Texturing, extruding, lighting, glass and windows.

Today we did some more experimenting in 3D, first we went over textures quickly. These textures are made by using the material editor and simply click the box next to diffuse. You then select bitmap and simply choose any file with a texture and it will apply it, you then just click and drag the 'ball' onto the object you want to give a texture to. The problem with textures taken from pictures is that when they 'tile' (repeat again and again ) it can look messy and unrealistic so it's best to edit your texture first.

 We then made a new plane and added a texture of a house, making sure the plain is the same size as the picture. We then made the plane an editable polygon and added two things using the modifier list, editable poly's and UVW map, we then positioned the guidelines that become visible when you click on the little test tube icon in a grid around stuff like windows and doors by selecting 'edges' and moving them about with the move tool. Then we switched to 'polygon' and selected a window, pulling the sidebar on the left out and clicking the box next to extrude, we then set it to around -100 to make a dent. This is the finished result.

 We also learnt how to make glass using a texture. You simply go into the material editor and instead of adding a texture you scroll down and play with the glossiness until the ball you have selected looks shiny. You then scroll up a bit and change the colour to anything you want and pull down the opacity as low as you like.

 We also learnt how to make a 'window' or simply cut out a shape from another shape. First you make a new box and position it where you want the hole in the first box, then you select 'compound objects' from the drop down menu on the left and select 'boolean'. After clicking on your box it should make a hole where the second box was.

We also looked at lights. We made the quick skirting board using bevel and emboss on a box and added a quick shiny wood texture. Then to make light we clicked on the light symbol on the left control box and selected omni. We then played around with how close/far or high/low it was to get different effects.

We also managed to change the colour of the light by pulling out the menu on the right and changing the colour option.

Finally we were left to experiment and I managed to make this quick mock up of one of my houses for my street using the bevel and extrude techniques we learnt.

Selecting aspects of images

 Today we looked at taking a certain aspect from one picture, for example a window, and preparing it for use in a texture file.

First, just like before we first straitened the building up as much as we could on a new layer. Then we got out the rulers and made a box around the window we wanted for the rectangle marquee to clip to when we selected it.

We then copied it and made a new document (which if you have the preset set to clipboard will be the exact right size for when you paste the window in.) After this we skewed it a bit more to get it as straight as possible  and then we went around the frame with the pen tool to get an accurate selection. When we finished the path around the window we right clicked it and selected 'convert to selection' and then we inversed the selection so we could delete the wall and save it as a png file to keep the transparency.

Building design

After being told that we were going to make a street in 3D I started thinking about what kind of street I wanted to make. I really like 17th century buildings, especially the whitewashed ones with wooden beams on the outside.  I would like to recreate a 17th century street but it's not that creative so I decided on a mix between sci-fi and 17th century.

http://www.blogandgo.co.uk/A55A21/BlogAndGo.nsf/viwLookUpMenuPlace/1051B4D1D3FBE514802573BE00085A25?Open&m1=home&m2=europe&m3=england&m4=chester

http://jameswolf.deviantart.com/art/cityscape-1-85291458

 I researched a lot of sci-fi buildings but I didn't really like many aspects like the light colour scheme or the use of curves. Looking through I found this picture of a futuristic city-scape and I really liked the look of the glowing tinted windows and dark metal and I decided that's the kind of sci-fi I would like in my street.

For my street I came to the conclusion that a slightly collapsing 17th century house with sci-fi add ons and support would look cool. With this in mind I started to design a house as you can see below, I'm very proud of the design but as I was designing my street plan I realised that a street make of just similar buildings would be boring so I decided on having an old church with sci-fi add ons across the road with maybe a garden the the left of the house.

I decided to change my street 

http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/The-west-facade

http://www.destination360.com/europe/france/paris/cathedrale-notre-dame-de-paris

http://alice.wikia.com/wiki/Infernal_Train

Experimentation with content ware fill and other methods.

Today we manipulated this image to prepare it for making a texture.

As you can see the image is quite wonky so to straighten it up we got up rulers (view > rulers) and dragged them to points like window frames, walls and the roof to get a grid like this.

Then after duplicating the layer we went into edit > transform > skew and moved the four corners of the building images and the sides until the image was straighter. We then played around using content ware fill to remove the windows.

We managed this by using our polygon lasso tool to roughly select say the sign post, then going into edit > fill and selecting content aware. This got rid of most of the post but sometimes it can leave a piece of window frame or door there by mistake which you can get keep getting rid of with content aware until you get the desired effect. Another way to get the same result is by using the clone tool, by selecting an area to 'draw' from with the Alt key held down you simply paint over any blemishes and it brushes over it with the area you selected with the Alt key.