So much to show and only one final render

Heres where i ran into trouble last year too, im a bit on the indecisive side, if im proud of a project i want to show off every aspect from every angle, problem with that is, the examiner is only going to want to see one board, i cheated slightly last year by putting three renders on the one board last year (two small one big) and i may do the same this time, but then that is still narrowing it down till three or four render view, which means its decision time, angle wise.

For now im adding cameras to my favourite views, and from there through a process of elimination i will hopefully narrow the final choices down till anywhere between four and one, preferably three.

The Camera is still a rather new tool for me, as ive only ever used it once, and didnt even bother really using them, i just moved the screen around until i was happy with that render. i think cameras are like clay models, they suit some projects but not others, i know they will be essential in my next project, as i will need to save screen positions, however for veepees, they aren't overly essential, but im going to power through and attempt to make them useful, after all i need the practice before the next project begins.

Theres several views i spoke about in my SKETCHBOOK, that i know i want to get cameras in, some of which include, an across the table view, showing clutter etc, a close to the floor view, making the arachnophobia more apparent when staring over at his legs, almost like the scene in jurassic park where they are hiding in the kitchen and the raptors are in the room, it meant to be breathtaking to the viewer. 

Another view would be the peeking in through the door view, and Veepees from bsaically every angle, even a close up of just him and the glowing needle.

This is the part where i have to decide to show off all ive created, or accept the fact i might only need a close up in the final render for emotive design.

Putting humpty dumpty together, and thoughts so far

As ive previously said i need to redo the needle and export it properly to get the glow in a different file, so thats first, then importing Veepees himself into the environment scene.

Thankfully no serious problems occurred so far, I had some problems with the left arm going heywire long after he was in the scene, which brings me to this ever constant and annoying reminder, always watch what you are doing, ive no idea what i did, but it meant i had to redo his arm. i tried importing just his arm again but to be honest it had to be scaled and rotated and i couldnt get it back in position, and my impatient self just decided to redo the whole arm.

Other than that and some importing/exporting first time hiccups, Im surprised nothing has majorly gone wrong in this project  (touch wood)

Now everythings scaled skewed rotated and in place, its time to start getting some lighting and cameras in there so i can render this out and finally be done with it. dont i sound so enthusiastic.
Problem with this point of the project is, im not done, yet my brain shuts down and thinks its done and the pressures off, so i really have to learn to concentrate until the very end.

 I Just gotta remember during these last tedious steps in the project that IM ALMOST DONE. sort of.

Time to colour him in

Some parts of Veepees are complex material wise, (complex by my standards) others are extremely basic, his hair and pupils for example, they are standard defuse colours, with spec and gloss tweaked.
Other parts of him, like his eyes, i had to look at a few tutorials, and thanks to pixars inspirations, theres no shortage of 3D artists interested in creating that shiney white eye effect.

His head is the following photoshop image wrapped, simple enough once you know how to move a texture around using uv wrapping. a technique im only hearing of never mind learning about. So far it seems to be able to do many interesting things but so far im not exactly skilled at using it

I used multi layer for the ears and nose, as its a technique in material editor ive only recently explored and used. It allows colours to mix and have more depth, im actually loving it so much, see how i could incorporate the metallic grey and the pink into the elephants ear, i figured id have to create a texture of my own and attempt to wrap it round, the pig nose is a dusty brown and pig nose pink, giving it a shiny slippery look that i think compliments the surrounding features. 

The goblin ear is two separate green colours blended, and has a decent amount of displacement, hopefully giving it a weird nonhuman look.

The glasses are the same glass material i used for the jars and test tubes, since i loved it so much, i tried getting the default blue glass to work but it didnt suit the sharp corners of Veepees spectacles. 

That the head sorted, the white lab coat i used a cloth threaded texture, which didnt show up too obvious, and a simple off white defuse colour with a bit of shadows to show to crinkles and button features more. 

