3/10/23 – Introduction to Adobe Photoshop – Planning Fake news – Thinking about Bond gadget project

On the 3rd of October I had my first lesson of Digital toolbox. In this lesson I was shown the software Adobe Photoshop for the first time as well as a future project. This project is to be created in Maya which will be taught over the coming weeks. In Photoshop I was taught how to remove green screen backgrounds and how to manipulate an image of a building. Arranging levels and curves to manage colour.

 

Bond gadget thoughts:

The assignment is to invent a James Bond gadget using our imagination and the software auto desk Maya. I already like the idea of our first upcoming project, it allows me to have full creative freedom over what kind of gadget I want to make. Forcing me to come up with an idea for the bond gadget is a concept that I can see being fun and challenging. It’s great that I can make whatever I want providing it fits in to the Bond gadget assignment although I have to think how the design of the project when making it in Maya. The idea cannot be too complicated to make however it needs to be impressive to look at.

 

Introduction to Adobe Photoshop:

I’ve never been introduced properly to Photoshop. I know of it and have used it in the past for a few lessons in College. A lot of my time in College was used on Adobe After effects and Premiere pro which revolve around the editing of films/videos. I finished College earlier this year, the course I took was film, tv and media production so I have knowledge in setting up lighting, cameras and editing.

In the first lesson of Digital toolbox we used photoshop to remove a green screen from a picture of a women and fit a new background in behind her. We also edited the picture of a building to make it look more apocalyptic.

Green screen girl

How I made the picture?

First I added the two file pictures of the women and the sky. Then I went to tile all vertically placing the two images side by side.

Next I dragged the women image on to the sky image making sure that the women would be a layer in front of the sky image. You can see the layers on the far lower right side of the software.

 

 

 

 

I then clicked on the layer of the women and proceeded to go to the colour range tool which enabled me to modify the tracking of the women’s outline on the image.

I could then use the eyedropper tool to click on the green screen background and change the tracking of the image.

As you can see the colour range has left a nice dotted outline around the women. This shows that the software has tracked round her body quite well. Some of her hair will be cut off but that is a minor detail to pay for the screen screen effect to work. Now that I know the colour range has tracked round the body of the women I can use the next tool called reveal selection. This tool is under layer, then layer mask.

Although the image has successfully removed the green background and brought in this new sky background there’s still some problems with the image. If you closer to the women’s hair there’s still some green left. It’s going to be hard to remove it, one thing we were told that we can do to help fix this issue is by using the Hue/saturation in the adjustments tool.

In hue and saturation we can change the master to cyan since that’s the colour of the background. After selecting a new master I can change the saturation down to eliminate the leftover green.

Apocalyptic building

 

Animal manipulation:

 

Images I used:

How if found the task at manipulating two animals in to one?

I really enjoyed this task, I like the fact that I was able to choose what animals I’d like to see fused in to one. The instructions in making this image was quite straight forward, easy to follow and fun to do. There was a lot of layer usage during the creation of my fox badger. I decided to go with a Fox and badger because they’re similar creatures in terms of habitat and size. I wanted to avoid coming a reptile creature with something like a dog or pig. It would look weird and be harder to pull off in terms of looking good. That was my thought process behind choosing these two creatures, the animals are usually seen near where I live so the idea was probably spawned through the history of them causing trouble down my road.

I like the way the final product turned out. I think the issue I had when making the badger fox was the colouring. The head of the fox is a bright orange, I had to tone the colour of the head down by using the adjustments tab. Changing the shadows and warmth down so I could make my image look a but more professional.

Artist research:

Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko is a Russian Soviet artist who was born in 1891. He was a sculptor, photographer, painter and graphics designer. Alexander used his art for the service of political revolution. He began collaborating with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky on a series of advertising campaigns in 1921.

