The Idea/References
- For this project I wanted to work on improving my 3D modeling for props and environments.
- This is my pitch presentation I showed in the first class. I detailed all my plans, goals and references. I tried to stick to my original schedule for this project but, I did fall behind later and had to ask for an extension.
- I started by brainstorming different environments that I thought would best help me to fully show off my skills and challenge me.
- I landed on the idea of a Japanese convenience store. I originally planned on modeling the interior and exterior as well as a small piece of the street around the shop.
- The systems I planned on using was Blender for the modeling and rendering parts. Substance Painter for the texturing of the models and Fire Alpaca for the product labels and signs.
Block Out/First Pass
- I started to block out different shop building shapes and interiors. I wanted the interior to look cluttered and mess like most traditional Japanese shop with overflowing shelves and boxes on the floor. For the exterior, I mainly wanted big windows or a large entrance so the inside would be visible. I also played around with the shape of the building, a simple one-story square was a bit boring, so I also tried taller buildings and a diagonal one.
- At this point I was still trying to work out the story element to make the model more interesting, there was the idea of old versus new by having a traditional building sandwiched between more modern buildings. Rachel suggested having a modern vending machine inside that fills the traditional shop with light. I liked the idea of old verses new, but I then had the idea of changing the species that lived in the world thus cat island was born.
- The new idea is that this world is inhabited by cat people, so I started to look into cat beds, cat trees, scratching posts and cat foods.
- I shifted from wanting to focus on one building to four and only focusing on the interior of the shop at the bottom. I made this photo bashed concept art using images from Google as I did not want to spend long on drawing different houses, I just wanted to put together the concept and start modeling.
- I started by blocking the new concept in 3D and using the original blocked out houses as bases. I also added platforms and stairs.
- Rachel’s class was perfectly timed as it aligned with when I was going to start modeling more details onto my block out. She showed some helpful modifiers for making modular assets as well as linked duplication. I used all the skills I learned from that class to create this model.
- The first thing I started to model was the torii gate pieces and the ropes attached to them, I followed a tutorial on how to model the rope. It was used on the legs of the torii gate to look like a cat scratching pole as well as across the top so I could add bells to it. I later changed the rope around the legs to a bumpy cylinder as suggested by Mike as he worried it could be too high poly, texturing would help it look more like rope as it could add the weaved look to the surface.
- I then modeled the little shop products. I looked into what types of cat food there was and how it was usually packaged.
- I wanted my models to look like normal cat food, but the labels would be drawn like they were food humans, e.g. a bag of catnip would be drawn to look like a bag of mixed vegetables.
- All the models apart from the walls were created to be modular to make editing and piecing the scene together easier.
- The roof tile was a little difficult to model due to the shape of it, the thick part had to overlap the thin piece, and the rows had to overlap to make it look layered. I used the array modifier to create the first row, then adding the next row I changed the array modifier factor to make the row overlap the first.
- To model the screen door and window I used a rectangle to make the front. I inset the face of the door to make a boarder for the screen panels, I then duplicated the inner face and loop cut it into squares. Inset the face of one of the squares and then extruded the edge this made one screen panel. Using the array modifier to add the other screen panels to fit the door frame. The scene was then joined to the door frame. I mirrored the model to make the back. The windows and door surround were modeled using this method.
- This is the first pass on the model. The houses are still in the early phase, and I have the main props for the shop blocked out.
Second Pass
- I started by modeling more objects to fill the scene. I modeled plant pots, railings for around the edges of the platforms, an air con, paper lanterns and a different type of roof for some variety.
- I subdivide the models to increase the poly count to smooth some of the blockier models. I replaced the old house models with new ones that had better geometry. I used a square as a base for the walls, added edge loops to shape them to suit the roof styles and placements of the doors and windows.
- I then set up the updated models to get a better idea of what I had and what might be missing from the scene. I also set up the shop interior with all the props added to shelves to see how that was coming along. I added plant pots in blank spaces, lanterns around the roofs, air conditioners and pipes to the backs of the shop and upped house. I also added drainpipes, balconies and chimneys to the houses to add more details since some of the upper houses looked a bit boring.
To make tie roofs look more like traditional Japanese architecture I wanted to bend the roofs, I tried to make it follow a curve but it kept deforming weirdly, I think it was because of the array modifier. Mike then showed me how to use the lattice modifier, it worked without deforming the mesh.
Mistake 1:
- I modeled the building walls using a cube as the four walls instead of making the walls separate pieces that could then be pieced together making editing the geometry more difficult. If I wanted to edit the walls, I would have to edit all the building separately, it made adjusting them more time consuming.
- After getting feedback from Mike later in the project I added paneling to the walls as the walls looked plain. This also would have been easier if the walls were separate as the panels could have been modeled into the geometry making it faster to update the model and I wouldn’t have had to hand place all the paneling.