The shiney purple gloves have a latex look because i tried giving them a rubber modifier, but it just made them shiner rather than stretched cloth, i will work on clothing around a model in future projects hopefully. 

The high specular levels and glossiness really brought out the rubber material.

Under veepees on his insect insect like body, is a simple defuse colour as i ran out of material balls to work with, and couldnt delete anymore from the scene. 

And last but certainly not least, i used the following  photoshop images to create the legs. The firs three are my first attempt which went horrible wrong and not just because of the bold colours.

The following three are the three textures seen on Veepees legs in the final renders, it took alot of tweaking but im quite proud at how his legs turned out, between redoing so much of the modelling and materials, i thought id never get the legs finished. The purple intersections, that was a mistake on my part, however i think they look better purple, with the same bump and grainy technique i used for the table as far as i remember, hopefully showing how smooth and translucent the pegs are where as the intersections are joints, and flesh. 

 Above are the textures i used for my first attempts. yes that is a plural, making the legs did take its time.

So far im proud of my Veepees down to all the smallest features. Now everything is done (some tweaks left to get sorted but disregarding that) its time to get it all in the one file, and hopefully get It ready for LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION....i mean render.

My Precious

There are a few elements in this entire project that im especially proud of, and as youve guessed, not shy about boasting about, The needle, Veepees obsession is one of them.
Like the glass it was mainly down to materials and render settings, but the end result is far more than i wouldve imagined i could create.

Due the materials, most of the needle had to be created as separate objects and then in the end assembled together.
I worked from the vocal point outwards, but ill explain it bottom to top.
The syringe part is a line, lathed, it was inspired by a lathe gone wrong at the start f the project when i was making the tubes and jars, so its a good example of how everything happens for a reason.
The finger holders is a short and fat cylinder with very little fillet, and a thinner longer cylinder booleaned into it, and then copied to create the other. simple.

The base of the needle is an oil tank shaped to what you see in the horrible images below, the radioactive substance i made first, and set perfectly on the oil tank below, i then very carefully extruded and lathed a line around it, stretching it to be the designed height.
The cap was a simple circle extruded several times and the center vertexs lifted up into a very fine point, a task i under estimated.

Now thats the basic shape sorted, time for materials and textures.
I started by creating a very metalic material, tis was done by alot of experimentation, and it turned out exactly how id hoped. The glass around the substance was a glass i had already created but not used for the jars and test tubes, so that worked out handy.

The glowing green matter on the other hand was not as simple.
I started like i have done for most of this project, i froze everything but the object i wanted to work on. Then followed a tutorial i found online, i tried several but they didnt give the glow i wanted, so for a while i was really disappointed in the needles outcome, until i found a tutorial for the glow of a lightsaber (george lucas' star wars, wiki link and tutorial link below) Although the tutorial was for a red lightsaber, like i said before tutorials are just guides to me, so it was only a matter of tweaking a few colours and settings for the green.

This was a very long and sometimes confusing tutorial when put into practice, but very worth while in the end.
Im not going to go through the tutorial step by step, as ive linked it below and its easy enough to follow, so it would be a waste of time, time im quite short on.
So instead i will discuss my thoughts on the process and the outcome.
This is a good example of something you cant just experiment with and hope to get it right, you need tutorials for this to an extent, tweak it to become your own, but outside help in my opinion is essential in this case.

