Evaluation

Evaluation

Overall i was happy with my 3D model it took me some time to finally choose a base texture for the walls as i wanted to keep to the medieval look. I know that i could of made more assets and filled the space inside my castle but i found trouble with a couple of unwraps and making the right sizer for the texture. Im pleased with the modelling but think i could improve on the texturing,i have defiantly become more confident with UV unwrapping and think next time i to another project it'll be much more in less time. 

I tried to keep to my initial design but found myself running out of time so i had to improvise on a couple of things such as assets and the fact i had to get rid of my church because there just wasn't enough time. At first i began to model the larger components of my castle such as the walls, towers and the pinnacle, it wasn't until the later stage i began to model the inside and also the keep and then i began to unwrap everything and apply textures. I actually tried to not texture things that would be seen such as bottoms and sides of walls to speed up the process.

Feedback

I was to maybe next time maybe think on a smaller scale and maybe to create assets before hand and import them in. And to also include to items on the market stalls. This feedback helped for me to realise what went wrong and how i be more prepared next time.

Castle research

Types of towers and buildings in a castle

Lists

Lists are seen surrounded by a stockade usually it'll be some green grass or water.

Chemise
Chemise is an inner wall enclosure of a castle defend, most of the time the keep was surrounded by a chemise and the only way in was the do go on the first floor e.g. chemise.

Bartizan
An overhanging battlemented corner turret, corbelled out; sometimes as grandiose as an overhanging gallery; common in Scotland and France. In other words a sentry tower.

Moat

The moat was a trench that was usually filled up with water that surrounded the castle, this was helpful when attacked because the enemy only had two choices swim or find a way to drop the drawbridge.

Stockade
This is the castles first line of defence which can be made from stone,brick or a solid fence of heave timber.

Parapet wall
This is a low wall on the outside of the main wall allowing the allies shoot arrows at the enemy from a shorter distance.

Postern
A side or less important gate into a castle it can also be a secret door, usually for peacetime use by pedestrians.

Brattice
This is a timber tower or projecting wooden gallery also called a hoarding. This also reinforces the wall. 

Battlement
Wall allowing defenders of the fortification to fire from a protected position.Parapet with indentations or embrasures, with raised portions between, crenelations; a narrow wall built along the outer edge of the wall walk for protection against attack.

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Chapel 
This is like another chapel but within a castle, the architectural structure though is usually more advanced for extra protection.

Keep
A castle keep is a tower that was built as the most protected part of the castle. The castle keep square shaped stone castle keep is the most dominate feature of many castles in England.

Pinnacle
This is usually a pointed ornament placed at the highest point of a castle, it tends to be located on top of the 'Keep'. The design of the Pinnacle varies from castle to castle and can represent different things.

Footbridge

The footbridge is a narrow walkway that is used to access the main draw bridge - possibly just as another form of defence. 

Barbican
The Castle's Barbican was a defensible structure placed in-front of the main Castles defence walls. In many cases the barbican formed part of the castle gatehouse complex, giving added strength to this potential point of weakness.

Rampart

Ramparts were a defensive bank of earth or rubble built for defensive purposes. A parapet was often built on top of the ramparts which acted as a protected fighting platform for castle defenders. These original structures led on to the design of Medieval stone castle battlements.

Drawbridge
The Castle Drawbridge was a moveable, heavy, wooden bridge which spanned the width of a castle moat or ditch. The drawbridge consisted of a wooden platform with one hinged side fixed to the castle wall and the other side raised by rope or chains. It would be raised vertically and dropped down again when danger had passed. The drawbridge would connect a road to the entrance of a castle, the Barbican and the Gatehouse.

Machicolation

In forts and castles during the middle ages they built galleries on brackets on the outside walls and parapets which had an opening in the floor to pour molten lead boiling oil and missiles onto the enemy which they called a Machicolation.

Guardhouse

This is a building that accommodates the guardsman of the Castle. It also acts a detention centre for prisoners awaiting a court verdict. 

Corbel
Corbels resemble a right triangle. The flat surfaces are joined to the walls or other flat surfaces, while the third and longer side is usually carved in some way, ranging from plain to extravagant.

Curtain Wall
The curtain fortified the castle and defended off from enemies. The walls are built to be very tall and thick to stop intruders from coming through and over. They usually connect towers or bastions together.

Bailey

A Bailey is an uncovered place outside the keep but within the walls of the castle. Settlers and farms are sometimes used in these areas.

