The Spencer Mansion Trailer

This is our Trailer that we handed in today.... but hopefully next week the final movie will be ready...

my last post...

well this is it for this blog... its been a long run. its been very fun but very frustrating. ive learnt so much this term way more then what i could of ever thought i would. i learnt alot of stew, ash and spence and they might of learnt a thing or to from me aswell. we came into this project all guns blazeing with an great idea. i think we planned the first few weeks very well i must say. But towards the end the final week or so, i dont think we should of been playing with the lights and finished them of so we could of renderd with one whole week to do it.

ive loved working with spence and stew, they are great lads that turn up everyday and always put effort into their work no matter what. ive worked with ash before last year and have never had any problems with him as we get on very well and bounce ideas of each other. ash has been with me since the very begginging on this college so he has always been there for me. Spence and stew are very nice to work with if on any project after this i would more then work them. same with ash. and after all the things we learnt from this project im sure we would do better in the final weeks of the next project.

i think i did well this project. i gave alot of input of ideas to our group and i always tryed to keep the moral up of the group to get us through. i did a lil but of modeling and some textureing. but i rekon i mostly kept the group on an invisable track the others might of noticed but i think i did well for the group. next time tho i think i will proberly plan out the final weeks for us better. but its not our fualt these problems with rendering happen

well we set up rending today. tommrow if the final day. hopefully render farm works or we will just give in what we have which is bloody good. ive just showed my rents and they love thing it looks professional standard. so thats kool.

tommrow i might post up some final pics on the things ive modeled but that will be it.

bye all for now... see u all next year.

not a very good week.... at all...

this week was very harsh on me and on our team as a whole :( i also had work this week which wasnt at the best of times as i could of used my pc to render =( the monday and tuesday we spent the main of it lighting all the rooms i finished off the textures in the main room so that was all done. on the wensday the lads came in to start rendering the scenes. unfortunely ive been so busy i havnt had the time to do any more screen pics to post up here but u can see some of the lighting shots on ash's spence and stews wall. on wensday we renderd out the basement i think. and thursday we renderd out the corrider and the study. all these are all renderd out now and they look superb.

Spence started on the music for the basement bit and so far i think its done and in my eyes i think is is awesome and spence put alot of time in this. we had maya corruption on our main room so we had to load up some old files thanks of ashley for doing this we had to re import the study and corrider into the main room rdy for rendering which took a while to set up again as we had to do all the lights again. whenever we rednerd out the main room on our pc's at college of the main room they would always just stop which wasnt nice as i was rending some important frames.

when it came friday when we knew we wouldnt make it jarred gave us an extenstion which was nice of him but i didnt see the point as we cant come into college on the weekend anyway to see if our rendering worked. so we kinda stuffed anyways. hopefully when we come in monday morning the render farm might of done it . me and ash but up alot of back up renders in render farm so if they dont do 1 or 2 there is still mine that might work

worst case senario is we hand in just the study and basement and corrider in but we spent alot of time abd effort into our amazeing main room. it would be a shame not to include it and skip it. if all goes bad next yr ill render it out again just for the sake of our team and for our showreekl

im exhasted and very upset the entire group feel the same way. its not nice when your render in render farm gets randomly killed for no reason. there are a few groups in the same situwation as us and they feel just as bad if not worse. what we could do to make our thing be ok would be ste play blasts the rest if the animation and we just import that in to fill in the blanks which isnt a bad idea wont look good but oh well for now it will still show our modeling skills and craftsmens ship of an detailed room.

but monday is hand in day end of and i hope jarred can allow us to hand it in at the end of a normal college day or depending how the render farm gets on,


i cannot say no more. as im not at college and none of us will never no if the render farm did ever render our final scenes its a real shame as honestly we have the nicest if not the best most detailed real life realistic enviorment i think anyone has ever done on maya at this college for this year.

this will be my second to last update now. then this blog will probs be over for me depending on the project next yr depends as i do like writing on it lol. on monday hopefully ill post the final movie on here and a final conclusion.... see u monday team

not a very good week.... at all...

room pretty much complete

looking good now

a few problems

we finished the first room textures and the room looks great i must say a few errors to check but its all there now. I coulnt render the file still but i think ill just export the main room and just render it out without the behind the stairs bit and then add that back on after ive takern a render shot. Stu and spence worked on fogs and lighting for the main room which is good. ash worked on the study all day and is looking good. tommrow we will hopefully render out the main room comeplete with key frames and the works. then wensday finish on study and render that out thur and fri just makin it better. all textures still need to be reassigned to the v drive tho =(

new render pics

there is light!