When i first finished this tutorial it didnt render out properly and there was no glow, just a green block, which i of course panicked at, and watched the tutorial twice again to realize i hadnt clicked on one simple box, reminding us all 3D Max is a confusing power tool and every tiny box and option should be read and checked properly, otherwise you will end up with the wrong outcome, ie. a green block and a wasted afternoon.
As far as i can remember i said this quite alot last year, how much i hated confusing programes with loads of options that a whole object/file/project could go wrong if you missed one step, or a step within a step, 3D Max needs to be somewhat understood before you can actually create anything properly, which means theres alot learning to get done before you can even start saying you can kinda of use the software. when someone tells me they know how to use 3D Max and they arent on a deans list or getting well paid to know how to use it, i tend to think 'you only think you know how to use 3D Max. if you really knew, you wouldnt be here or telling me how much you know) So my advice to all you 3D Max newbies, would be ignore anyone too ignorent to know they know very little about something like 3D software, and just keep building your own skills, they will eventually come.... at least im hoping they eventually come.
And always always double check what youve just done, nobody wants to end up with a basic green block and be left wondering why its not glowing.
And of course, always save your work, infact double save your work, who wants to be that person who has a great model, or glowing needle, and then loose it simply because they didnt click the little floppy disk.

I think ive mentioned before the needle, or its properties and rendering settings didnt export out properly, so always be careful and double check you are exporting with the right option, and if not, you will be stuck like myself, redoing it in a different file.
I still havent gotten the hang of the exporting and importing options, i was told what ive done wrong by a third year student, however even when he tried to fix it, it didnt work. to save time and energy ive just followed the tutorial and redone the glow, sometimes figuring out the problem isnt worth the time you put into it. I spent over an hour trying to figure out what went wrong, the third year student spent half an hour at least, thats an hour and a half that couldve got the glow redone in a different file.

So once again, time keeping is a major factor in any project, especially 3D,

All ready for the big man himself

The room is done to an extent, the only thing missing now is the character Veepees himself.
Like the other objects that i knew would take a deal of time and work, i created Veepees in a separate file, not just incase anything went wrong, but so id have less software crashes... and isnt 3DStudio Max just so fond of crashing when you are near done, or have made a decent amount of progress.... dont complain, its our fault for not saving regularly. A skill i have yet to actually master.

Just like i did in the design process, i created him basics first. The body.
It took a few attempts this way but i created the hunch back body from the line tool and lathe modifier.
Messed about and added a few more polygons into the structure and taadaa, a big misshapen ball we will call the body for now.
Next i made the head, this couldve been done better. I used a simple chamfer box as it already had the amount of segments and vertexs i needed to mold the head.
Its times like this in 3D Max im very tempted to experiment and use mud box, between this and the next project i will experiment with it, but i dont think ill have the skills built up enough to actually use it properly.
 moulded the head to the shape i wanted, leaving bumps, lumps and a gap where his mouth should be.

I decided to move from head to pincers, The bolts are on the NE and NW of his head and slightly skewed, i spent far too long getting them at angles i preferred considering they are barely noticeable, you cant say you werent warned about my odd work process.
The hair is actually the same three hairs rotated stretched scaled and skewed, creating his little tuft of human like hair.

His ears were done so many times, hard to believe considering how they turned out, but still, they took forever.
I started with the goblin like ear, decided against the little hairs, but i may go back and change that and the little legs i didnt include in the slider legs later.
I actually made the goblin ear as close to a human ear as i could, only the wrong size, rotated it more than a human ear and then extruded it into a point, at the time i was happy with it, but on further review it could defiantly do with being redone.

I did the tattered elephant ear next, using an extruded plane, i tried many ways to make this ear, yet in the end the simplest option turned out to be the most effective.
I curved and bent the ear to the shape id designed, if i was to do anything further to the ear it would likely be boolean some extra tatters in there, but it would more than likely cause a hallow look to the ears, so id have to find a different technique to creating the tatters. If im going to be really picky i could use a liquifier tool in photoshop perhaps.

Just to let you know, i will do a separate post on the materials and textures, otherwise thered be too much to explain in the one post. for now i will simpley discuss the model and how i created the basics of Veepees.

I now mved on to the arms, and Veepees being an unsymmetrical Igor, it wasnt a matter of creating one half and then mirroring it, i had to do all his body parts separately, including his oddly shaped arms.