This is an example of one of Rodchenko’s many pieces of work. The art here is very abstract and unique, there’s a lot of images spliced together. He uses a lot of old war machines for such a small picture. Alexander places a dog or wolf on top of a persons body in the photo, that could potentially represent the Soviet Union to him. Maybe he likes representing the Russian people as dogs/wolves. There’s even a polar bear located in the top left of the image amongst a building and a man. I think the meaning of this picture links to Russia as a whole, maybe to show there industrial side of the country as well as their power. His art was used in a political way so the artist was quite patriotic.

David Hockney

David Hockney is an English artist famous for his acrylic art work. His art is very expressive and out going. He uses a range of bright colours in his work as a whole. The man was born in 1937 in Bradford, considered to be one of the most influential British artists in the 20th century. One of his pieces of art sold for $90 million in 2018 making it the most expensive art work by a living artist. His art is known as pop art and he is one of the reasons for pop arts massive popularity in the 1960s.

Above is one of Hockney’s work over his career. The piece itself is very outgoing. The acrylic style gives off this nice blend smooth effect with the colours, there seems to be no rough lines in this picture. I like the style of Hockney’s work, in fact I looked in to him in the past some years ago for an art GCSE homework study. I think what draws me in to his work is the style. Very unique in a way that makes his art seem dreamy. It doesn’t look real but still captures some of reality with all these bright colour pallets and smooth lines.

John Stezaker

John Stezaker is a British conceptual artist born in 1949 and is known for his photographic collages. His work is famous for conjoining male and female faces in to pieces of art. Splicing art together he often creates romantic scenic pictures over the expression of famous actors.

This example of art work done by John Stezaker is a great example for his use in splicing male and female facial expressions. He tries to create a face with similar expressions. Similar to one of the other artists I looked at Alexander, both splice pictures together to create an abstract piece of art that captures an expression or meaning. Alexander’s work was more political so his work had more of a meaning behind the art, whereas John’s work simply captures the expression of a new face from two completely different people. His art is simple yet outgoing and unique in the idea of combing a famous man and women’s face in to one.

Plan fake news composite

For my fake newspaper image I want to do something famous and funny. I want to use King Kong as my fake news. I think it would be hilarious to make a realistic front cover of a newspaper involving King Kong, a fictional gorilla that is famous for going to New York and climbing up the Empire state building.

I want to create a newspaper article of King Kong being real entering the city of New York or potentially another city such as London. Below are images that I want to try and include if possible.

24/10/23 Fake news idea hasn’t changed much. I’ve been trying to cut out different King Kong images to cut out and past in a London location. I wanted to place the character on the Big Ben but the idea is hard to do with the different Images I’ve tested. The idea for the character rampaging in London is still there.

15/10/23 Summary of week 2 lesson and messing around with Auto desk Maya

In week 2 we used auto desk Maya for the first time, going through the basics of the software so that the class could fully understand the fundamentals and physics inside the program. Maya is a software that I do have experience in. Out of all the software’s listed on the course of Visual effects this is the one that I do have some experience in. I’m no expert, knowing only the basics so this lesson was a fresh recap. It’s been a while so the lesson perfect for me remembering the keys and tools.

The basic tools – The first thing to learn in Maya is rotating round, to do this simply hold ‘Alt’ and the left click. This will allow for better views of a project. Another tool is if you select an object and hold ‘Ctrl’ ‘D’ it duplicates an object. Next is the channel box, located on the right hand side. This will show the history and information of a selected object.

As you can see there’s data of a shape that I chose. As you can see there are scaling’s of different parts of the shape. Including the rotations of the shape in case I wanted to maybe point it 45 degrees at an angle. The scale ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the top right of the image is the size of the object at different angles. If I changed scale ‘X’ the abject would grow from the right and left and remain shape from behind and front. It’s hard to explain so I’ll show the effects of the scaling for ‘X’ and ‘Y’ below.

Above is the effects of changing the scaling for ‘X’. There’s a lot of information shown on the panel, a lot you can change this way. Great for specific measuring in projects. As you can tell I’ve been using these measurements for a Greek Temple in class. I can add extra faces on to cylinders which is what I’ve done with one of the pillars for my build.