today we came in and still major crashes and errors when trying to render. but then i had the thought of removeing the study from the main room and have 2 maya files. Doing this split the load on maya so its much more smoother now which is nice and it renders now thank god. Im so happy now that the project is back on track. last week full steam ahead! =)

what a shit day.....!!!!!

omg today has to be the most worst day ever!!! honestly. Our main maya file wont even render at all!!. even on mental ray or maya software you fuckin name is it dont work. also upon trying to render get ready.......... CRASHHH ERROR NO MEMORY C+++ ERROR BBOOOOMM. same shit all over again even on old files it just crashed if u try to render or even navigate around the scene also the pc's at our college suck so that may be why or for another unkown reason. mAYA CRshed 8 times on me today yesterday it crashed atleast 20 times for poor old ash this shit is not funny and starting to take a tole on us when we have one week left.

so basicly were fucked, we cant even preview render our shots to check if they look good or have decent textures or lighting or if the bump maps are ok.

another awful thing as well. when we render on the render farm all files will have to be reassigned to the vanguard drive so that all our damn textures we have to many!!!!! more then any other group this alone will take a week to do. why the hell didnt the tutors tell us to set up our project and work on the foookin vangaurd drive in the first place then this crap would never happen - *

i can honeslty see our project not working or just epic fail and its no good what so ever. sorry for this mass rant ive just got in and are soooo angry about today i just wanna forget about the work today and come in fresh on monday ----

new render

brand new renderd image today. Rendering on maya today was a right pain but it managed to render it. The stairs are completely wrong and they are bumped to much so they will be toned right down so it looks better. but alot more has been texterd today we are around 80% complete textering of the first room

Progress Report

last week we spent most of our time textureing the main room and we got alot done which was wicked. also we arranged the study room so that is now ready for textureing.

This week we are powering through the texturing of the first main room and stu starting the camera animation work.

So this week the main room should have all textures in and complete and the study will be next which wont take long hehe.

texture progress

A very long hard days work today with maya. me spence and stu worked hard on getting alot of textures in the main room complete. We had major problems with the pillar texture as it wouldnt map onto the bottom becuase of some lame file error so we wasted about 1 hour trying to fix the dam error. I came up with the idea of making the texture image as a targa and it worked so we was all happy and continued on thanks god. Now tommrow we will comepete all the main room texture so that it is ready for lightning and camera work. we are so close. also progress on study going nice some textures in there to on the sofa and chairs and plants. we need all of ash's textures tho.

reflection =)

ok the left on is bump mapped but has no reflection. The one on the right isnt bump maped but has a really nice reflection that we wanted just like in the original picture from resident evil

progress report

last week the team and i concerntrated on textures, apart from stu who was working on the study room and it's looking good so far. Spence and ash have been doing a fantastic job on the texturing side which is good. We still need to texture the first room and make it good before we can start to texture the study and dungeon area.

Last week we also had a person called rob jones i think come in for 2 days to help us with our project and give us advice which was nice of him. He also told us how to render passes in maya and then export them into after effects so they are just layers so we can build them up to make them look really good. I didnt get much time to talk to rob as he was busy helping other groups but he did tell me how to make a nice simple flame for the candles aswell and ferhan told me a nice easy way to so now i know ill show the others when i next see them.

This week is texture, texture and more texture as time now is very tight...........i hope we can finish it. enter the survival horror

textures coming along

muahaha textures coming along ok now. ive done the main floor way and left and right sides to the main room downstairs and looks good.

textures baby yeah!!

floor texture complete as from today. Tiles may be darkend, and also a border around the edges but wait and see until tommrow im going home now ive been doing this uv texture most of the day

random marble floor test done at home. This may not be the final marble floor pattern, but i was just testing it in maya for practice. maybe a marble floor pattern with a more simple pattern then this? we will see next week

new update + meeting with jared

just a quick update. last week we had a meeting with jared to see how things where going. And its all fine so far we was talking about textures and how to make our inviorment more special. The main room mansion is around 97% complete, only just some extra polish such as on the main hall way steps i think not sure what else. NEXT week we start on textures mainly and the study room that stuwert will be making a start on. but all of us will try and do the textureing so that we get a chance to see what its like. jared says we will struggle with the textureing but says it will be worth it in the end. US as a group just must concerntrate getting the final rooms done and textures even before thinking about animateing our inviorment as we havnt got long left. my dam keyboard if fooked cant dosnt type properly

New Progress

this is the state so far and looking very good indeed. The main room is nearly finished, all that is left to do is some final polish to the room such as ceiling arches, chandalear and some others. We are curently in the process of starting to texture the room with 2 people and the other 2 starting the study room.

banister detail

this is the banister detail that was going to go inside the banisters above the main stairs. But it didnt work becuase we couldnt curve it around the shape of an arc so we had to stick with the normal spindels instead =( still looks good tho

Written Progress so far

yes its that time again for a progress report yay!!

all this week we have been laying out our room for is fianl design. We put in the main stairs archways pillars and stair banisters and more. So far we are doing really well and next week we plan to start on the study room as well as maybe playing around with some texture for the front room. But all know is we will do the basement behind the main room which will not take long to do at all its all abou the lighting down there lol But the camra work will have to be put in really soon as we want that to be perfect

It has begun!

