Art Stream: Cityscape Concept

  The product of a three-hour stream. If anything this was an attempt to get my mind back into actual digital painting since aside from the concept art for Legends of the New Year, I hadn't picked up a stylus for Photoshop for anything more than silhouettes.

I suppose the buildings at the bottom could have a lot more done to them. There are still a number of rough edges and I might need to look a little into building layouts next time in order to make something a little more organised.

Yiquanhuabanyiulu: Composition complete

     After a hard few days the composition is complete. While looking for a background I came across photos of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, world famous for its hundreds of vertical pillars of rock which for me really hit home with the vibe of the Treacy city which is that the designs reflect patterns and structures in nature. So a mountain range that is the opposite, resembling an urban environemnt, seemed like a perfect fit.

    Its unlikely the Chinese government would actually build a city i nthe heart of the park, but such is one of the liberating things about fiction. Who knows, this might not be a unique sight if you look though China hard enough. It is a very big and diverse country.

Summary: Barcelona, February 2015

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National museum of Art of Catalonia) is one of my favourite buildings that for me draws forth images of the zenith.of the Spanish Colonial Empire. Such a legacy was bolstered by imported trees and parakeets flying in flocks particularly here.

    I have returned from the five-day trip to Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. A beautiful city nestled along the coast of the Mediterranean and at the foot of the Spanish Alps. I fell in love with the city within the afternoon I had arrived due to the staggering abundance of large Italian-influenced neoclassical facades combined (for at least half od the city) with a well-planned Roman-like grid system. Tree-lined avenues (sadly leaves had not blossomed while I was there but I can almsot imagine what they look like in full bloom) crossed the city and were occasionally peppered with statues and gorgeous fountains. It is a shame that in my haste to leave for it I had left my camera behind because I do nto believe these sketches or my descriptions do the city full justice

     My days were very busy so I did not have much time for sketching. So I used much of friday to wander the city committing it to it to pencil in a new sketchbook. I got the chance to draw La Sagrada Familia and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. The top two images ot the left were from two things I had seen outside the Salvidor Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, a town an hour or so outside of Barcelona. Even with most of the city being these stone-faced mid-rise buildings the metropolis still felt huge with blocks rising between seven and ten stories in the metropolitan area and between four and six in the older, more tightly-packed and warren-like Gothic District, with four-to-five metre-tall ground floor levels on many of the metropolitan buildings.

Theere were many large ornmaneted buildings like
above.

    This is a city I would definitely love to return to. Despite it's age i'd say it combines it's ancient history and historic architecture with the modernity of an organised modern metropolis (such as New York) very well as much of the city is quite spacious thanks it it's wide avenues. I was able to visit many places by keepign a relatively straight path and it was only in the more maze-like Gothic district where I felt the risk of getting lost.

    As I said above, it is  shame I did not bring a camera because I felt there was a wealth of inspiration here from the broad avenues to the canyon-like Gothic district and Barcelona's central cathedrals. It is a city that despite the 2008 recession is still one of the great cultural and commercial hearts of Europe. The elegant buildings make the entire city ooze wealth and influence even in this modern age of economy and minimalism.

Project 2: WHat If Metropolis: Final Render.

    I was going to publish this last night but it got pretty late and close ot the deadline to do so. But after seven weeks of work I am glad I am finally finished and I like how it has turned out so well. For the most part I feel like all my time texture designing have paid off. One of the criticisms given on the crit was that because I had gone for such a realistic tone ot the city, the matte painting at the back didn't work quite as well.

    I spoke with Stitch after the crit and he suggested I should consider using harder brushes to give a more solid feel to my work, which I can understand as I might have for the most part been using fairly soft brushes and I guess it does show with the matte painting. I was advised to go for a more photographic look (which I can achieve with photoreferencing and using real photographs as a guide), so it is a good thing I placed the city in the middle of China.