Beveling
Mistake 2:
- When beveling I did not use the modifier as it would not show up on my models, so I beveled all the models in edit mode, I could not change them once applied. Mike gave me feedback that the bevels I did looked too sharp and suggested adding 2 segments when beveling to make the edges look softer and to make used all the bevels were to same size, so the models look more cohesive.
Old New
- To fix the beveling I reverted to a previous save and tried adding the bevel modifier, it still did not apply to the models so I looked up what the problem could be. I needed to apply all transforms so the modifier could accurately add the bevels as Blended was registering some of the models smaller than they were.
Mistake 3:
- When applying the transformations a message popped up, saying I had to make the object singular so the action would not be applied to the linked duplicated of the object, this meant I had to reset up the scene with the new beveled models which was a bit time consuming and delayed my UV unwrapping.
- After adding the bevel to everything I used the subdivide surface modified on any model that still looked a bit blocky. This is what the full model looked like beveled.
Rescaling the model
- After more feedback from Mike, he suggested that some of the models look disproportionate, such as the stairs and doors compared to the buildings. So, I found an image with human measurements on it so I could scale the assets based on it so the model would be more proportionate.
Old New
- It is a subtle difference, but the rescaled version defiantly looks more proportional when compared to the older version.
Plants
- To make the plants for the scene I was going to use tree gen as it was a faster way of making foliage, but I found the results were a bit more realistic than I wanted based on the video I watched.
- I then followed these stylized foliage tutorials to make the type of bushes I wanted. It works by using a particle emitter to generate the leaves across the surface of a sphere, I used planes so there would be less faces. Since I did not want a bunch or particle emitters around the scene as this would slow the render process, I looked at this tutorial to change the particles into a mesh.
- This did later slow down the scene anyway as there were a lot of faces and I wanted a lot of trees. To solve this, I added the trees to a lit scene, rendered them with a transparent background and then added the render back into the scene as a plane, this help the scene load faster and render faster as grease pencil did not have to calculate as many faces.
UV Unwrapping
- I followed this tutorial to UV unwrap as efficiently as possible, it was extremely informative and helped me streamline the process. It went smoother and faster than I expected. I also straightened most of the UV’s so the textures would apply evenly and straight. Some UV’s stretched if straightened so I left them how Blender unwrapped them.
UV Mapping
- I tried to keep models that were related to each other on the same UV maps as this would help when applying materials in Substance Painter so I would not have to copy different materials to different files.
- I also tried to keep the scales of the UV’s relative to model however I did make the signs and shop products a larger size so they would be a better resolution. Mike also advised making the shop products use the same texture map with different textures for the different versions of the product as this is what industry uses to optimize so there are not multiple maps for the same model.
Texturing
- I started by creating a colour pallet for the scene, I wanted the colours to be realistic to real Japanese houses just more saturated. I wanted the texturing to look like watercolour as this would give the scene a slight anime, Studio Ghibli look.
- I started adding one of the shop props to Substance Painter to experiment on. To make the paint stroke texture I added the grunge dust texture and then the blur slope, this feathered the texture making it look like paint splotches. For the gradient at the top, I used a darker colour and applied the gradient filter, I then added the blur slope again to bring back the paint splotch look. Finally for the edges I used the edges strong mask in a lighter colour, I wanted the edges to be highlighted.
- Once I was happy with the texture, I used it to create a smart material by adding all the layers to a folder and right clicking and selecting create a smart material. It made applying the texture to the other models faster. I then just had to adjust the colours and finishes depending on the model being textured.
- I started to texture the rest of the models with the material, however, I was not as happy with the results. On the milk carton the texture looked more defined than on the walls.
- While looking for stylized texturing tutorials for Substance I found this tutorial on different types of toon shaders, I decided to pivot to texturing in Blender.
- I created a sample of the different toon shaders on my store props. I decided to go with the watercolour like shader as this was the style I had initially wanted.
- To add more texture and depth to the shader, I added alpha maps of wood grain, concrete, ropes, etc.
Grease pencil
- Since I was using a watercolour like shader, I wanted to experiment with adding outlines using grease pencil. I followed this tutorial on how to add them to a scene. I then followed the other tutorial to make them look more organic and hand drawn. They even jitter slightly when rendered.
After finishing this project I tried to bake the textures to upload the model to SketchFab, however, they could not be baked as EEVEE does not support baking shaders, and Cycles doesn’t have a equivalent to the ‘shader to RGB’ node. I did try a few different solutions but none worked. I uploaded the model with just base colours to SketchFab. I may try to recreate the shader in cycles or try to achieve a similar effect in Substance Painter before the showcase so I am able to upload the textures to SketchFab. This is the model in SketchFab.
Products and Signs
- For the shop products and signs, I hand drew all the textures as I had more control that way. I looked into what types of cat food there was and how I could change it into a product that a cat person would buy.
