Week 7- Further work on my image for April

During this week I also did some additional work to try to complete my image for April. To start with I continued to add the spikes along the dragons back as I run out of time to complete this task last week. To do this I once again cloned the prism and used the move and rotate tools to place them in the required position.

When I had completed this I started to work on the face. I felt that the flatten sphere I had initially used for the head was not quite what I wanted and so I decided to add other shapes to try to improve this. Firstly I tried to create a jaw so I drew a sphere and then modified it to turn it into a hemisphere. After this I selected the scale tool to make it elongated and more like an oval. I aligned this to the main part of the head and after making a few alterations to the size I felt it worked reasonably well with the rest of the dragon so decided to continue. I then used the exact same method but used a slightly smaller sphere to create the bottom part of the jaw.

Next I created the dragon’s eye. I felt the most appropriate method for this was to use two spheres; the first sphere would be the eyelid and the second would be the eyeball. For the eyelid I drew a basic sphere and then used the slice tool to remove two thirds of the sphere. To complete the eye I drew another sphere with a slightly smaller radius than the previous to fit inside as the eyeball. When I was happy with the appearance I placed the eye on one side of the head and cloned another for the other side. I used the rotate tool to make the eyes face outwards as I felt this would be the most suitable direction for them to face.

After this I decided to create the nostrils. I did consider using a few different methods and tried a few out including the soft selection tool and the lathe tool, but felt the following was the most appropriate to use in this instance. To do this I used another sphere which I once again converted into a hemisphere. I then used the soft selection tool to create an indent in the middle. When I was pleased with its appearance I cloned it and placed it into the scene.

The last addition which I made to the head of the dragon was the teeth. I chose to use a cone to do this and created one with a fine point to give the illusion that it was sharp so it helped to give the dragon a fierce look. I created two different lengths for the teeth, a longer one for the top than the bottom, but still tried to make them in similar proportions otherwise. When I aligned them with the rest of the head I did feel they were slightly too large, but once I scaled them to reduce the size I was happy with the dragon as a whole.

At this point I was happy with the way I had modelled both the dragon and the figure of St George and so I decided to move onto the textures. I started this by creating a bitmap image for the texture of the dragon’s scales. I decided to use circles in a variety of shades of green and sizes for this as I felt it would look more interesting and draw the viewers’ attention to the main subject of the image. I was quite careful when creating this as I wanted to place the circles at suitable locations in comparison to the others and also tried to line up the edges when part of the circle went off the canvas.

When I was happy with the appearance I imported the bitmap I created into 3Ds max and added it to the materials editor and applied it to the main parts of the dragon. Also, I used a greyscale version of the same image so I could add a bump. I applied a bump output value of 30.

After I had applied the texture to the body I found that the limbs needed to have a larger sized map than the body so the scales were in similar proportions. To do this I created a separate texture size for the main part of the body.

Next I used the anisotropic shader to create the surface for the dragon’s spikes and wing bones. I chose this setting because I would be able to get a slight shine and so set the specular level of 80, gloss level of 10 and an anisotropic level of 50. I decided to use red for these parts of the dragon as they would contrast the green used for the scales, but I chose a darker shade as I felt it would not take the attention away from the rest of the image. When I added it to the proposed sections of the image I was really pleased with its appearance and so decided to work on the next material.

After this I created the material I would use on the eye. I chose the eye to be black as a lot of animals have eyes this colour and also as I felt this would be the most effective colour. For this I used the anisotropic shader again as I would be able to make it glisten and therefore contrast from the background. To do this I used the specular setting of 90, gloss level of 55 and anisotropic level of 50. I then created the texture for the main part of the wing. For this I used a similar shade of green to the rest of the dragon and used the transparency shader to make the wing slightly see-through. I set the opacity to 95 to create the transparency I required. The other settings I used were the specular level of 15, gloss level of 50 and softness level of 0.1. I was quite pleased with this so far and so went onto the next material.

I then started to work on the textures on George. Firstly I used the bitmap image I drew of a cross and applied it to the body of George.

I had to make some changes to the size as to begin with it was too small, but after some manipulation the cross was the size I wanted. I then used the bitmap once again to apply it to the shield. I did have some trouble positioning the cross on the shield and had to make several alterations to this before I was happy. After this I decided to create the material for the armour and to do this I used the metal shader . I chose dark grey with the specular level of 120 and gloss level of 60. I then created the chainmail by drawing the following bitmap and applying it to selected part of George’s body.

I placed the bitmap as a bump map and set the bump output value to 30. When it was rendered I felt the loops of the chainmail were too big and so reduced the size of the bitmap. Also I applied some glossiness to highlight the bumped surface. Lastly I created the material for the handle of the sword. For this I used the blinn shader with a specular value of 0, glossiness level of 10 and softness level of 0.1 to get a matt finish. I am quite happy with the appearance of the materials on George and so will continue with the image.

After this I worked on the lighting in the scene. I started by adding a target light as the main light source. For this I used a white colour light and placed it so it shone on the front of the subject matter.

I then started to add the background to the scene. I wanted to use a medieval castle setting as I felt this would link well with the dragon slaying story. To do this I chose to use a stone backing lit by candle light. I began by using a cylinder to create the floor. I made the radius of this quite wide so all of the dragon and St George fitted on easily. I then added three pillars to the scene as I felt this would add to the scene as light would be able to be added here. I drew one using a long cylinder with a radius of 15.681. When I was happy with this I placed it to one side of the dragon and then cloned the object and placed another behind the characters and one on the other side.

I felt the best process to do next was to create the candles for the light sources. I felt that a wooden torch would be the most appropriate as it would fit into the medieval theme well. To do this I used a cone with a small point. I adapted the height and radius of the top of the cone so it would be proportional to the rest of the objects in the image. When I was happy with the proportions I cloned the shape and placed one on each of the pillars. When I was pleased with the positioning I continued with the image.

Afterwards I added omni lights to the top of each torch to create an atmosphere. I decided to use omni lights for this as the all around light source would recreate the way fire is a light source. I used a yellow light as I felt it would be the best to recreate the glow of a flame.

I felt the next step was to add the fire to the scene. To do this I used the sphere gizmo and added a fire affect. I started this by creating the flame coming out of the dragon’s mouth.

When I applied this and rendered it the flame was not what I wanted and so I edited the settings by making the outer colour of the flame slightly more orange, making the flame type tendril, decreasing the stretch and increasing the flame density and detail. I then used the same method to create the flames on the torches.

At this point I went back to continue work on the dragons scales. With some more alterations I managed to align the bump map and colour map on the body well by editing the coordinates. I then used the same method to align the scales on the limbs.

Next I worked on the background again. To do this I drew out two bitmaps, one for the pillars and one for the floor. I then applied each to their sections as a background surface and a bump map and aligned the two by using the same coordinates. When I was happy with the proportions I altered the bump value. I used the bump output amount of 30 as I felt this was the most suitable.

Lastly I added shadow to the scene as I felt it would add realism. To do this I used the shadow map setting for the target spot light and for the omni lights I used raytrace shadow so that I could get varied intensities in different areas. It took some time to find the most suitable settings, but I was eventually pleased when I found these settings.

I am pleased with the outcome of this image at this point and feel the majority of the work is complete. I may make some minor alterations in the future, but I will complete my other images first and do this if I have time.