Here's my latest texturing and lighting assignment...Glass Bottles [pretty self-explanatory].
I would have to say that out of all the texturing and lighting assignments I've done so far, this is the one which I spent the LEAST amount of time on, only because this week we had our 1st Midterms and we were bombarded with assignments!
Assignment Description:
The models are given to us looking grey, and it's our job to add colours, texturing and lights in order to make the scene look as realistic as possible. The most challenging part about this assignment would be the fact that I did an outdoor lighting scene as opposed to indoor lighting [this is the first assignment in which I "tried" to achieve outdoor lighting]. The rest of the class was still doing indoor lighting, but I wanted to try something new and make this an outdoor scene...Well, I tried!
Completion Time:
I usually spend about 1.5-2 weeks on these lighting assignments, but I only spend 4 days on this one!
[2 days for texturing, 2 days for lighting]
How It Was Made:
[Where do I start?] Well, for most of these assignments I usually have a theme that has been inspired from a movie...For this one, I wanted a "Wild West" look and was inspired to have a "Rango" kind of theme [in terms of the lighting.]
The texturing was easy for the most part [yes, I had to UV map them...but it wasn't so bad considering all the bottles were symmetrical, and with a planar projection from the side view the object was ready to be textured]. The only annoying thing about this scene was that there were 15 bottles! Not 1, not 2...but 15! So each bottle needed to have it's own unique texture...No 2 bottles in the scene share the same exact texture.
Lighting was a real challenge; well, because, we never learned exterior lighting yet! [And here I am trying to do something that hasn't been taught to us yet!]. Well, I used 1 directional light and 1 bounce light. Yes, it might sound surprising, but there are only 2 lights in this scene! [I know it's probably not the proper, legitimate way of creating an outdoor lighting setup, but for my first attempt, I'd say it's not that bad!] The shadows were a little tough as well, because each bottle has its own colour, and therefore the shadow will contain some refracted light rays of the same colour value as well, not just a greyscale value. However, I was informed that this effect could only be achieved with a mental ray render [if you hadn't already known, all our texturing and lighting assignments are rendered using the default Maya Software render...] I've included a closeup of the best-looking bottle so you guys can see the amount of detail that's present in the texturing.
Final Words:
Well, for 4 days I'm quite surprised at how well this turned out! The textures and the lighting go along very well together and I think I was able to "fake" the outdoor lighting effect...Next time I think I'll learn exterior lighting BEFORE I start experimenting on my own!
Enjoy :)