Matte Painting

     Didn't take long to make up a matte painting for the final presentation. The image on the right is what I will be using. I used the background of the original concept piece as a base but did some serious tidying up of it before adding the lower half. The image below is the painting as it was before I added the city at the back. I admit I may have gotten sloppy with keeping record during the crunch time however.

Project 2: What If Metropolis Crit Presentation

The "What if?" Metropolis: The Final Presenation

Long-Awaited Update

     With some rendering on tutorials underway I thought an update of my project was long overdue. At least I am just about ready with my textures. However I regret one or two buildings may have to be left out of the final render due to pacing and a hint of me biting off more than I thought I could chew. But I digress, just about everything has had bumpmaps, specular maps and texture maps assembled and some of them are looking pretty good wraped around the models.

    It did feel something of a slog getting to this point but now that I have (barring maybe one texture map) reached the point I can install everything and test the lighting and hopefully everything should be ready by Friday.

    One thing all this texture mapping has aided me with is getting brisker with painting. While some of the painting surfaces started off confusing, there are times I ahve taken the work in my stride, other times I needed to push myself, but I feel like I am almost. ALmost over the crest of the hill, although it took a couple of late nights to manage it.

     Of the current models I have, all the texture mapping I have left is the closest balcony (the one which in my concept art looks like a boat hull) and a dome to hide the joining of the sails on The Star. However given current circumstances I am contemplating perhaps dropping the boat-hulled balcony or moving it because the building it was supposed to connect to had not been built. And with the deadline approaching I am not sure if I can make it in time as well as doing all the peripheral things such as catching up on reviews, making the matte painting and assembling the presentation.

    The positive outcome of this is that the whole scene could come out less cluttered. As in the concept I had crammed buildings in based on the blackout I had constructed with the ground only partially seen far down below. With less buildings, more of the ground could possibly be seen, giving a feeling of more space in this elevated world that has been constructed.

Project 2 Modelling Update

    Construction of the hero prop is taking shape. I have a solid idea for a texture map which I will need to go about refining however after having lunch I had a bit of a creative stumbling block after making three unsuccessful attempts to start construction of the beak - all of which resulted in a fatal error when I rener-previewed what I had without changing the render engine from Viewport 2.0. The deadline is closing in and the fesire is to finish this. So I wil lsee about pushing forward.

I have made some trial-and-error progress on the silk tower but I neglected to snapshiot as I went as I constantly alternated between Maya and Photoshop. But it's mainly due to the mesh I have so I hope this problem doesn't come up when it comes to rendering these other buildings which haver more confined meshes.

What If Metropolis Project: Part 3

     It feels embarrassing but I decided ot restart this tower again after trying what I considered doing in a previous blog post and it is all because of the focal point caused a few issues with the arrangement of the edges radiating outwards. This time I tried a new technique involving the cut faces tool to create something that resembles a Spirograph creation.

     I became vastly more familiar with the "merge components" function during this session as some pieces were disconnected from the edges and I could more easily create what Maya's render preview function would recognise as a contiguous surface.

     Using the extrude and edge loop functions I was able to extract the geometries that I needed for the top of the building. I also have to construct this bearing in mind that there are two similar buildings that will be in the composition; one that occupies the foreground and one that occupies the midground, meaning I may eventually have ot design a more detailed version of the building.

    

     After mapping the UVs for this building, which is probably the best out of all attempts, I moved on to tackling the "star" prop of my composition. Working on prior buildings helped a long way to familiarise myself with the tools and skills that I would have beeded realising it but it is still far from done.

     Utilising the skils I acquired from creating a symmetrical structure with the platform, I made use of the mirror geometry tools and mirror cut tools to create a ring of eight petal-shaped outcroppings to which more planters will be placed.

     Production wasn't perfect, as I made four separate attempts to create a design with minimal clipping but I eventuall managed ot settle on a technique that involved a 24-spoke cylinder in the centre. Each petal would have two edges meeting it, I duplicated the petals (which unlike the main floor I did not scrap at any point), I would look for the line of intersection and, from the centre of the cylinder I extended a "cut faces" line that bisected the two petals. I then removed the clipping faces, neatened up with some careful application of the translation tool on the misaligned vertices.

