After the last meeting with my responsive group, we had all left feeling secure with a concept that we had all agreed on. This concept, was to make a large doll house either through paper or plastic, via laser cutting. We had all said that we were going to go away and start some designs on how we think the doll house should look, so that once we come together, we can take elements from each one and start producing it.
I did quite a simple sketch for my design, because I thought that we could focus more on the contents of the house rather than the detail of the outside. Also, because we have such a fast turnaround time, this would make the process easier for us, so we can really focus on presentation and display. I wanted to include a lot of windows in my design, because light was really important for us in our meeting, and I think that will be one of our unique selling points for our final result.
I then quickly coloured the designs in Photoshop, using colours from the trend forecasting websites. Salmon pink was mentioned a lot for Autumn 2016, so this was something I made sure to portray, using it as the dominant colour for the house. I also thought about the time of day, and I really want the display to be at night, not only because the lights will look much more powerful, but also the light projection will be more captivating on a darker back drop.
To make the small mock up that I had in my head, I went straight for Maya because I am quite familiar with the tools, and I also wanted to push myself. I have never made a mock up before, or have I made a complex building such as this one, so I knew this would be challenging for me, especially to remember all of the tools, but I was excited to have a go!
I started with making a cube polygonshape and then added multiple edge loops in order to manipulate my object. I extruded the faces of a lot of the vertices to make indents for the windows, but it was extremely hard to get everything to look even and symmetrical. To overcome this, I remembered that you could mirror the other half of your object/model so that you don't have to worry about asymmetry, so this is what I did once I was happy with the left side.
I also noticed that some of the patches on my house were a bit harsh/uneven. This was because I had moved the edges too far across, and it was 'stretching' my geometry. I had to keep tweaking these edges to make it look more smooth, but once I added a material to the model anyway, it started to look less of putting.
I then added the salmon pink from my designs and began to add more and more detail. I used my designs as a reference, but thought that there were too many levels, so I stuck to just three. At this point, I started to think about how I would illustrate the windows. Would I just add a white lambert material and hope that people would know what part of the house it was? Or would I try and find out how to make a glass mesh?
I actually followed a tutorial online which showed me how to make your own glass mesh. I had to make two .pngs in Photoshop, one with a white back ground and the other with a black. These would be the textures for 'shine' and 'gloss'. Once I imported these, I was able to add them to the faces of the model. At first, I thought that this material had deleted the face because it looked like it had disappeared, however once I rendered the scene, or chose 'front' perspective, I was able to see that it was in fact glass! And I had been able to achieve the reflection effect.
The only downside to this however, was that it was really hard for me to sort out lighting, and I really struggled with trying to make the inside of the house look even mediocre! It either looked really empty, and the window pane shadows were extremely strong, or it just looked like there were holes in the wall. Again, I looked online and someone suggested to make a plane and then change its special effects so that it glows slightly. I tried this (top right image) and with multiple glow intensities, but it really didn't work for me. It looked too obvious that there was a plane inside the house, and it brightened up the outside of the house as well as making the contrast of the scene too high.
I then changed the lighting options to 'Sun and Sky', and I did actually get a better looking scene. I made some fencing around some parts of the balconies, and I added some plants and I think the model looks much more realistic here.
I think it illustrates our aims really well, and at least if anything it is a 3D version of my concept. Though this is only the outside of the doll house, I do plan to make a mockup of the inside, as well as attempting to make the whole scene in a John Lewis window display. I think I am pushing myself here because this whole concept is new to me, but even though it has taken me a long time to make this mock up, I feel like I am stepping out of my COMFORT zone and exploring new ways to incorporate animation.
Even though I liked the sun and sky lighting, I still wanted to make my mock up in a darker setting, because that is what we are aiming for, so it would be more relevant and practical. Therefore I went back in and tried multiple lighting options again, and found one that I was happy with! I used 'point lighting' for this next test. This meant that I could light the inside of the house, making the windows almost 'glow'. I preferred this a lot more, but it did wash my window panes out so that you can't see them, so I will have to think again about how to solve this.
However, I am happy with my practice mock ups, and I think that once I expand on it and add more to the concept, it will look even more developed and I will be more confident showing it to my group.
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| Further testing within glass display. |
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