His arms is actually where the clay model (shown previously) came in use surprisingly.
Once you et in there and start creating arms, its hard to remember the finished look, or where you are and what should bend or cease in what way, and the fact Veepees is in a big baggy lab coat made it no easier, however i already have experience in creating messy clothing from last year project, Blobman.
I made one arm and the forearm and part of the hand, before i started the second arm, so it was easier to create the correct pose.
One arm turned out better than the other, if it was a lower poly count the turbo smooth wouldve worked better.
The hands and forearms are simple cylinderchams, with a few vertexs scaled to look more natural, i dont like using the supplied primitives but, sometimes you have to admit they are there for a reason.

At this point i stopped work on Veepees and started a different file for the needle, it is a major element in both his character design and the environment, its essential its done corretly, *see next post for how i created the needle.

Once the needle was done i returned to the character/Veepees, and imported the needle in, and this is where i ran into problem importing and exporting, i got the needle in but the glowing substances material properties were not imported or exported properly. A problem i will fix later, for now im focusing on the model.
I created fat squarish yet rounded fingers, I made them all separately so the could be different sizes and able to grasp the needle naturally.
Im actually quite proud how the hands grasp the needle, granted it looked better before the final tweak and i couldnt get back to the perfect hold, but im still happy with the finished result.

I added two simple spheres onto Veepees jacket, one larger than the other, as buttons.
At this point i took the opportunity to make final teaks to the coat, on the body and arms, to make it a bit more natural looking.

And the piece de resistance, the legs.
Though texturing them was a far larger task than modelling them, modelling them was no boat ride.
I started with one leg, froze the rest of the body as to not interfere, a technique i used in almost every stage of this project.
I know the legs arent all the same but the parts are, though in different poses and size, they are relatively the same, so i made sure to have each section its own object, so i could copy and use them on other legs.
The legs were a modified and extruded compound object, the inter sections a simple hamfer box with its vertexes scaled and moved about.
Keeping to the original design and scale was rather difficult, I used the clay model as reference for size and such, but i had to restart or resized several times, the legs would no doubt be massive in comparison to the body, but they couldnt be comical or illogical, and if anything, they still needed to fit in the very accurately sized room. Ive used proper dimensions in basically everything up till this point, so it was essential i continued this process.
Once one leg was finally done, the others didnt take much time. I wish i had focused more on the legs but i was finding it very difficult to concentrate through the leg modelling, so looking back on it, im not as proud of them as i wish i was.
The modelling of the legs and the eyes would be two more things i would definitely redo if i was to touch up this project at any time in the future.

The eyes i shouldve done in single polys and just skewed and rotated them into shape, but since i just wasnt concentrating or doing my best, i ended up just tweaking a sphere, leaving the edges crinkled and not perfect, i attempted to turbo smooth it, but since it was originally a sphere it took out all my shaping to it, leaving it impossible for me to use turbo smooth.
The eyes didnt end up as comically big as i had originally planned, but i am happy with them.
The pupils are spheres, ones a clone, The lids of the eyes and the eyes themselves copied and scaled bigger, i then deleted the unnecessary parts, and dragged the end vertexs inwards.
Eyes complete, now time for the rest of the face, the pig nose was a simple line mirrored and extruded, the nose holes were actually trickey even though i used a very simple method, its because i was dealing in such small dimensions, and any tweaking was a drastic change.
I used the boolean tool on the nose, uses short fat cylinders, two infact. so the nose was booleaned four times in total, so you can imagine how often 3D Max was tempted to take a serious chunk out of the nose, thus it was a long and tricky process.

Veepees model is almost complete, the finishing touches are in place an the only thing left to model is a barely noticeable feature that makes a big difference and connects to the child original drawing, the round spectacles/glasses that rest on his piggy nose.
once again short fat cylinders were used and placed in th appropriate areas under his eyes without interfering with the eyes or nose or even the head, i extruded and bent a box to create the little bridge.

