Baths of Caracalla and the Long Overdue Progress Update

For the past month, much of my energy has been on the development of the Bathhouse of Caracalla. An elaborate bath spa complex completed in Rome under the emperor Caracalla by around 216 AD. This enormous complex served as a communal bath house for the City of Rome, but it was so much more; it had the typical setup of three bath rooms but also a gymnasium, libraries and was surrounded by avenues of shops that would have sold everything from fine linen to freshly cooked snack food.

  What got me most interested in this project was the opportunity to design fine architectural features. Decorated composite Ionic-Corinthian columns, veneered marble, columns both structural and decorative, expansive layouts and grand hallways covered in recessed stonework. It still feels like I have only started but the layout so far is already looking rather beautiful.

And that's not even getting into possible props for the location like water, incense burners, oil lamps, potted plants, tables, benches, seats, the list goes on!

  I found myself reintroduced to xNormal, a piece of software for converting 3D geometry into 2D maps for lower resolution models. While still possessing some shortcomings, I wouldn't have close to the level of detail I have managed to push out of this project without it.My PC, and any potential rendering engine, could have overloaded with the amount of detail required to make this project even remotely convincing.

If it wasn't evident already, one of my favourite parts has been the columns. The capitals were initially a by-eye estimation, but after doing research into the carious types of columns I realised there was much more to them than any old fancy decoration. There was an artistry to the classical column which I needed to replicate.

  Without xNormal, these columns couldn't have been as detailed as they are. The same can be said of the terracotta roof.A large building would require many terracotta tiles, but individual instances of these could have been a nightmare to visualise on even a high-end PC. With xNormal I have been able to simplify the geometry by a huge margin. Still rather detailed, but to a degree that is much more manageable.

One of the advantages to the symmetry of classical buildings is a lot of what is featured on one side of the building is present down to the last brick on the other side. I find this does cut down my workload, as I only need to worry about once side of the building. Bring that up to a high standard and I can then swap everything over on the other side.

  There is still quite a lot to do. What I have been thinking for a while however is to bundle many of these elements into kits for sale on ArtStation so other aspiring artists and architects can use them for their own architectural projects. The common elements like pillars, walls and ceilings should be easy enough to bundle together. I am still deciding however if the roof tiles would be a kit on their own or if I combine them with the wall and column kits. If anyone is in need of the geometry for a Roman style non-reinforced concrete dome I would be happy to oblige!

  The more I finish though, the more I feel there is more to do. This has been an interesting project so far, but the itch to move on to something else is starting to set in. When I showed a friend a block-out for a mountain palace I had sketched out a couple of years ago to alleviate some fatigue, he thought it would be a great showcase for level design. I might do the same to keep things fresh and avoid the onset of single-project focus fatigue.

The real baths of Caracalla took some five or six years to build with hundreds of labourers working and stone from across the Empire (Egyptian marble was one prominent material) hopefully me all on my own doesn't take nearly that long to complete this rendition of a major Roman landmark.

Four: Signing Off The Grub

  The grub is almost ready to sign off. Controls are in place and tied to their bones while a basic skin has been added, and a texture map is to be in the works. With time in mind, it is fair to say that I am ready to start animating with this model.

  What is slightly jarring that might be coming from the glossy reflection is the skin appears to be reflecting the body around it, something that I've noticed skin to not really do. Turning off the model's ability to be seen in reflections does appear to remove this mirror effect however this is likely to make the creature's  invisible in the reflections any of the chrome surfaces in the lab (such as the floor of its incubation unit).

  The grub, compared to the others, is quite a simple design. Only one key control is needed for opening and closing the mouth. I might need to devise some teeth to provide something for inside the mouth, although it might not be as easy to see as other 

Four: Retouched Skin

  After being briefed for the second term, I figured I would try and add some finishing touches to Four to close off the minor project. The shader above uses a mila material to provide sub-surface scattering, but it appears to have an added benefit that the light interacts with her body much better than in the last design.

I also retouched her skin to give it more life, as before she was rather pale and dead when a direct transfer of the textures from a blinn to a mila shader was involved. It also gave me an opportunity to retouch her complexion to bring it more in line with her final concept.