Covered Parapet Walk

The Covered Parapet Walk is the walkway ontop on the Curtain walls. It also access on top of the walls for archers to shoot enemies and to keep a watchful on any intruders.

Flanking Towers

The Flanking Towers are the towers on the corner of the castle. They allow defenders to watch all corners and make it extremely difficult to be flanked.

Turret

Castle turrets are usually on the walls of castle for extra defence. They allow for archers to fire arrows on incoming intruders. Some turrets are situated on their own but near by the castle.

Castle

The castle is the main part where the family of the lords family live and its also where the military retreat to in some cases. Event and meetings are also held there. The walls are usually built around the castle to help defend it.

Corner tower

A tower usually has a Corner Tower, a circular tower allowing surveillance and defence in nearly all directions.

Ideas Generation.

This is my mind map to give me a clear look at what I will choose to do.

Idea 1

The first idea that I thought of was a castle on a mountain and embedded into the mountain. I wanted the environment to be snowy and icy with clumps of snow on top of the castle towers. The theme of the castle would probably be a kind of German/Norman theme allowing me to add tall towers but also bulky more defensive buildings. I'd like to have a drawbridge leading towards a long hallway

3ds Max

Interface.
Week 1

Move Tool- The move is the symbol of arrows crossing over each other, this is used to move an object on it's Z,X and Y axis. This is very useful when maybe an object is in the way of another or if you simply want to place the model in a different area of your piece.
Rotate tool - This is the symbol to the right of the move tool which looks like an circular arrow, this is used to rotate an object from its Z,X and Y axis and also be able to use all of them at the same time. This is useful for when you need to place something at a certain angle such as a bunch of boxes maybe will have a few rotated to express a fall.
Snapping tools - The are the symbols which look like magnets with certain other symbols next to them such as right angle these are used to snap an object to stuff like movement and rotation.
Creation tab - This holds all the simple pre-set shapes you can use and scale the way you want by simply clicking on which shape you want and then clicking on the grid and scaling by moving the mouse in directions.














Here I've started to test the camera movements this is used loads whilst modelling to get a good view of what you are modelling and how you want to see it. Using the middle mouse button you can pan around the interface which is good if you are modelling say a long street. You also zoom in and out by scrolling the middle mouse button which help to get a good and more detailed view of what your looking at. Also the by holding ALT and the middle mouse button you rotate the camera around the scene freely or you can select an object and rotate the camera around that single object to get behind or in front of the object whilst modelling.

















This is a screen of using the modify tab to this we created a simple box and set the segment to 3 on each side and then converted it to editable poly after this you can go to the modify tab and drop down the editable poly menu and choose from a selection of vertex,edge, border, polygon and element these all have there own different styles of modifying hence difference in the names. From there you can move faces out and in and go on to use things such as extrude and bevel etc.















In this screen I've shown how to snap two objects together using grid spacing and the right snap option.This is helpful for when you want a precise connection to two or more objects and makes it much easier to quickly make good changes without having to fiddle around with it for so long. It's also better when snapping to objects together to use the front or side views to get a better look on what you are doing. To use the snapping tool you click the symbols with the magnet or if you wish to change the setting you can right click on the symbol to bring up the settings.

This is a screen shot of using the material editor the best mode to use for applying textures onto models is the compact material editor which allows you to see the material on a mesh before applying it. The main way to add textures is to use bitmap materials which allows you to go into folders and add saved textures from the internet or visually recorded on a camera or even drawing. Textures can then go on to be enhanced with lighting and things like bump to give the textures a more 3D effect and other things like noise to give walls a more grainy look to them.

Week 2

First today we looked at using textures and adding more tiles to textures once objects were stretched and adding a UVW map.
UVW Map

 Here I've adding a simple box to my interface and placed a bark texture .

Here I've used the scale tool and used the x axis of the tool to stretch it at the sides this as you can see in the screenshot has stretched the texture as well .

 To stop this I added more tile to the texture by going into the maps options and increasing the number of tiles.







Now with the texture better i now went into the modifier list and scrolled down to UVW map and set it to box and then scale it to the size of the previous box. This is to get used to using this tool.








UVW unwrapping.

To start off with we made a box with all measurements at 32 then went into the modifier list and added a "Unwrap UVW" which brings up a menu showing us the mapping of the box. I then clicked the polygon tool to be able to click faces of the object and move then around on the UV editor.

