Navigational Drawings

Ok so here are my drawings from the reference material i gathered earlier. Now i would like to move into maya to start getting these done!

Navigation tools (hr)

 Ok so I have been put in task of researching Navigation tools to appear in the admirals room. After lots of researching what the chinese would have had in the 15th centuary i was a bit put out. Obviously they had the beautiful Compass below, however apart from that i havent found any other instruments which the chinese had during this period. The reason for this is that the chinese had many rules and laws about how to distinguish wind direction and weather, distance and speed. These came in the form of tables or scribings upon scrolls or on tablets.

I have decided there fore to incorporate a Scroll which denotes how you choose wind direction, with caligriphy brushes and pots for scribing them.

Here are pictures i have found to help me in my drawings which will come next!

Get in there once again!!!

Ok so here are 2 of my shots which i submitted for the animatic and one was used. The other we just wanted slightly different so ollie re did it :)

A Slight Re-addressal!

Ok so after talking to jared, who inspired us to push our work further and develop a story, we sat down and did just that! It was a good day, running from around 10am until 3am the following day, but we got there!

I wont go into the full story here but heres a sum-up.

A letter from the late emperor is being read as the ship starts on its journey. There are clouds on the horizon however and as we proceed down to the lower levels of the ship all is not how it seems. Scraps of information about a revolt and remmision of the junk and a final word about the emporor himself.....

I hope that wet your apitite!

HEre are a couple of little animatics i did whilst we were talking. Each took almost less time to make as they do to play but enjoy!

Get in there!

Here are the shots of mine which got into our first animatic! Ollie asked us to cut them again after we knew timings ect. So here are the individual videos!:

Another Sail test.

So you guessed it! more sails!

for this test i placed the sails near enough as they would be on the deck of the Junk, and affected the mesh using dynamic hair curves and turbulence. The result is pretty still and poor in my opinion, and I have found a MUCH better method to work with which i will hopefully be able to get done and put on here soon!

This is how we roll!

Ok so sorry i havent posted in a few days, ive been so busy doing the work!

ill start with this post and hopfully catch up to date with whats been happening with the subsequent posts.

This is How We Roll!!!!!

I was asked by the producer Ollie to make everyone aware of how we want to be working on this project. Here is what i sent everybody:

Hey guy's we will be working with a naming convention when modelling and texturing. Here is how filenames should be layed out:

for (.mb)
(model name)(modeller name)

for (textures and bumps)
(texture name)(type)(texture artist)

examples:
''CannonSteph.mb''
''CannonBumpSteph.tiff''

all textures and images should be saved in the 'source images' folder.
all models should be saved in the 'Scenes' folder.
all test renders should be saved in the images file.

Also we have discussed how to model and position files within our boat. Here is a breakdown in steps:
1) open the shot you are currently working on.

2) create a new piece of geometry and place it where the object is you are going to model. Try and get the size/shape near enough right.

3) copy and paste this geometry into a new scene and model it there.

4) if you need to move the model during modeling then keep a copy at the location so you can re position it for importing directly into the same place within the shot.

A bit of movement

Oh yeah i forgot to post this a while ago. Ollie had asked me to do a quick test about how we could get things moving onboard our ship. for this test i used dynamic soft bodies and dynamic hair curves for rope. I dont think the rope worked very well but the dynamics in sync with the gravity works well and i think if it was tweaked to perfection it would look great for our purposes

Just an observation....

Ok so I have been put incharge of deciding the interior structure of the boat. Thisis important as we do not want the boat to look like a 1x1 resolution poly cube. I want to capture some of the nice curves from floor to ceiling and wall to wall as they will give an amazing sense of being on a ship. Going further still might also prove to be a good idea and make it slightly exagerated however care must be taken to still instill a feeling of reality.

Above are notes i have made after studying all the interior pictures and blue prints i have found. I am also observing the outside curvature of the boat in order to make an informed guess about the shapes of the interior. Using my notes and the references below I will now begin to structure the rooms and make placements for beams.

V&A and British Museum.

Ok so yesterday our group went along to both the V&A and the British Museum together research material for our project.

Very helpfully, the V&A's China section was closed for refurbishment until December this year. Arg.

Luckily we were still able to find some good pieces of pottery which fit the exact timescale of our junk, and even some that were lost at see from an old junk! Here are some of the pictures I took before my camera died. How very nice of it!