Dr. Suess' "The Lorax" Panelization

REFERENCES (For Panelization)

Reference Example of Repetitive Panels

Reference of External Walls

Reference for External House walls

Dr. Suess' "The Lorax" Robot Cat

REFERENCE

Air Conditioning Unit used for the general shape of the robotic cat's body shape.

Specifically the front legs inspired the front legs of the robot cat's front legs.

This mail box inspired the head used for the robot cat's head.

Gears within the movie of "The Lorax" inspired the design of the robot cat's legs.

How I picked my images...
When choosing references I was not concentrating on picking any one given animal or seekign out robotic creatures. I just turn on the movie, lay back, and let the images create imagination and design possiblities. When I run into shapes or items that are intriguing I pause the movie, rewind, and take a snapshot. As the movie goes on I begin to build the model in my head until I find myself with a complete picture.


CONCEPT SKETCHES (drawn over with sharpie)

Robot Cat Front View

Robot Cat Side View

Robot Cat Top View

I wasn't sure what kind of robot would be found within the milieu of the movie "The Lorax". I noticed a cat surveillance robot in the movie so I stuck with this concept idea for my game modeled robot. I didn't however want to try to copy what the movie had created so I grabbed other elements and objects found in the movie to create the robot cat. I created the robot from an air conditioner, factory gears, and a mail box. The only part of the original robot cat from the movie I kept was the shape and style of the front legs which I found very unique. In this manner I could create a model that was keeping within the style of the movies concept and design, but keep it unique and original as well.

FIRST PASS MODEL 

Robot Cat Front View (Rendered in 3DS MAX)

Robot Cat Side View (Rendered in 3DS MAX)

Robot Cat Top View (Rendered in 3DS MAX)

After practicing conceptual modeling with the helmet and the light fixture I found modeling the robotic cat quite entertaining and easy. I first started with the body by creating a box and moving edges into the general shape of the air conditioning unit found in the movie. After that I made the gears that would attach to the body and connect to the legs. I created these with a cylinder and simply beveled out the faces. I then attached them to the body using the same method I used for the light fixture side lamp parts. I extruded the 4 sided edges of the poly I wanted to connect the gear two. I chamfered the vertices to create 12 vertices and welded the vertices closest to the body down (4) to end up with 8 vertices on the edge loop of the body and the edge loop of the gear. After that I attached the editable polys and target welded them together. The legs were beveled out from the gears and the feet were attached. The feet were made from a cylinder. I cut the cylinder in half and capped off the open side. I then beveled on local norm the face loop on the bottom outside to create the very bottom part of the foot. The head was created with a box and chamfered edges and the ears from a cone that was manipulated using scale and moving the edges. They were connected to the head in the same manner the gears were connected to the body. Over all it was a much longer process than the light fixture and the helmet, but was approached with more understanding after learning the lessons from the last two models.

ANIMATION 

Idle Motion (Litter Box)

 

Walking Animation (First Pass)

 

 

 

 

Attacking Animation (First Pass)

 

 



 

ANIMATION (Second Pass)

 

 

Walking Animation (Second Pass)

                                                

Attack Animation (Second Pass)

 

Animating was fairly difficult. The front two legs have bone rigging and the back two legs are linked and the pivots are centered. The biggest problem in animating the Robot Cat was getting the timing just right on the alternating leg movements of the legs. Alot of times the left rear leg would suddenly move too quickly throwing the smooth alternating action of the legs off. Rigging took about 6 hours to get just right to that animating would be easy. Dummies were used on the front feet so that the feet could be rotated without rotating the bone with it, since without the dummy the pivot of the foot geometry would not move with the foot when moved with the bone. Interestingly the pouncing attack animation was the simplest. The methodology behind it was less about alteranting the legs and more about the forward and upward movement of the body. As well the legs mostly moved together with a slight offest for a more relaxed and natural looking movement of the body.