Wow the main room of our mansion is really starting to come along now and looks great. We should hopefully have this room complete next week with its final polish done before textureing. Also next week we model the study and lower tunnels behind the main mansion stairs. good work team we are working very hard and very pleased with all the effort ash, spence and stew have both put in i think they all believe in it just as much as i do

The Main Room so far....

Here is the main room so far, put together by Spence and Stu with direction from me. Looks very good so far just like the real screenshots so im happy. Alot more work needs to be done like the banisters side archways and ceiling detail. But overall alot of hardwork has been done today and well worth it!

Work to be done this week?

just a quick post. i think this week we will start putting the first room together with all its props and get its final layout i hope fingers crossed. Also if that goes well maybe a few starting textures. I will be in college tommrow anyway to start some more work.

Main room First steps

here you can see our basic plan room complete with our finished first set of pillars that me and spence created.

note: the stairs are being re done as they will be to hard to texure as they look now so studog is re doing them.

the size of the room will be alot smaller to this room is pretty big the final one will look more compact. but the main thing i get from this picture is that it already looks like on of the pictures of the mansion from resident evil good news indeed! still need to make another pillar design tho to go under the main stair case oh and arches on top of the pillars to wont be to hard i hope not with the medic around anyway ;)

Ground Zero Libary Research work

Here are some scanned images from a Gothic Building book in the college Libary that me and ash found. As you can see in the images some of them have really nice shapes and arcs and stairs just like what we are trying to achieve with our mansion. Credit goes to ash for finding most of these pictures and me adding them onto here.

Summary of our Formative assesment and the general reviw of the past 3 weeks

Hey all this is my first posty heheh lol moo moo.

Anyway yesterday we had our formative assesment and i must say i was very impressed with what jared thought of our group and how well we was doing. Before we had the assesment i knew my blog was serverly lacking and had hardly any writing on it except for technical work but i just didnt have the time to sort it out soon enough becuase ive been so busy posting things on our team blog mainly.

Today ive had to post all the things ive put on the team blog and put it on mine which from now on is what i will do first and then ill post it on the team blog for the other lads so see. So expect from now on every week or so to see a review of progress on how we are doing.

Over the last few weeks since our group got together and it was pretty random i must say but has turnt out to be miles better then what i thought. Eveyone in the group pulls there weight and they all know what they are doing and what i expect from them. Ive never worked with spencer or stuwart before but they are great to work with and they like to have fun aswell. Ive worked with ashley previously before and his great he helps out alot and he generally just wants to do well as a group and get a good grade same as me.

When we came to the idea of doing this mansion eviorment i didnt even have to suggest much apart from show them a video of the old remake of resident evil on the game cube and they loved it so much that it was settled within 2 mins that was what we was gunna do we didnt winge or have a tantrum in front of the class we all liked it and we stuck to it and blending in some hostel and saw designs for the mansion to from stuwarts research which was good 2.

So far weve been making props mainly for all rooms and doing the concept art and storey boards which spencer is doing a sick ass job of which i am very pleased with. Stuwart is a monster at modeling as soon as he sees something he likes boom hes started modeling it. Ashley is the team medic he helps with maya in modeling and does the propbs and does them to grade a standard quality. Stuwart is working of the main staircase. me and spence have started the main room plan of maya and have made the main pillars for the room and have stated basic laying out.

so all is perfect so far and cant wait for the next coming weeks to see how it looks then. Expect more writing from me from now on.

Barcelona Pictures

here is a small selection of my pictures taken from our trip to Barcelona. I think the Railing banister picture will be very good becuase we that fits the style of the mansion ones and we will need this to go in the main room on the stairs and balcony. The other pictures show pillar designs and colours of that which are similar to our mansion theme.

Research of the main hall way room

all these pictures here will be helping us decide on how big our first room will be and what things we would look to see inside the room. I think this gives our group a great start in designing our first room.

Resident Evil Main Hall

This is the Main Hall Way room in the game Resident Evil. This is the first room we are trying to make in maya. The starting of our fly through will show this view at the start and walk towards the tunnels on the left hand side of the main stairs

Practice Maya Cube & Texture

cube with texture on maya made from a totorial

Archway

My First Archway made in Maya =) with help from ash