Project 2 : Modeled Scene

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PpAtXb-OdRJmB-PRjYDEa2EmTSEBg8ch

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The Problem :

For this project, we were assigned to choose a scene of our choice and recreate it in Maya. I knew I wanted a challenge, so I chose this stained glass bathroom scene. One of the challenges that excited me when I looked at the reference photo was the odd angle that the light entered the bathroom and reflected off the floors and walls.

The modeling process of the furniture was relatively simple, there were details I had to omit from the furniture in order to save time, however these details can be easily sculpted in or bump mapped in later. One of the biggest challenges I ran into in the modeling process was the stained glass window itself. While the easy answer would have been to simply have a thin cylinder with the designs being a textured image on top, that would have conflicted with the project guidelines of not using images as textures. I had to figure out an efficient yet effective way to model the details in the window.

When the modeling and texturing had been completed, it was time to finally tackle the issue of the lighting. Since 3D space does not have a sun like the one in the physical world, I knew I’d need several lights in order to simulate the rays. My initial thought was the place the lights outside the window and have them stream into the room, however I soon discovered with this method that too many of the lights fell on the window sill, over exposing it and completely erasing all detail while at the same time not lighting the room. After I established a few of my main light sources, I had to figure out how to create the reflected lights seen on the floor and wall, as the few spotlights I had were simply not enough to create enough light that bounced around the room without overexposing one or two objects in the process.

The Solution :

For the first problem, the modeling of the stained glass window, I tried a few approaches before finding one that worked. My first approach was to use the curves tool and create each individual piece of glass between the iron detail work. I quickly discovered how time consuming and inefficient this process was, so I scrapped it and started over. My next approach was to take a circular plane with no subdivisions and cut in the geometry with the multicut tool. I quickly scrapped that idea was well as after a few tests I couldn’t recreate the fine curves and sharp points of the detailing. After my string of failures I had to step back and think what was the simplest way to recreate this window. Instead of trying to recreate each individual piece of glass, I decided to see each component of the window instead. I started by using a curve to create the four petal and five petal flower, and simply duplicated it, making slight changes to each one. I was able to group these together for easy texturing later. I proceeded to follow the same workflow with the leaves. When it came to the intricate vine like detailing, I decided to get a little more literal. I would recreate the line with a NURBs curve, and simply extrude a poly cylinder along it. I figured since this particular mesh was going to be transparent, I had a little more leeway with stacking the meshes and having them intersect.

Moving into the lighting stage, one of my main issues was figuring out how to get the soft reflections off the floors and walls. In order to have the most control over my light source, I decided to light my scene using spotlights. The first few lights I set up were the brightest reflections on the granite floor. I used two lights for this, One of the flood of the soft yellow light, and one of the more intense and central yellow reflection. After these were in the scene, I tried adjusting them in all sorts of angles and positions in order to have the light reflect from the floor to under the circular side table to no avail. I figured the only other way to achieve this look would be to create another light for the wall reflection. This solution worked better than I would have thought, and I proceeded to create an individual light source for every reflected light source. All in all I ended up with a little less than ten lights in order to achieve my desired look.

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