Maya VR Scene Progress – Alexander’s Yr2 Blog

Introduction

So far, I have modeled, textured and shaded some assets to use in the pirate ship scene that my group is creating.

Models

First, I modeled some gold coins and textured them with UV, a process I had only done once or twice. Using UV textures made it so that I could have images on the faces of the coins, like there would be in real life. The coins weren’t incredibly detailed as they would be quite small in the scene.

Next, I modeled this telescope and once again used UV texturing to have the separate parts of the model different colours.

Test renders candles

Next, I began modelling some candles. This is what the model looked like after texturing but before I added lighting to the scene. I used some new techniques in this model too – extruding a NURBS cylinder along a curve to create the curved metal candelabrum, and then converting that NURBS object to a surface with topology so that I could merge it into the object’s mesh and add a texture to it.

I also came across a completely new technique when I decided to create the flames. I started by deforming a circle to create a flame’s shape, which I then used a StandardSurface shader on and changed the colour to a gradient from red to orange (I hadn’t used gradients in Maya before). Once the colour was applied, I changed the transmission values very low so that light could pass through the object, and changed the emission value and colour so that the candles emitted a soft orange glow. This can be seen below.

Then, I added a cylindrical area light inside of each flame and changed their settings and test rendered until I got a warm lighting effect that I was happy with. You can see some of the test renders below – I particularly wanted the candles to shine their light against a wall, which I created by applying a texture of some wooden planks that I found online to a polyplane.

This is a test of a final render I did of these candles where the sampling was low so I could get a result faster to see how the final would look. Note how I applied subsurface scattering to the wax candles to create the effect you see in real life, where candle wax is translucent as it begins to melt.

Table

After modelling the candles, I used a reference photo as inspiration and modelled a table. Here is the reference photo I used – I liked the look of the metal trim around the edge of the table and I thought the table legs looked good, so in my own work I tried to make the table legs look a bit more interesting as well.

At first I had trouble with the texturing, as I had modeled the trim as part of the table, and the UV was quite complicated to figure out – I couldn’t find which faces were the table and which ones were the metal trim. To solve this problem, I duplicated the table and deleted the trim from one of the models and the table from the other. Then because they were separate, I could easily add wood and metal textures to them.

Previously during modelling for this project, I had just used AiStandardSurface to shade metal – by changing the metalness and transmission values. Using this method gives a smooth and reflective metal look, which is good for silverware candle holders and smooth metal telescopes, but I found it wasn’t working for the metal on this table so I chose to find a more rough cast iron texture online. I couldn’t find any free textures in high resolution, so I took a low-res texture and edited it in photoshop to create a bigger texture image.