Now I select all the faces of the shape by pressing "CTRL A" and once that was done I went to the top of editor and chose Unfold Mapping from the mapping drop down box. Now I needed to scale my map down so it all fits in the square I also rotated it the map to make placing the textures easier in Photoshop. All this was used with the snapping tool on. Now I Rendered the UV template and saved it as a JPEG for Photoshop.

This is the UV unwrapping in Photoshop, I made ruler guidelines for the textures to snap in the right place, once properly placed i added my own features such as blood for a unique look to my model.

 Once that was done I saved it back to my folders and then went back into 3ds and adding the new bitmap in the material editor and added it to my box. To make things look a bit better i duplicated the finished model and made a little scene out of it using the plane object for some shadow.

Editable poly tools

Here in this demo we learnt how to use many of the editable poly modify tools to expand our way of modelling. So first off we learnt how to extrude first we selected a poly face and then clicked on the little box next to the word extrude and gave it a height of 32 to create double the size of the model.

 Knowing this tool we could continue to apply it to other faces creating a stair like structure. Also in this screenshot I've used the bevel tool to make a point with the poly face and made the height the same as the size of the cube 32.

Here I've started using many different tools such as champher, ring,connect and inset.
Champher is used to curve edges which can help on things like arches etc.Ring in a button used for when there are multiple edges to be selected in a row if so you can just press ring it'll do it for you.Connect is used for adding segment and lining up segments made I used this straight after using ring to then extrude them out into walls.Inset is used to shrink poly faces and then extrude them inwards to make things like windows and doors.

 This is the final model i made it was just an experimentation of all tools we learnt I though it looked slightly like a obscure boat so I added a light and blue plane to create a theme of sea.






Lights.

 This is a demo of how to create lights in a scene to produce a good effect of shadows and a more 3d look. So first we started with the target spotlight which is very simply drag onto the scene and directed to wherever you want.

 Here I've started to go into more options of the light such as Intensity/Colour/Attenuation. So first I turned on the shadows, then I changed the colour for a more warm yellow and also change the colour of the shadow to a warm blue along with lowering the density.

Here I've added an Omni light which is like a singular light that can be placed anyway. Once placed i went to the options and toggle the use button for far Attenuation and change the amount to 60 for a light glow. After this I finally changed the colour to a bright green because I wanted it to seem that the seem was that the boxes where carrying uranium or something.


Week 3
Making the Crate

Here I've started to make a crate by making it an editable poly and selecting all the faces then using inset and extrude to create a edge to the crate.

Here I've made a thin plank shape and placed it diagonally on the crate for more realism.

And here I've deleted some polys that won't be seen in the final render such as the back of the plank and the sides of it.

Now I've began UVW unwrapping and moving the faces and edges in separate positions, once I did that i then went onto stitch the faces together to create one full face, one full edge and the plank.







 So here is the template after unwrapping

And this was after textures it in Photoshop I wanted to a slight metal texture on the vertices of the edges and a lighter base. and then went back into 3ds and added the texture to the crate.














Textures.
In this demo we looked at making new textures in Photoshop.

 This is two textures put together with some adjustment using the opacity and fill percentages and the lighting modes i use multiply for my lichen wall.

 Here I've added a duplicate of the wall and added a screen mode to brighten the texture and lowered the opacity to something suitable so it doesn't look too bright. Other things i did was use a filter called offset to move the texture around to get a good shape, and also added burn tool to edges of the wall to give a more 3d effect.

This is the final texture I made once I finished editing I defined the pattern with the paint bucket then pasted it in a bigger canvas.

These are the Specular light,colour and bump textures i used to add more depth to my final render. these where simply made by changing saturation and levels in Photoshop















This image shows the things I did in 3DS Max  So first i made a tall box and added the texture base in the compact material editor. Then I converted it to an editable poly and used the UVW editor to change the face of the texture to what I wished. Once I did this I added the last few textures (Specular textures) and added a light to see the bump on the final texture.



Here's the final rendered texture.













Barrel
This was a quick warm up to start the session this is the final render. I was a bit disappointed with the shape in the end but I know what to do next time.

Fort callus

To start this I created a tall box made it an editable poly and deleted the missing faces using edges and vertices










Here I've used two symmetrical edges and used the move tool to extend them on the y axis and then bridged them making the extension.
























Tree
Here I've got a picture of a tree and giving it a layer of  a dark green underneath and burnt some of the edge to get rid of the tint.

Now here I've made it black and white for an opacity map

Now I've taken a chunk of the tree and copied it in a ring to make something completely new so when I go into 3ds max I can add these through the tree.

And here i made an opacity map for it.















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