     I then removed half of the petals and mirroed the geometries. As luck would have it, the while thing snapped together beautifully.

    There's still a good deal of work to do however. For one, when I preview the renders, all the petals split at the seams so I will need to connect them all up. I'm trying ot avoid crazy hours like 2 in the morning since often it caused me to wake up late. Despite how tempting it is to keep working.

First Steps to CG Reality

     Today I finally start modelling and, surprisingly it feels like it is taking solid shape already. After coming in and unsure how to start, I talked with Jordan and he suggested blocking out the basic shapes I need for my scene. I was initially worried about the number of models I have planned but not all of this shown is going to be a 3D model, particularly towards the back.

    After Jordan showed me some basics when shaping the scene, I took a couple of steps to refine it ready for my first detail models. Before I moved on to such things though, it seemed best to work out a lighting setup first while the whole thing is still pretty low-poly. Thus it was very useful that this was on Monday and Simon gave us a lesson that went nto detail about lighting different times of day (in my case morning or evening lighting tips are probably best, but I've always figured learning how to do a midday scene was considered the first steps in lighting a digital scene.)

     As I said I was worried about the level of detail but one of the beautiful things about such a distant shot is that I can probably get away with portraying smaller details such as lamp-posts, shrubs or street furniture as being textures or bump maps.

    There is an ambient occlusion node here though I cannot quite recall if it was this last frame or if I had progressed further. When it comes ot texturing I may have t odial down the colour intensity of these lights so the whole thing doesn't by the end look like the city was drenched in orange juice.

     Rather than building my hero prop first I thought it was probably best to create one of the other buildings to test out texturing, lighting and modelling rather than do it with my hero prop in case I mess up, Though I wonder if at the moment it's too complicated. I'm building it as an organic structure, certainly, but I suppose one question is how detailed should I get? Its not too fiddly a design as it is relatively flat at the top and there's not too mcuh going on underneath aside form some very organic curves, but it is still quite a chunky design at its heart.

     From the wireframe  Ican see it is farily complex, but I suppose that is what these test models are for. Though I concern myself slightly with the complexity of the UVs as the UV maps in the previous scenes I have done have been reasonably simple, and the most complex thing in the Old Alley ended up being coloured with a shader. One thing I have noticed is that probably due to my own inexperience the model hasn't come out exactly like the orthographic views. With all the curves I have in my city I wonder if I should add some curve guidelines so it is a little easier ot map out my curves in Maya when making future models (something that, in thinking about it, might help a lot for things like faces and limbs).

Update: Travalogue Addendum

    "...Yet for all the beauty that captivates the eye. For every haute couture dessmaker’s, perfumery and tea shop. I cannot help but wonder what I could see if I peel back the skin. What opinions must come from spending all of the day in a garden high above the ground, walking about in the likeness of Mother Nature while captivating all those around with a stolen scent? Yiquanhuabanliuyu is certainly beautiful, I could spend all day examining the outlandish dresses, hats and coats that line the shop front windows, or indulging myself in the taste of the many brews of tea consumed by its inhabitants every day, or sitting in the shade under a cherry-blossom within one of the elevated gardens, soaking in the tranquility of organised ecosystem around me while looking out on the city below. But for all the beauty, for every flight of fancy this city satisfies for you, I see people who remain hollow, feeling unfulfilled, and wonder if their emptiness is their doing, or the city’s.

    Even as I leave, the magic of the city travels with me. And every chrysanthemum, orchid and lotus flower I see draws me back and fills my thoughts with its perfumed aromas. And reminds me of all the sensations I left behind."