On the far left of Maya is a tool panel. This is where the basic tools are kept. Here you have the ‘select tool’, ‘lasso tool’, ‘paint selection tool’, ‘move tool’, ‘rotate tool’ and ‘scale tool’. The names of these functions are self explanatory.

Next is the main hub of Autodesk Maya. This is where everything is. A lot of the tools located in the right and left panels are here too. The shapes and special commands are stored in the top of Maya.

As you can see there’s a huge amount here. Quite hard to explain the a lot of these different tools up here especially since I don’t know what a lot of them do. My experience with Maya is limited and I hope to expand this immensely.

 

Using Maya we were tasked with building a Greek temple.

Rocket ship

I made this rocket ship using the different shapes used in the temple design that I’d learnt. I also used the beveling tool as well as the extrude tool for extra detail. The model is very basic but I tried to include as much tools as possible that I wasn’t too familiar with. I had some issues with the digital sketchbook on Monday. So I wasn’t able to get round to the lighting for my rocket sketchbook.

Week 3 (spaceship and extruding)

In todays lesson we focused on the tool, “extruding”. This tool allows me to pull out object faces. This allows me to pull out multiple faces on an object at a time if I hold shift while extruding.

The extrude tool is located in the poly modelling tab of Auto desk Maya.

By switching to faces on select by holding right click on the mouse you can insert a shape and select a face. By holding shift you can select multiple faces at the same time which can be very useful.

After selecting the face(s) click the extrude tool. This will now give you the arrows for pulling out X, Y and Z values. These values correlate to the different directions on Maya that you can move an object.

Now you can hold left click on one of the arrows and drag. This will pull out an extended part of the face(s) selected.

You can click the extrude tool once more and this will allow you to extend the extruded faces once more. You can also hold shift and select another face while extruding, this will pull two faces out at the same time.

 

Using the extrude tool multiple times allows me to create cool shapes and structures. Below is an example of me extruding two faces at the same time multiple times.

Spaceship making

Making of spaceship 3 tutorial

First go to the Arnold on the main option deck located in the top of Maya. This is where the lighting and rendering options are. Then click the skydome icon. There’s a picture of what this command looks like. This creates an artificial lighting dome that covers the scene in Auto desk Maya.

 

After selecting the skydome new settings will appear for the dome on the far right. Next to where it says colour is an icon. An icon that looks like a chess board. If you click this you can then select files and choose a background to use for the render of the scene. I recommend using a high quality back ground image such as 4K images and above. There are various websites for these background images.

As you can see the background is placed after using the Arnold rendering. Next for the standard surface covers on objects a object or shape needs to be created. I recommend using the extrude tool to create an object. Below is an object (spaceship) which I have created to use. First you want hold right click on the selected object and then got to assign new material.

The image above should pop up after selecting assign new material. Click Arnold then aiStandardSurface. A new panel on the far right should appear. Showing the information for the surface that will be plated on to the object. Click pre-sets and then select a texture to cover the object you selected.

before rendering you can press 3 to smooth the object, recommend doing this while making the object/shape.

The Arnold rendering should show the object covered in the texture. AS you can see below is the spaceship I made and rendered with a green metal surface texture.

Spaceship 1

spaceship 2

Week 4

In week 4 we created cups and a kettle using some new tools in Auto desk Maya. This includes the curve tool and circularize tool.

The circularize tool is pretty self explanatory. It makes the polys in the faces selected become circular. This was very useful for the tea pot we made. Both for the handle and the hole on the other side.

The line tool is also pretty easy to use. It can help make thing that are more curved. It can work well the the circularize tool.

As you can see from the screen shots above I’ve just clicked on the icon for the CV curve tool. It has allowed me to start creating points which join together to make a line when I press enter on my keyboard.

Once I click enter with my line points selected it will turn green. This shows that the line has been made and I’m happy with what I’ve made. Now If I go over to the surfaces tab and click revolve with the right settings attached the Line will come full circle creating a sort of cup.

Using these new tools as well as the extrude tool I was able to make a tea pot. The line tool helped me get the half sphere base for the tea pot. Which I was then able to build upon by adding a handle and hole using the circularize tool and bevel tool. The bevel tool brought the circular faces out. To finish of the design I used the aiStandardSurface matting tool to change the color and material of my build.