And at last, after a very long modelling process, He's complete.... well the model is at least.
At this point you are lulled into a false sense of security that it couldt possible take you as long to do finishing touches like materials and camera work etc, near done right? wrong.
We are now at the half way point, fixing problems and tweaking everything until its perfect and then adding materials and textures to everything, and THEN lightening and cameras, and then you are nearly done.
emphasis on the nearly.

The sad attempt at fire

Unfortunately, no matter how much time and effort i wasted, or tutorials i attempted, i could never get the fire effect, it never worked and if it did, it didnt suit.
The closest to fire i got was a long weary tutorial of particle simulation, and transforming the snow flakes to appear like fire, if the setttings are all done correctly, i followed the tutorial and got the same effect as the maker, however, like i said before, tutorials are only useful as guides. This tutorial on fire that worked, was amazing for the purpose the maker wanted, but all i wanted was a flickering flame, with an origin oit of the candle, Not a full blown fire.
I tried experimenting with this fire to make it my own, but by the time i could create the origin correctly in such a small point, the flames looked like a flame thrower, it would only work on a bigger scale, and a fast blaze, not a small flicker.
This is my biggest regret of this project. Although it wont be graded once i have all this done and handed in, along with my many other university projects (so little time) i will return to this for my own benefit and attempt to create the fire my way and in my own time.

http://flickercandlecompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/stock-footage-this-is-a-seamless-loop-of-warm-candles-gently-burning-in-a-black-void-i-used-this-shot-during.jpg

Inside the room is done, now for the outside.

The outside view is one i may come back to and change if i find myself with free time for touch ups at the end of this project, however i doubt itll happen.
The view is simply a plane with a bitmap material, with a bit of illumination for that extra bit of light, its dark and night time but still a source of light, regardless of the amount, so a good bit of illumination was added.
Finding a good place for the plane wasnt as easy as it looks either, i wanted a vast wilderness view but found unless staring directly out the window in the final renders instead of the character, you wont notice it, so i had to improvise and at least show the night mountainous view and the lightening, for the added mad scientist mood.
In the end it turned out well, considering it looked overly flat and unrealistic the first few placement attempts, i even tried wrapping it in an arc around the window but it looked like a bubble rather than a panoramic view.
I like the fact i moved the lightening to the other side of the window, that way its more obvious in the final rendered views, from almost any im going to attempt.

A bit of experimenting outside the box

Now the room is starting to look a little more lived in with all the books, candles and glass containers, how to make it that bit more lived in? well he needs to clean the place right? all that stuff doesnt stay sterile by itself, and im sure the experiments arent all safe enough to hold in your hands, so rags are needed, it would be the final touch on my objects, plus im a wee bit eager to start the dark world of 3D simulation/animation etc.

Theres a few ways to do this i found, but the way i did it was the easiest by far, so yeah im a slacker, and i likely did it wrong, but it was a whim and experiment that worked out in my favor.
I created a simple plane. and added a cloth modifier, played about with the settings, mainly the active/inactive/collision options.
I ended up choosing active cloth, and made it cotton, however i choose differently the first few times just to see how 3D Max would react, i highly recommend playing about with these options, its quite funny if you are as easily amused as me.
I then added an object, the table to be exact (originally i didnt add the table and the cloth decided it was a ghost and could float not just through the table but through the floor alos, so yeah, making a collision object is important.
Once the table was added and made into a collision object it was all very simple, thread count and material wise, the only thing tht took time was rendering out the cloth, every time i pressed play it took forever to get to 100 frames so i could see the end result, and it was quite annoying since i had to move it several times before i got the right crumpled and hanging off the table end result, which means i had to sit and watch it render several times, as interesting as watching grass grow i must say.

regardles, i highly recommend adding a little something to your own projects environment, and i will defiantly try to make a point in animating some objects of a scene to get them to fall naturally. Like the books i couldve made the cloth and set it in place manually but the finished result wouldnt have looked as professional. I think it adds to the other objects and makes the scene look much more natural, hard to believe such a little characteristic can change a room so much but it can.