 

 



FINAL RENDER(All Texture Maps)

                                                                                

 

(Front View)

(Side View)

(Top View)

 

(Perspective)



 

FINAL THOUGHTS

After modeling the helmet and the light fixture this model was really easy to design and model. Mostly because the requirement was to make a robotic creature I was able to design it with a more boxy look. this made it much easier to unwrap and texture. As well since the model was a robot I was able to put a simple tilable metal texture as a base. The donw side to this model was keeping the poly count minimal. I ended the model with around 1200 polys. For an entire creature model this isn't too bad, being a non player character in a game it would take far too much space. Being the first model I animated in the series this increased rendering time. As far as the animation goes rigging was fairly easy. How you rig however was quite a pain while first learning. Getting certain IKs connected to the bones in specific spots for desired results took hours of testing and messing around. This was only done with the front legs. To allow the front feet to rotate (rigging the foot with the bones didnt allow it's pivot point to follow) I attached dummies to the feet and linked the dummies to the bones and upper legs. As well by attaching the dummy to the upper leg I was able to get a full range of motion while only moving the IK, rather than selecting multiple IKs increasing the time it would have taken to animate the robot. the rear legs were on rigged. they were linked to the body and each other in subsequent order to the feet. To animate the legs I selected the upper leg, lower leg, and foor and rotated them at the same time independently so that all parts would rotate equally. I alos rigged the tail for minimal movelment. to move the head I selected all the polys of the head, gave them an ID, and when I need to move the head I would select the ID and simply rotate the polys and move them around. Over all this one took the most time due to proper rigging and rendering time, but was the most fun to do. Figuring out ways to get the robot cat to jump was both unique and intriguing. I look forward to doing more animation in the near future, trouble shooting, and learing new tricks of the trade.

Dr. Suess' "The Lorax" External Light Fixture (First Pass)

REFERENCE

Reference for Main Lamp

Reference for side bulbs using  the added style of the tree lights. (as shown below)

Artificial Trees (lights)

How I got my images...
Though there were thousands of light fixture in this movie, they were all extremely similar and unoriginal to one another, and very far away. Getting a good image of a light fixture to use was difficult. So I went with the images of the light fixtures I found to be the least grainy and out of focus and simply attach them together. My end result is a light fixture more similar to the movies', then my other models are. Something I try to avoid, but when required, we do our best.

CONCEPT

Concept for External Light Design using aspects found in the references above.

Side View of External Light

Top View of External Light

RENDER

Model Rendered in 3DS MAX using concept designs as reference (First Pass Front View)

External Light rendered in 3DS MAX (First Pass Side View)



External Light rendered in 3DS MAX (First Pass Top View)





From the concept/reference I created the main lamp shape from a sphere. The bottom half of the sphere's poly's were selected and deleted. A Shell modifier was then added and collapsed into an editable poly. The main light bulb in the middle is a normal 16 sided sphere. The vertices were selected and moved to give the rim of the light fixture a lip. The two smaller lights were created with a cylinder that was put on a path deform and collapsed into an editable poly, attached to an 8 sided sphere and welded into a single primitive. The wall attachment was created by beveling from faces off the main lamp shape and welded down to a curve. The cylindrical wall attachment was created using bevel on local normal.


RENDER(Second Pass)

Low Poly (Right Side)

Low Poly (Top View)

Low Poly (Front View)

In the second week it was required to reduce the number of polys into the models most basic shape. In addition the requirement of creating a single mesh rather than multiple primitives. When approaching in this manner it was easier modeling a good end result knowing the end product would be a low poly. The biggest challenge was attaching cylindrical objects to a four sided poly (in order to create a single mesh object). The solution I came up with is to delete the four sided face in which I would attach the cylindrical object. The grab the edge loop of that deleted face and extrude it out and chamfer all vertices of the extruded edges. Then I target welded the vertices to the object and kept 8 vertices. Sine I reduced the number of edges on my cylinder down to 8 it was a perfect fit. I attached the primitves and target welded them together with my new vertices.