Fake news

 

 

Materials:

I talked a bit about what I wanted to create earlier this month of October 2023. I talked a bit on what idea I wanted to make for my Fake news project. I was thinking on how the layout would be. How I wanted to have King Kong in London on the Big Ben clock. This however proved to be a tricky combination as I failed to find the right images to help. I found a lot of the King Kong pictures to be either too low quality or in a tricky pose in the image to work with. I was trying to figure out all this while keeping the color of all the images. I new what I wanted to make, however I didn’t know how it would all work and the style of it. Over on the weekend when making a start on it I found this issue to be very frustrating, becoming a road block in the project. The next week (today as of writing) I decided to spend the day trying to make my Fake news cover.

After struggling with the original King Kong image with making it look natural I decided to make a big change in style. Upon looking for a different King Kong image I came across the puppet used in the original King Kong film. I decided from here that I’d make my poster based on the first King Kong film. Making it black and white to give this old affect that would help this version blend in a bit more in to my Fake news. The hand of this image was in a perfect position to hold something. I thought of using the pen tool to take out the background first.

I then made a copy of my King Kong image with the background off. This meant that I had two images of a background clear King Kong. I one of them I turned the opacity down and had my image placed next to Big Ben.

Here I would use the pen tool again to cut out the bottom half of the images body around the building. I also cut off King Kong’s left hand so I could use the other copied image to make the arm around the building. The opacity tool helped me see the building so I knew what to cut out. I planned on making King Kong a lot smaller originally, he was supposed to be hanging on the top of Big Ben Like the Empire state building. In the end I made him a lot bigger so that He would appear clearer for the Fake news image.

The pen tool was also used for the planes I added in. I used this to mainly remove backgrounds. For King Kong I also used the pen tool to remove the arm and enlarge it around the Big Ben clock.

Another effect I used was by making my images black and white. After deciding the art style I would take, inspired by the classic look of King Kong. I decided to search on YouTube for a way to make my images have a black and white effect. I’m sure there are multiple ways but because I’m not familiar with Adobe Photoshop I searched for a tutorial.

The instructions were very simple in making my images black and white. I would use this effect on all the images and then use the adjustments tab to filter my project to have a tint of blue to go with the original King Kong image.

First I selected my image and went to layer then calculations. This would open a tab of settings. For the most part kept it the same as the default.

This would add a black and white affect to my image. I would then make a empty layer and copy and paste the mask from the channels tab.

Week 5

Week 5 was a catchup session on our previous Digital toolbox lessons. As well as a lesson on creating a kitchen background and some cups that you would see in a kitchen. Using the Kettle from the previous lesson and some new cups.

I used this lesson to primarily put some thought in to my Bond project. The Bond project involves me making a spy gadget that James Bond would use on a mission. I have to create this all through Maya without any animations. A still showcase. I’m planning to make something small but detailed. I figure that if I make my project too big I could lose the detail and I don’t want that to happen. In the end I came up with an idea for my gadget. A camera. One that shoots a laser out of the lens. In order for me to show that the camera shoots a laser for the showcase I will have to attach a beam from Maya.

The model I’m basing my gadget off of is called Nikon APS-C compact camera. Below is a link of the camera and its features for referencing.

Nikon’s New APS-C Compact Camera Features 28mm f2.8 Lens (dancarrphotography.com)

I will be referencing this Niko 18.5mm camera. I though the camera itself was very do able to make and had potential for a lot of detail. The concept is simple but still cool, I really like the idea. The work will pull the weight of this project so taking notice of the small details like the different materials will come in handy.

I made a concept for the camera, working out the simple layout of the camera. I just wanted to get an understanding of how the different components on the camera would work on Auto desk Maya. I’m planning to use textures over the different parts. As you can see on my reference image the material is different for each part. Hopefully the textures will help solidify the look of the gadget.

