As I continued to progress in my project, I found another obstacle that faced me. If the piece was to be used for an advert then there would be copyright issues with using artists work.
I decided that I would have to create all of the art on the walls, and the only way to do this realistically within the time frame given, was to create a modern gallery containing abstract art.
Here are some of the art styles whose work I decided to base mine on.
Before this project began I was not very familiar with the full potential of certain adobe softwares. However, I decided to ask friends. Greg Martin and Ollie Kane were very helpful to my queries.
Ultimately, Greg helped me in understanding the basic tools in packages such as Illustrator and Photoshop to create images that could easily produce abstract art.
For my floor texture I simply used and re-modified a wood plank in PhotoShop.
Below are the different types of wood that I used. Essentially they all came from the same wood texture, but have been altered using effects such as color correction, brightness and contrasting etc.
Although it was not entirely necessary, the below shot has all of the wood textures side by side. However, the only part which contributes to this UV's texture is the central part. However organizing things in this way allows me to try and match up, if not contrast appropriately the plank being worked with, to the planks that are already done.
From image to image I only set up changes to occur on the darker side, the other side will be better if they look well matched in its laminated floor style that is common to new galleries.
From here we can see all of the different textures that will be used. I decided that 6 different styles of wooden planks would suffice in creating the initial variation in the planks. Now I would have to start thinking about tweaking lighting along with the textures.
Here is a screen shot of the process of setting up the connections for the wood textures (only colour)
Now that I was totally happy with the animation, I had to do the final touches by creating a realistic feel through basic texturing and lighting then to be output with good rendering techniques.
Here are a sequence of images that indicate the procedural steps taken to prepare decent lighting. The key thing that i was trying to achieve was to form an even distribution of global illumination photons in the scene which could be tweaked. At this stage, however, there are no textures available. This lacking of the textures would completely change the way it looks. However, the key to global illumination is presenting the scene with an even distribution of photons at the correct intensity. This means that as soon as I do have my textures set up, it would only be a matter of tweaking, rather than beginning the entire lighting process from the very beginning. By the end we can see a nice distribution of uniform light that will be tweaked later on.
Now that most of the technicalities have been addressed and solved for the greatest part, I started developing the animation of my final scene. I thought that it would be a very nice addition to the animation if the gallery filled up with picture frames and artwork. I felt now with my re-evaluated idea, I could incorporate an interesting play on perspective so that each letter of the logo was positioned within the gallery at different places and with different scales, so that at the end of the animation the sky arts logo would come into focus. Here's is my first draft of this basic remade idea.
And from the renderable Camera...
then continued to refine the actual animation until arrived at this stage.
Now the only thing left to really complete this script is to create a slight edge if realism by randomizing the way in which the effect happens.
In my mind there was two ways in which this could be done-:
1. By selecting every tile and allow one of three things to happen. Either lat the animation go forwards by some factor, go back by some factor, or simply stay where it is.
2. Vary the height at which the effect occurs between 2 float numbers.
I set out to do this and achieved it in quite a simple manner.
Here are three videos which indicate the three stages of the effect.
Wave Effect 1- No randomisation
Wave Effect 2: Random animation shift
Wave Effect 3: Randomizer of both the animation shift, and a random height scaler
Now I decide to test my idea on an even further more similar looking object, i.e. floor tiles which look similar to the design of parquet floor. Here are some further examples of how I re-tested my script before I finally implemented it into my scene.
Here is a screen shot of the user interface that I created to ease the use of my script for later.
I have not quite finished all of the features, but in terms of functionality the script is fine.
Here is the first test that I felt would replicate my scene:
Now adding a dynamic Camera, the visualization becomes even clearer. I have also created a rowPhase shift that looks more appealing.
Now I can start integrating this into my actual scene.
Now that I have done The greatest Part of the work, the script is still not entirely finished yet. In case you did not notice, so far the only attribute that is being altered. Now I had to experiment on a less symmetrical object- i.e not a sphere. The total effect that i desired to achieve was to have a floor panel, one side which is dusty/dark, the other which is shiny bright and laminated. Over the animation I would want the dusty sides of the laid panels to flip over on to their better sides in the wave like manner. Now I had to transfer rotational attributes. Here is my next test.
We have probably reached one of the final stages of this script. In this amendment of the script we can see that I have managed to pass on rotational Keyframes to the rest of the objects in my tiled floor. Now all of the tiles are moving in exactly the way that I want. This was the test that I had been striving to obtain.
So, I know now, that if I have a grid with m rows and n elements in each row, I can take any animated object's necessary Keyframes, copy them all to the objects which will be offset by some element phase. Once I am happy with the way that one row is looking, I can bring back the keyframes from all the rows so that they offset by some rowPhase. With this, I can constantly tweak my animation until I am absolutely happy. Ultimately this gives us the wave phase that I had been aiming for.
