later on, I selected the center faces of the edited sphere and extruded it to get the mountain-type ascending slope. And for the Hub not being hollow, I grabbed the edge and fill the hole, so that it would be a complete object.

The final part of modeling was the Syringe. for this, I took a tube and reduce its radius to 0.001, which is an extremely minute value but needed for the syringe. And for getting the sharp end, I took a box and aligned it at an angle where I can get a perfectly sharp edge. And after assigning the box, I used the Boolean tool and subtracted the intersection between the box and the tube. This is how I obtained the syringe needle.

This is the wire frame mode of the Syringe with all the components included.

After the step modeling, the main step was texturing. “Arnold Standard Surface” is my go-to shader for texturing purposes. It is extremely handy and because of the presets that are included in it, makes it user-friendly. For Most of the body, as I needed the metallic texture, I reduces the roughness and increased the metallic setting for it. And for the main body, I took the preset of Glass as it resembles it the most. But the Glass texture gives it a 100% transparent look. For which I added a bit of metallic so that is becomes less see-through.

After adding the texture this is my final 3D model:

The First Model of the collaborative unit was the Musical box. This is one of the models that will be integrated with Virtual Reality. This box represents the traditional box, which is typically used in animated movies nowadays. Along with this, as the story depicts the theme of Cinderella, the box is made a bit in cartoony way.

This was the box Reference given to me by the group leader of our project. The main task was to make a model that would be similar to the reference. Doing the character was not necessary. but other things such as, the base of the fountain, the handles and the design should be similar.

Modeling the main body was simple straight forward. I was able to model it with the help of the basic tool set, which are Extrude, Insert edge loop tool, Boolean.

Extrude tool:  It allows you to extend a selected Face or Edge from the selected 3D object by defining various parameters. We can also use the same tool of shrinking or narrowing it down. I used the extrude especially for obtaining the following pattern. For doing it I selected the face and extruded it as per needed.

Boolean:

In 3D Modeling, by Boolean operations, we mean creating intersections and unions of objects, as well as subtracting objects from each other. I typically used Boolean to create a block pattern. The way we use this tool is that we select 2 objects, the first being the one we have to create an intersection into and the other the shape (3D object) or pattern that we need to create.

For this model, I used this tool to obtain the hooks where the lid would fit.

The trickiest part of this model was its design. The main problem I had was making the ‘leaf-like pattern’, for which I tried various techniques such as revolving or making a surface with the help of curves. But the main problem was that I was not able to obtain the curve nature of it.

So to solve this problem I did the simplest and the most effective way, manipulating the tube polygons tool. What I had to do was to grab a few of the vertices and edit with the help of smooth edit, by which I could get the sharp yet soft corners, which resemble that of a leaf. For the rest, I did the same thing and copied it in accordance with obtaining the design.

After the design was added to the model this is what it looked like.

The other important element of this project was the Fountain. For the shape of this fountain, I created a 2D curve in the shape needed. After creating this shape, with the help of the ‘Revolve tool’ i could obtain the shape. The revolve tool helps in creating a revolved surface with the help of the curve. Basically, it wraps the curve in 360 degrees; and creates a circular shape. For obtaining this circular shape we have to give it more segments; so that we do not get a jaggy surface.

The disc shape that you can see on the fountain was created simply by scaling down a sphere and making slight changes to the vertices to get the upward bending structure.

Along with this, the base was one object which took quite a time, with the help of the extrude tool, I extruded the faces of a cylinder. Cylinder was the shape that fitted perfectly to get the desired shape as shown in the reference. Then i individually grabbed the faces and gave it a noisy extrude so that I get the unevenness in the extrude and obtain the brick type structure.