Week 7 Maps and rendering

In this scene I have created two surfaces, both surfaces have assigned materials ‘aiStandardSurface’. I’ll be using this to demonstrate the different tools in ‘aiStandard Surface’. As you can see I’ve changed the colour of one of my surfaces.

First I will demonstraight the colour section and the different settings within the tool. First I hit the checkers box next to colour. Then another tab will appear and I clicked on the Ramp icon. The icon is very colourful and located in the middle of the table.

When selecting a tool in colour you want to click one of the icons that has some colour in it. If not then the tools might still work but the colours will come off weirder on projects. 

After selecting the Ramp tool a new side bar will pop up with a black and white colour dial. Select the dial in one of the corners and click the select colours box. This will give you the option to change the colours for the selected shape. In this case I’ve selected the small square in the image.

After clicking the colour I wanted (blue) the Ramp colour dial will also change. Below is an image of the texture. This is a great way to customise a colour tone for a project, allows for more to control in colour.

If we continue using the colour ramp then we can use some features to make cool effects. Above the colour bar we used before we can change the type to circular. We can also change the colours and make circles by closing the colour bar together.

As you can see here I’ve changed it to green and yellow. By closing the colour meter together there is a circular image that is being placed on to my surface. Also if we go to UV editor then we can get a picture of what’s being displayed on our object. Here we can change the layout. By holding right click and going to UV we can interact with the squares and reline the displayed image. 

Going back to the tab we’ve used earlier I can click on place2dTexture3 (above) to edit the settings in the displayed ramp (circles).

I can multiply what’s being displayed on to my surface. Multiplying them gives off this sticker look. Something that gave me an idea for a future design. I don’t think it would be too hard to make this surface have a paper look for a sticker design. There’s lots of uses for this feature in Maya.

Next is the metalness. This changes the look of the selected shape. Just like the colour tab this tool involves selecting the checker board. When selecting in the tab under metalness you want to choose an icon that is colourless. For similar reasons if you don’t do this then the outcome will come out differently.

 

The checker icon is located at the top of the tab that comes up. 

 

Above are the changes of the metalness tool. I changed the settings purposely to show the slight changes in this tool. The more I change the colors the more color goes from the object.

Breaking and modifying connections

Connections are the images and changes being placed in the aiStandardSurface tab. Breaking connections remove these function allowing you to start over or keep the projects with a connection. In order to break these simply just go over the modified tools, right click and click break connection. If you see the checker board boxes as just black boxes then that means there’s a connection taking place.

This is the hypershade window located in the top right of default Maya. In this you can see all of the edited pieces of an object. All of the lines being attached to the bar in the middle of the image below show the connections. Her you can break the connections by dragging them off or right clicking them.

Bond project

 

 

Continuing from last time I resumed the progress I had on my Bond Project taking influence from a camera I found online.

Above is the image I’m using to reference my Camera for my Bond gadget. I just want to use this image so there’s an understanding in layout for my design. I’ve got no intention in copying this image. The gadget will be a camera that shoots a laser out. I didn’t want to copy the look of it completely so I made some changes for my project to make it more original.

I started the model build by adding in some bevels so the different parts of my camera would come out smoother. Objects in real life aren’t as sharp and pointy, especially the camera that I was using as my reference. Beveling gives a smoother design, adding in polys and edges to make the models smoother. I did this for the corners of the camera as well as the pillar part sticking out of the front face of the camera.

You may also notice that there’s a line going horizontal around the camera, near the top. In order to replicate that I used the tool screen located below. By holding CTRL on the keyboard I could create an edge around the main rectangle base for my camera. Then I beveled the line and finally switched to faces to send it backwards. This created the line look for my camera. If you look closely it goes in to the camera a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the main lens I didn’t want to make it based of the really design. I wanted to make it simpler and still. You may notice that the lens I designed isn’t adjustable by hand like in the referenced photo. There’s no part where it looks like it can be adjusted by hand on my camera. By using the extrude tool I was able to make the camera. Going in and out of the camera itself to make this complex shape. I was able to make 2 cylinders which I rotated and scaled to create the lenses. One of the lenses was smaller and was placed further in where as the other lens I made was placed further out. So if you look closely you might be able to see both of the lenses in the camera. I thought it gave a realistic look. 

