Week 5 – Environment Modelling

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Reference Mood board for Modelling

Secondary research mood board.

Residence Model

Front view.
Side view.
Chimney model.
Side windows.
Side windows added.
Roof dividers, to surround the tiles.
Door knocker.
Perspective on the inside of the door.

Since there is no need to show the inside of the house, I have made each of the house model components like this. Then left holes in the house structure base mesh in order to let light though. Like so:

Door handle model.

This is the sort of perspective that I was thinking about. How everything looks very large from a small point of view. Although, I think that I could have exaggerated this further, it is too late now and I shall have to use the camera work the fulfil the ‘from a small perspective’ theme.

Uvs

Here are a few of the Uv’s I created. Most of the model Uv’s will only have an Arnold material applied to them, according to my palette and design. I simply deconstructed these model Uv’s using ‘Automatic Uv’s, instead of taking the time to complete the Uv’s properly. This way I should be able to save time, considering the vast amount of models that I would need to add textures to otherwise. The few remaining, that I would like to add more realistic detail to, will have Substance Painter material textures applied. Such as wood or stone, with the colour changed according to my palette.

Doorway frame UV.
Door UV.
House base model Uv.

Colour Assignment

I would need a more thorough colour assignment than in my initial environment design, to assign shades from my palette. Since my design has changed and I need to know which objects have which materials, I wanted to plan it out quickly before hand.

This is the palette I am using.

Various structures around the environment can adhere to these separate rows. Perhaps the purple or turquoise rows could be either the important objects in the scene or the background tones. This way there will be a better contrast between objects in the composition. I will have to make many tests to see which combination of colours would suit the environment best.

Substance Painter Textures

Textures in Maya

Figure 1.

This is the result of the first texture application. As you can see the tone varies significantly from the models that have an Arnold texture and a Substance Painter material with baked texture maps. I am not happy with this result.

To improve this, I will make a plane, fill the image with the plane’s UV completely and make texture maps from Substance painter that I can quickly apply to the rest of the models. These could have various materials according to the models such as wood and stone. This should have more continuity for the environment, however, I will have to do this for everything in the environment. I will try this option for now, and see the result first.

Other Colour Samples

Figure 2. Method above used.
Figure 3. Roof side colour changed.

In all honesty, the first texturing method using some Arnold materials looks better than this. While the colours are more fluid with the whole composition, some textures do not look that good. Also, figure one looks better with the bolder colour roofs. I will use Arnold materials for the rest of the environment mixed with some Substance Painter textures, just like this method.

On the other hand, I believe that the window frames should not be an Arnold material. I am maintaining the colour pallet with the assigned colours to the models as in my diagram above. However, the window frames look better as SP textures than Arnold materials. They are too bold otherwise.

Overall, I am not happy with the colouring. When using Substance Painter textures, the colour seems to wash out in comparison to the Arnold textures. I will improve the colouring of each model when I can see everything completed together. I will consider adding more Arnold materials to more and larger models, such as the the house base structure.