- I drew all the products on a normal canvas and then resized them to fit into the UV map. For the tops of cans and tins I used images from Google, everything else was hand drawn.
- Since the backs and bottoms of the products would not typically be seen I made them a plain colour or mirrored the front onto the back. Some of the word placement is almost falling off the products so I will go back and fix the sizing at a later date.
- The signs were designed after the products as most stores posters and signs are used to advertise their products, this allowed me to reuse some textures.
Storyboards
- Henry discussed with me how I wanted to showcase my model, I originally thought of just doing a turntable with some nice close ups of interesting places in my model, but Henry suggested a presenting it like a travel advertisement. I really liked this idea, so I researched some travel adds for Japan. Mainly looking at shots used that didn’t focus on people.
- I then created a short storyboard of some shots I wanted to do, I have plans to continue to add more shots, but this is what I knew was achievable within the time frame.
- Shot 1, nearly all travel adds start with an establishing shot so that is how I wanted mine to start, I also plan on adding the place name over the top on the shot.
- Shot 2, this is a tracking shot through some torii gates along a path.
- Shot 3, is a steaming tea pot with some ambient lighting from some candles.
- Shot 4, a paying shot going around a statue of a cat person, I want the sun rays to shine onto the statue like a spot light.
- Shot 5, a fish being grilled on a hissing grill, fish will be flipped to transition to the next shot.
- Shot 6, the fish, now cooked, gets set on the table.
- Shot 7, this will be a day to night cycle or the whole model, the windows and lanterns will glow once the scene goes dark.
- Shot 8, a panning shot to show off the label and signs at the front of the store.
- Shot 9, another panning show from inside the shop of the products on the shelves.
Scenes
- To make rendering faster I only added the models that were visible in the shots. I also adjusted my particle trees as they had too many faces which slowed the render time as the outline was generating around all the individual leaves.
- For models further away from the camera I rendered the houses and trees separately and then added them as a transparent image plane to fill out the shots.
- The day and night sky and Mount Fuji are images I found on Google; they are just place holders as I want to make my own model of Mt. Fuji to better match my art style. Also, I want to create my own sky backgrounds or sky dome for the model.
- I was unable to fully animate the scenes so a lot of these shots are stills, I will be going back and rendering fully animated shots for the final showcase. There is a lighting and grease pencil issues in scene 2, the light flickers and the outlines disappear when the camera moves. There is also an issue with scene 10 as the outline doesn’t appear immediately.
Shot 1
- To finish this shot I need to add trees to the ground as well as making the ground sloped. I also plan on following this tutorial to make the water.
Shot 2
- I need to add more bushed to the ground around the trees at the end of the path. I also need to add stairs at the end so it looks like the path continues into the town.
Shot 3
- I need to add stream coming out of the tea pot and cups as well as adding tea lights and other decorations around the table to make it more interesting
Shot 4
- The plie of rocks will be replaced with a cat person statue and add a light beam, I will also fix the grease pencil issue and add a blue sky.
Shot 5 and 6
- I need to add steam to the grill and flickering light to look like fire. I also will be adjusting the texture to look like it has grill lines
- Both shots need animated
- Shot 8’s food will be more decorated similar to the second tutorial, where there is other foods placed around just out of shot.
Shot 7
- At the minute these shot are edited together with a cross fade but I plan on animating the sky to look like the clouds and sun move and fade to night.
Shot 8
- I plan on adding a path and some grass to the ground plane as it looks flat as well as adjust the lighting as it makes the labels look a bit yellow.
Shot 9
- The sun beam looks cool coming through the window but it only affects the further away shelf so I need to adjust it so it shines onto the shelf that is being focused on.
Shot 10
- I need to fix the grease pencil issue as well as adding texture to the sand to look like it has lines like a Zen garden. I also plan on thinning the lines on the bushes with the cloves leaves as it looks a bit thick due to the amount of leaves.
Final model shots and animatic
- These are the final rendered shots of the full model and the animatic of the travel add.
- There is still a lot I want to add to this project however I ran out of time. I am very happy with what I was able to achieve in the time frame.
Reflection/Conclusion
In conclusion, I am very happy with the outcome of this project. I learned a lot about modular modeling and working through a full 3D model in a short time frame. If I was to do it all over, I would make the walls modular, and the beams would be built into the geometry rather than being a separate object, it slows the file down due to the amount of meshes there are.
What I plan on adding/adjusting before the final show
- Adding grass to the ground
- Adding a hill and trees to scene 1
- Adding dynamic water
- Adding sand texture to the Zen Garden
- Model a cat person statue
- Creating a sky backdrop or a sky dome
- Model Mt. Fuji
- Fix product textures
- Adjust lighting of the scenes
- Add more shots to the final video and finish setting up and animating the ones I have started