Week 9- Starting my image for October

For October I have decided to base my image around a colour theme. When I think about this month the first thing which comes to mind are the colours of red and orange, and as this is what I based my moodboard on I feel it is the most appropriate area to work on. For this 3D image I have decided to link the two areas of October which I included in my moodboard, these being the leaves changing colour in autumn and Diwali, the festival of light.

To start the image I decided to work on the background and so created the ground. For this I drew a plane and used the soft selection tool to create hills for the landscape. To create the hills I changed the falloff value of the soft selection tool from 60 to 200. I feel this went quite well and so will continue with my image.

I felt the next stage of the image was to create the trees for the background. I decided to create a tree with bare branches and then add in leaves for two reasons; firstly so I could apply leaves of a variety of colours and only place a few on the tree and a lot on the ground to symbolise the transition from summer to winter which occurs during the month. To begin this I created a box and then increased the number of segments in each dimension. I then converted it to an editable poly so I could create the branches. To get the initial transition from trunk to branch I selected vertex’s at different points around the top of the box and dragged them out to different angles and positions. From this point I selected the polygon icon and the extrude tool to continue to extend to branches from the base of the tree. Once extruded, I used the move and rotate tools to arrange the branches at different angles which looked realistic. At this point I felt the tree was coming along quite well, however when I went on to add extra branches coming from the side of the ones I had already extruded I found the whole side panel moved with it. After some time I found that I could add extra vertex’s to the extruded parts which allowed me to create a tree with a more realistic form. However, at this point I was not completely happy with the trees appearance and so decided to move on and come back to this later.

At this point I decided to edit the trunk of the tree to get rid of the pointed edges. To do this I used the soft selection tool and moved some parts of the trunk inwards and others outwards. To do this I set the falloff value of the soft selection tool to 20 so I could edit the trunk in small sections.

I then went back to working on the branches. For this I used the same technique as before, but still felt it did not look quite right so decided to once again move on to another part of the image.

I felt this next stage was to create the roots of the tree. For this I selected several of the polygons at once and moved them away from the trunk. I chose to use this technique as I felt it worked well on the beginning of the branches. I was pleased with the appearance of the roots at this point and so decided to move on to another part of the image.

At this point I felt it would be a good time to work on the foreground of the scene. To do this I began by creating the walls by using two boxes with the same width of 55 and then cloned each one to leave a hole for the window. When I arranged them I did feel the hole left for the window was too small and so increased the height of the middle blocks to correct this.

I then went on to create the window ledge. To do this I used another box and then used the bevel tool to extend the sides as they are rarely just boxes. To keep the size of bevel consistent around the window ledge I set the bevel height to 1.5 and output amount to -1.5. I was pleased with this and so went on to another part of the image.

I then went on to add the furnishings around the window. For this I started by creating the curtain pole. I used a cylinder with dimensions of 5 for the radius and the height of 374.365 so it went right across the window. I was happy with these proportions and so created the stoppers at the end of the pole. I chose to use spheres for this as this is a popular end for a curtain pole. I made the radius of the sphere 10.454 so it was noticeably larger than the pole. When I was happy with the size of the sphere I cloned it and placed one at each end of the pole.

After this I began to create the curtains. For the curtains I wanted there to be folds in the material as though they had been opened. I felt the best way to do this would be to draw a spline and extrude it. For this I used the line tool to create a snake-like curved shape and converted it to an editable poly. I then selected the polygon icon and extruded the shape before capping the end.

I then placed the curtain in the scene and cloned the object so there was one each side. I made some alterations to the size of the objects using the scale tool including increasing the height so they completely covered the window and decreasing the width so the material folds were closer together. At this point I did need to increase the length of the curtain pole as the curtains covered too much of the window and the objects in the background could not be scene properly.

It was at this point that I felt the land in the background needed to be worked on again as it was too small and the edges could be seen. Due to this I created a larger plane. I then increased the number of segments in each dimension and used the soft selection tool as I did before to create the hills. This went quite well and so I am pleased with the appearance of the background so far.

I then created the floor in the scene. To do this I used another plane and placed it in front of the wall. This went well and so I went onto another part of the image.

Afterwards I went on to create the window frame. For this I decided to use several boxes as I felt this would be the best shape for creating the frame. I started by drawing one box and setting the height to the full height of the window. I then used the bevel tool to create a more realistic shape. For each bevel I made the height 1.5 and output amount -1.5 as I felt this would be a suitable amount. When I was happy with the shape and size of this box I cloned it three times and placed them across the length of the window. I then used the exact same process for the top and bottom of the frame.

At this point I felt the window frame looked incomplete and so I added handles as though the window would open. To do this I used a cylinder for the base and capsule for the handle itself. I made the cylinder quite short and wide with the radius of 10.391 and height of 14.777. For the capsule I applied a radius of 10.643 so it was only slightly larger than the base part and the length of the capsule 90.079 as I felt that this length would be in proportion to the rest of the frame. I am reasonably pleased with the handle and so decided to go on and work on another part of this image.

I then decided to create the Diwali lamps which I planned to place on the window ledge. For this I felt the most appropriate technique to use was the lathe technique and so I started by using the line tool to draw the shape of the lamp.

I then went to the modifier menu and selected lathe from the list. This took a few attempts as I did not know where to move the pivot point to, but eventually I was pleased with the result.

At this point I wanted to add decoration to the lamp. I decided to used the Boolean technique as I felt this would be effective when a light source was placed inside the lamp, however when I tried to do this during the tutorial several weeks ago I was unable to complete this task. Due to this I looked up how to do Boolean first. I then drew a sphere and changed the radius until it was the size I wanted and then cloned the object several times and arranged them around the lamp evenly.

Then using the Boolean tool I managed to remove the circles all the way around the shape. I was very pleased with the appearance of this and so cloned the lamp twice and placed the objects on the window ledge.

Lastly this week I went back to do more work on the tree. I added a few more branches and made some more alterations before adding the mesh smooth modifier.

As I was reasonably happy with the trees appearance I cloned each of them and placed them in the scene. I tried to arrange them to make the composition look quite interesting, but also have some realism.

I am pleased with the progress I made during this week. I plan to continue working on this image next week. To do this I will firstly create the leaves and add them into the scene before adding the materials to the objects and also adding lighting to the scene.