Building a House

Once we had all came to an agreement on the house, it was time to start modelling…or building as i liked to say.

I was in charge of modelling the house, and since i had designed it, i was glad of this. It meant that as well as working from my own concepts as reference, i also the house visually built in my head, so it wasn’t difficult to build in Maya.

I began with a cube and worked from there…

I built the main structure and then added onto/built on top of from there, as you can see in the image below, this is the basic house fully unassembled, a roof, balcony, walls, windows and door. I did this intentionally so that i can use these assets to build the neighbouring houses and also give them individual details, so that each house isn’t a carbon copy of the other.

Once assembled the house looked like this, which i felt look very like the drawings i did, which made me feel like it was successful.

I also modelled the swinging seat, however i will be texturing it with other assets, rather than as part of the house.

I then UV’d the house and began the process of texturing, so far i am only at the beginning. Below is the first texture that has been applied, as you can see clearly, parts didn’t apply correctly, and the planks are to large in proportion to the house itself. I intend to have this finalised  and completed by Monday. Once successfully done it will make it easier to create the other houses in the scene at a quicker speed.

Skype Call with Jason Sadler of Blue Sky Animation Studios

“Industrial design is always solving a problem wether it be time, money or technology. Going through progressions at Blue Sky is that you get to see the process from start to finish instead of modelling something and not getting to see it again until the film is out. ”

Sadler’s process is one of many ways to go about doing something. Don’t feel like its the only way.

“Sometimes you can love the character because of the pose, not the character. You should try drawing the character in an unattractive pose to see if the character is still appealing. Draw small and if the basic shapes look good you have better chance of it being a successful characters”

“Rule of thirds always helps with proportions, never divide things in half if you can avoid it. Proportion decisions are everywhere, be deliberate about your choices”

Sadler mentioned ‘The Illusion of Life’  and how its principles still work. He mentions off setting straights and curves like natural body eg back and boobs, legs and knees etc. He mentions looking back at black and white films because of how brilliantly their lighting was.

When discussing the difficulty of animating/modelling “peanuts”, Charlie Browns nose caused many problems and simplest shapes are so difficult to convincing in 3D.

When working on Gabbi the frog (from Rio) he was surprised at the fact the modeller actually made his character so much better.

Can be forced to specialise but work closely alongside all other specialisms.

Sadler (concept artist) works closely with model and even rigger. Grew to love deadlines because things just don’t get done without them.