UVW LOW POLY REDUCTION

(From 800 polys to just above 400 polys)

Front View (3DS MAX)

Top View Render (3DS MAX)

Right View Render (3DS MAX)

In order to UV unwrap my object I need to reduce the number of polys even more. The most challenging part was reducing the polys around the beveled handle on the main lamp shape. It was even tougher to keep the objects symmetry and edge loops; however, I was able to reduce the polys from 800 down to 400 polys.

UV UNWRAP SCHEME (Not Flattened)

UV UNWRAP (Flattened)

UV Map for Light Fixture (3DS MAX)

Front view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

Side view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

Top view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

For the first time I unwrapped my light fixture. With the sloping of the main lamp shape and the spheres it was difficult to stitch pieces of the flattened map together and keep the integrity of the texture. In order for me to be able to flatten and stitch and keep the integrity I stitched the the circular polys into a flat rectangular map much like a map of earth. A few places on the object keep a warped or twisted texture, but I will resolve these issues with texture sets. There are few seams that are all on the back end of the light fixture which is good since that is the part facing the wall in real world space. Over all the experience of flattening and stitching was tedious which pushes further the idea of lowering the poly count especially for circular shaped polys.

TEXTURE (First Pass)


                                                                          Texture Set

Texture Set (Top Left) Diffuse, (Top right) Specular,  (Bottom) Bump

                                                             

   UV Unwrap Texture Set

   

UV Unwrap Texture Set (Top Left) Diffuse, (Top Right) Specular, (Bottom) Bump

Textures:

 

Texturing was done in photoshop. I took my completed flattened UV unwrap and began drawing out my textures. I went to "cgtextures.com" and got a metal rust pictures. I imported it into photoshop as a 512 by 512 photo and copy pasted it it until it filled up my 2048 by 2048 UV unwrap picture. I then made it tilable by offsetting the picture and using the stamp, clone, and patch tool to get rid of repeating patterns and ensure the sides, top, and bottom would match up when tiled in 3DS MAX so that no lines would show up on the textured model. To create the bump map I made my final image in gray scale by using a black and white adjustment layer. The Speculat I used the black and white adjustment layer aswell as the levels layer and curves layer to get rid of the midtones. I saved all three images and applied them to my final model.

                       

 First Pass Model

Front View Render (3DS MAX)

Side View Render (3DS MAX)

Top View Render (3DS MAX)

This weeks progress was easy and difficult. Of course as in all things with modeling the difficulty came with not knowing the "tricks of the trade" and making it look good. The simple and fun part was making the actual textures. I really enjoy working in photo shop and manipulating images; however, getting it to match up well with the object is difficult. I simply to an image of rusty metal and used hue and saturation adjustments to get the purple-blue color that is shared with the reference of the lamp from the movie "The Lorax". I painted on a yellow and used curves to make them a bit lighter. I used burn and dodge to get the gradual color contrast between where the fixture would be exposed to the light from the bulbs. 

FINAL PASS (diffuse, bump, specular color/level, reflection, and refraction maps all applied)

 

3DS MAX RENDERS

(Front View)

(Side View)

(Top View)

(Perspective)

FINAL THOUGHTS


After modeling the helmet I approached not the design of the light fixture but the modeling process with low poly in mind. This made for easier UV unwrapping the final model. Though the model isn't as smooth as a new student would expect, it portrays the art in game art. If it was as easy as just making the model with as many polys we wanted and without a water tight mesh, we may just call it engineering. The end result of this model added a few tricks for me when low poly modeling. One of them as stated above was how to connect a circle to a square poly. By chamfering the veritices and ensuring the cylinder I am attaching is 8 sides, I get a perfect fit that can be attached and welded together. Keeping in mind that this creates triangles it's still a fairly decent method. Un wrapping the light fixture was the most difficult part. this being because the light fixture has so many circular surfaces that when flattened create long border edges. this was solved by laying these polys out like squares and expanding the texture out as the polys area shrinks. Limiting cylindrical shapes will be a fore thought before designing future models.