Maya Tutorials: Last of the Lighting Effects

  Continuing to make progress with the Maya tutorials that have been set. The last few relating to Mental Ray proxies, diffuse maps and motion blur.

  With the motion blur tutorial, I came to realise what might have been slightly off about Colo Colo as it ran (when it was actually in motion I had suspicions it didn't feel completely natural). So I was intrigued to discover the power a little motion blur could have on giving something a natural movement. I might look into motion blur in Premiere Pro and After Effects, however I have also considered making a mini-project out of refining the creature's model, which opens up the possibility of using Mental Ray's motion blur system without needing to essentially re-render images I already have. The displacement map tutorial has also given me inspiration to return to working in Mudbox to finish a model I had come a fair way on.

Maya Tutorials: Mental Ray Lighting Techniques Part 1

  These past couple of days I have been prioritising on getting Maya tutorials out of the way. And after a good few hours I am almost done with the Mental Ray lighting tutorials, which have helped me familiarise myself with final gather as well as techniques like portal lights, skydones. and compositing strategies to clean up images and make them look a bit less computer-generated.

  I particularly liked how this image came out using just a skydome, a pair of portal lights and the final gather feature to illuminate a bump-mapped pair of blinn surfaces..

Colo Colo: Better Running Animation

  With the deadline looming I feel I am almost ready to have something presentable. Most of today was spent improving my run cycle animation which thanks to tips from Alan and Julia looks much better than it was. So far I quite enjoy what I have turned out, This feels like a huge step up from my previous projects, and so far I feel confident I can produce something effective by the presentation day on Thursday.

  I don't plan on showing much animation, but I can easily make up for it with turntables and an effective presentation I am sure. As along with the running animation above, I have also planned for an idle turntable and below the footage includes a few seconds of it demonstrating what it does when under threat or acting aggressive.

Colo Colo: First Animations

  I was unable to update my progress on the weekend but after essentially re-skinning the model I feel confident I am at a state I can animate. So what I attempted this afternoon was an animation for Colo Colo running to start me off. Errors in the model have come up, and I feel I may have made the thighs too wide but progress is progress. Over the next couple of days I hope to build a set of action animations to give the creature some personality. The time spent correcting my mistakes has however eaten into time that could have been spent with other preparations.

  I am not dissatisfied however, as this entire project has been ambitious compared to what I have done previously, and I am not disappointed as I have always enjoyed the concept of a challenge. What I have produced so far I do not feel came out badly.

  Enough confessions, I also prepared a playblast. The difference between this and the rendered version is mainly from improving from what I had discovered using this initial animation sequence.

Colo Colo: Head, Feet and Chest

  Progress is developing nicely with Colo Colo, progress with the texture maps are coming along. For the most part I think the body is in a state I can consider it finished.

  The one issue so far is that there is a problem with the thigh's UV. One line down the very front of each thigh for the rear leg seems to be getting errors. When smoothed, this one line wraps around itself, creating an artifact in the form of a highly compressed duplicate of the rear leg's texture that fits between this vertical line of UVs and one set of UVs on its of the UV map, effectively projecting the rear leg's UV down one line of faces. This error however, does not show up in the projection in the viewport but that can be down to a lower-quality projection.

  One thing I have definitely concluded working on this is that at some point I'll need to go into Mudbox to fix the seams between the projections. I had attempted to mimic the colour of the legs between the two projections, but due to the way I had shaded the leg in the body texture map, the translation wasn't perfect. The above render is the closest I might be able to get for now.

  Errors aside, I have made a lot of progress on the head for Colo Colo. Texturing as something to resemble the concept art I had made, I think I'm fairly close. The other major thing I added was a mechanism to mimic the effect of the creature's heart beating or lungs cycling (chest motion essentially). At present it may be slightly too rapid, but I can control the rate as the chest expansion is tied to a driven key and an attribute in the shoulder control. The testing speed is based on how small creatures tend to have very fast heart-rates, as well as looking at some footage of lizards and myself in a mirror to get an idea of how extreme the inhalation and exhalation is during the breathing cycle.

  The beauty of controlling the rate like this is that with only a couple of tweaks, the breathing rate can be refined, or this rate is for when it exerts itself. Though changes in rate might involve either swapping out for a fresh duplicate with the differing or transitional rate, or input each cycle by copying and pasting.

  Or a MEL script.