    This is the planned addition I have considered to the travelogue that explores the "darker side" of Huabanliyu. That though tangent may have gone all philosophical. But I suppose part of what I have to consider is that no city is perfect. Even the idyllic fictional utopian cities of Coruscant, Theed and Rivendell have less pleasant aspects to them that draw them away from being perfect places to live. So I figured that in order to ground Huabanliyu it made sense to give a less perfect side to it.

Exploration and refinement of Considered Shots

1

2

3

    I decided to look into what I had done and refine some of the images; making tweaks, extensions, shavings and refinements to a couple of my previous blackout thumbnails. I am drawn to 1 but somehow I like the atmosphere of 2. With 3 I thought back to an idea of perhaps the city being in a canyon after looking at a few photographs of rural Chinese landscapes (a region of the planet famous for undulating landscapes, high cliffs and humid climate).

    The styles of all these buildings made me think on the "Biopunk" theme for most of the evening (a sibling of cyberpunk, where the theme's focus is on the issues and consequences of genetic engineering, synthetic biology and living machinery) due to the organic shapes reflecting advances in bionic practices. Thinking back to the idea of a "grown" city. It could also link back to the Oriental setting I had considered as the Far East has historically been well-known for its medicinal advances and in more recent times this region of the planet has become a popular site of interest for advances in the field of bionics and organic engineering and architecture. Seeking to achieve a sense of harmony between man and nature though design and living spaces

    These cities feel a lot more massive than the one proposed in my OGR, and at the same time could be much more fun to make and explore since I usppose from a practical sense, one of the drawbacks to constraining a city inside a giant flower is the limited surface area which is dependant on the size of the plant. A more traditional location allows metropoli to spread for miles and miles and miles. There's some creepyness but I think the tone could also be heavily affected by the materials I use and the mood I set the lighting (thinking on liting from behind for 2 and 3, with the sun's rays creeping over the mountains in the distance).

    A lot of Treacy's designs use fabric and wireframe to convey texture, sometimes with the wire meshes being so clear or the threads being so magnified that they form a highly visible criss-cross pattern across the surface of the material. I feel inclined towards 2 although the bridge in 3 would definitely look striking when lit as a model. 3's lower part also puts a lot of emphasis on scale as I tried to make it appear as if it were sprawling over a canyon, the true floor somewhere deep below.

Project 2 Space and Environment Update: 09/11/2014

     I'm starting to really hit a roadblock with this project. One of the suggestions I was given was to be less literal and more abstract in my city designs. I'm fairly set on the main building I want to include but the problem is filling in the gaps between major buildings. As a milliner, Treacy's designs are not intended to be combined with each other which means when I tried to arrange several shapes he'd design into a city block it but just looked mad and jumbled.

    So I tried at more abstract shapes, curves, something fro ma modern art sculpture but I do not even know if it is Treacy-like what I have come up with. One thought I had considered involves putting the central building towards the back. However this decision made me feel as if I was going backwards as it meant more thumbnails, more location and composition arrangements and more building ideas so now I feel stuck in the thumbnail stage with the end (the the final concept image) feeling very far away.

    I'm having trouble seeing past this current point as my current thumbnails are beginning to feel either more of the same thing or something that doesn't quite look like a Treacy work despite suggestions of aesthetic over function and to keep to organic abstract shapes I worry its starting to look like things other designers would make rather than something he'd make.

    When it came to 155 I think I snapped and underwent what is described in the video game Dwarf Fortress as a "strange mood" and drew almost under automation a collection of squiggles that I then tried again with subsequent thumbnails, filling in and shading the gaps to give structure to look like modern art sculptures. Starting with 164 I also considered making the building as more of a background element which led to this feeling of going in a circle that I mentioned earlier (even if that is the design process, what kept me from doing this on Invisible Cities was I had 19 different cities to choose from as inspiration. Here I've created over 165 thumbnails for just one city and from one root).

Space and Environment Project 2 OGR by Mark Stamp

Mark Stamp: The "What if?" Metropolis - CAA year 1 Project 2