 

Next I started working on the smaller details on the front of the camera and adding in text to make my project look more believable. Adding in text and coloring specific parts.

For the laser I created a cylinder that was scaled really long and made it a mesh light.

This made the cylinder a light. So I could change the brightness and color and focus coming out of the lens. This was a cool effect I could add to my design, especially since the whole idea for the project was to make a gadget.

week 8 – Texture mapping

Texture and mapping is very important for placing images over models in Maya. The process of ordering and arranging skins or textures for the models. When texture mapping the textures are flat. They’re carefully mapped out on to a grid in Maya. It is important to arrange textures so that they look the way you want them to. When textures are placed on 3D objects they can look distorted or angled incorrectly.

Example of texture mapping are below:

The image is flat but wraps around a 3D object. Learning how to texture our own projects in Maya was fun .l We created our own simple designs of mushrooms using the extrude tool. Then went in to UV editor and mapped out the textures.

Cutting a line down the middle on the mushroom is needed for textures. For the mushroom I cut a line vertically on the whole model, just one line.

It is important to go to UV, then Planar to set the viewing point of the project. This is essential for texturing. I set my mushroom to the Y axis.

Using the cut tool in UV editor I could split the different sections of my mushroom. Doing this allowed for my textures to be come less screeched and keep the same textures throughout the model.

The square boxes in the UV editor all repeat one another. So it’s important to have the texture shapes all in one box.

After exporting my texture for my mushroom I entered Photoshop and edited the image with a black background layer. (important) Makes sure to save the texture in source images inside of a default Maya work space folder.

After painting over the layer in Photoshop so my texture looks like a mushroom.

week 9 – Adobe substance 3D painter

When exporting projects in to Adobe substance 3D painter it’s important to make sure the files are an FBX type file.

when switching to the different views you can use F1, F2 and F3 to switch between the different views of the project.

There’s also a feature where you can almost spray paint over cutouts of some of the Alphas. As you can see in this example I have done some for suits in a classic card deck.

if you press the two triangle button and then the button next to it on the right I can add some symmetry to the Alphas and drawings.

On the far right hand side of this image is the layers. Similar to Photoshop this is where I can swap layers and make some nice effects in between.

On the far left of the default layout is the texture lists, also known as the assets. You can download assets off the web and add them in here.

week 10

Ideas for the next project

For our next assignment we have to create a scene of a historic event. However the model cannot have any people in it. The scene also has to be created in Maya. I already have a few ideas about what I should do.

 

Moon Landing

The first idea I have is to make a scene of ‘Man landing on the moon’ for the first time. I think this is a very historic event that is very well known. I won’t be able to capture any astronauts actually stepping on the moon, so I’ll have to show this by having the moon in the scene. Which shouldn’t be too hard, It’s a sphere with bumps and texturing. I think this idea is good because I can divert all of my attention to the space shuttle if I wanted to include it. I can also add the American flag going in to the moon. Which I can texture myself since the color scheme is pretty simple.

Either I will set a scene with the shuttle coming back from space in the atmosphere or actually in space. The space one sounds more fun. I will have to keep in mind for the texturing about the burnt marks from leaving the atmosphere. I could even make the ship itself setting off from its destination. So from the landing pad.

 

Empire State building

A second idea I had for my next historic event is the building of the Empire state building. Last year I went on a trip to New York and I was lucky enough to go up the Empire State building. Learning about the make of what once was the tallest building in New York. There was a lot of work in the creation of the building and I think it would be interesting to show the creation of it. I can add so much detail in to the building. I think this is quite an ambitious project option.

The first personal computer

The creation of the first personal computer is a historic event that I think was undermined at the time. Nobody knew the potential, I think most didn’t. This is a cool scene that I think I could texture myself. The colors aren’t too complex and I think this idea is simpler. I’d obviously have to design the surroundings. Maybe the scene could capture the personal computer being shown off too the public for the first time.