Having written the script which gave a certain look for each row, I now had the problem that the next row starts too late, and the same for every row ahead of it. So now I modified the script to perform a phase shift on the entire next row, bringing its starting wave back some time . This way I can bring back its key frames enough so thats soon as the first row goes off, the next row does the exact animation but only a fraction of a second afterwards. Now perform this On every subsequent row procedurally. You now have the effect of a wave going across your floor. Here is the first successful test in this regard from two separate angles.
Notice now that I now have complete control of the off set in between the rows. This increases the re-usability of my script, and allows the user to create a wide variety of effects.
My next job was to now use the current wave version 3, and somehow apply a kind of phase shifter in between each element within a row. I struggled to find a solution. After much development I managed to come up with a script that only created a shift in between each element Study the test below. It even may seem like a success, however, all that it does is give animation to all of the elements with some shift.
these are the numbers of each element within the grid. So we give object1, an animation that we like. We then say give your keyframes to the next, object2. then do the same for all of them.
Luckily the folling grid is very small, with only seven elements in each row. When the last object in row1, has finished, then row2's first element would start moving.
However imagine if the grid had 25 pieces in it. That means we would have to wait for all of the first rows animation to finish before the second one begins. In this grid you may notice this, but what I want to achieve is a wave effect. The script still requires work because our parquet wooden floor could have dozens of tiles in each row.
My next step was to generalize the maths to this problem such that it would not only work with specific grids. I wanted to create a tool which would be used on a number of cases. So if the User had a floor tiled with 20 tiles in a row, and there are 40 rows, all he would have to do is type in those values, and the effect would work every time. Here is a demonstration that indicates how the script evolved and became more useful.
After logically laying out the problem in my head, my goal was simple:
For any n by m grid of tiles, numbered in a certain way, then can I pass on another objects key frame data and then offset their animation to make then occur at the same time. This would be able to create a wave effect.
first I had to work out the maths behind the situation. I would copy the keyframes from one object- the master animator. the script would paste all of the necessary keys to all of the objects in the scene with some neighbouring shift. So the first object would go, the next would move, and then the next. After the first row had finished moving, then the next would go, however this is not the effect that i want.
My first goal was trying to get the shift between rows. Here is my first Test.
The following is the first basic layout to my animation using some of the basic ideas that I originally set out to do. Out of all of the music availible I felt this one (Organic3000) was the best to use.
I first created the letters in 3D using a very interesting method that was suggested by a friend of mine (Greg Martin). He suggested that the best way to get a 3D object out of the logo given was to open the file in Adobe Illustrator- manipulate it the to attain the curves that map out the letters completely, import those Illustrator curves in their vector format in to Maya. We then get Nurbs curves in Maya that accurately map out the letters "ARTS". Using this as a basis, we can use simple operations in Maya such as lofting surfaces and planar to create all sides of the letters. Although from here one can easily covert these into polygons, it seemed that the renders of grouped surfaces worked perfectly well in my tests.
I simply blocked out the modeling to give myself the basic idea of scale- in this case it was simple a cubic room that used a scaled polyCube.
I then experimented with the default dynamics inbuilt to Maya to create the swirling particles that come from behind the camera then under the logo. This was easily achieved by using a curve to map out the exact path that i wanted the particles to take, and then using effects to create a curve flow along the given path. This would later be used as the basis of instancing where by all of the particles could have been replaced by a piece of geometry or sprites that would have the required musical notes.
I then created the final particle effect by using two emitters synchronized with animation to create what would later be some type of confetti.
The camera animation was dynamic and was used to make the viewer observe specific parts at given times. I wanted it to be slightly obscure that the letters were only slightly visible against the white back ground. the first thing to view is the music notes flying past. the camera follows their motion until we reach the next effect i.e the confetti makers. The confetti makers would then lead on to the letters above that would have the fluid effects splashing paint against the logo above, finally that is the main focus of our piece.
After receiving both praise and guidance in the formative assessment, Alex mentioned one suggestion that made me re-evaluate my idea. He thought that the inside of the box could be for be in the inside of a gallery. Building the idea up, I researched into the various styles of galleries. They usually feel into two types: classic/traditional galleries and modern galleries. Brainstorming further I then thought that it would be very nice to see then inside of an art gallery old/empty which renovated to reveal the logo.
i first thought of an interesting effect that could lead the animation. Researching galleries, one thing was common, they predominantly have wooden floor. I felt it would be amazing if each panel of old wood raised up and flipped into a renovated panel on its other side. And it would be very nice if this effect happened as a wave.
From here I felt that why not have the gallery be empty and gradually fill up with paintings over time? if this was a gallery then we could else have sculptures as well as paintings. The logo could present itself as pieces or art within the gallery. Now with this basic structure, it seemed a good idea for the lighting to follw the direction on the animation.
This would be a tremendous challenge on many levels. One would be to find a way to create effects that I have never done before. Then to model and texture a realistic Art gallery. However the idea has a very nice theme to it and i have decided to follow this idea. The next few days will be spent on R and D to script the effect.
