Module Journal a summer of the work produced over the past year
by Mark Kilgallon
Introduction
The following pages will account the key development stages which culminated in the creation of my final rendered images. Over 240 posts have been posted on my online module journal since September 2007. So for a full account of all the work produced over this past year, please visit the full online module journal at; www.inmarkwetrust.blogspot. com The past year has been split into three stages. Stage one was almost exclusively research based, allowing me to explore a multitude
of areas and subjects to aid in the development of my project. Stage two was almost entirely revolved around image development and visual style, with the third stage set aside for the creation of my final images and design and development of various printed media. As a side project, I also developed a narrative, based upon themes and research conducted in stage one. This narrative would then compliment and provide the foundation for the development of the final visuals.
STAGE ONE
In stage one, ideas for projects changed on an almost weekly basis, with some ideas even changing by the day! While this would prove demoralising at times, it would ultimately lead to the creation of a project that would ultimately take
elements of some of these ever changing project ideas to create a broad by visually interesting project. Some of the project ideas that would lead to the development of this project included:
THE VIRTUAL ANNOTATION OF PEOPLE & PLACE A visual investigation into the future of on & offline spaces & how this ‘located media’ will be intertwined with our physical one. LOCATED CONSUMER MEDIA An investigation into how retailers could use new technology to interact with consumers as they go about their daily lives. THE CONVENTIONS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES An exploration into how new technologies will change the way we live and how the conventions generated by these new technologies will influence not only the technology itself but the culture that created and interacts with it. LEARN THE PAST, WATCH THE PRESENT, CREATE THE FUTURE An exploration into how new technologies will continue to change the way we live and how this future can be conceptually portrayed via 3D computer graphics software.
It was the last of these that would ultimately lead to the creation of my final project idea...
STAGE T WO
The second stage of my MA was a proverbial pick’n’mix of different activities and objectives As a result the amount work produced in this stage more than doubled compared to stage one. I approached stage two on three fronts which have continued throughout the stage.The work in stage two developed out of a plan to design my own approach to illustrating my ideas. This was done by looking at various illustration and visualisation techniques. The
These detailed drawings were then scanned and coloured in Photoshop, with characters and additional content draw individually and then scanned and coloured in the same way. While conducting some more detailed research into the idea of using actual photographed scenes and using these images as references, I came across an online blog entry briefly detailing a technique of building props in 3D and compositing them into a
hope was to then take elements from this research and incorporate them into my own work. Early on in this process I came across the work of a husband and wife illustrative team called Kozyndan. The name is actually a joint pseudonym of Kozue and Dan Kitchens, a couple probably best known for their whimsical and quirky illustrations of modern cityscapes. Their visual technique for their cityscapes for example was to first take a series of panoramic photographs which they then traced or copied by hand.
2D scene, (in this case for a comic book) thus saving time on actually hand drawing the object. This appealed to me as I felt that I was far more confident in illustrating an object and indeed a whole scene using 3D software than I was trying to hand draw it. So inspired both by Kozyndan’s cityscapes, and the technique of using 3D software to model objects and scenes, I set about attempting to create my own cityscape, using 3D modelling software.
While at the time, I was pleased with the first series of images I produced, many of my peers through group tutorials felt that they were still obviously computer generated buildings. All were very uniform, with minimal indication of where the building was or indeed what it was supposedly made out of. I was then encouraged to switch software to a more industry standard 3D modelling program called Cinema 4D, a commercial cross platform high-end 3D graphics application. The change was suggested party because of the quality of the renders produced superseded that of Form.Z and also because of an additional plug-in for the program called Citygen. Citygen is a procedural 3D model generator application aimed for generating random urban models. Essentially, it allowed me to build a whole cityscape in only a few clicks rather than spending hours building it one
building at a time. The next series of images I produced spoke for them self’s. Greatly improving the render quality and believability of the scene. However the buildings now being produced, while the variation in height, scale and placement in the scene had improved, the buildings them self’s remained flat and featureless.
A far cry from what buildings actually look like. So my attention turned from rather than attempting to model a full city, i would simply spend time modelling a single building or object and incorporate it into a pre selected 2D image. Essential I would render a model of a building and then composite that rendered image onto a 2D photograph. However at this early stage this technique was not yielding the effect I wanted but I would continue to develop this over time. I found that by adding more advanced lighting systems to an object and taking some of the
colour out in Photoshop I could make the rendered object harder to identify while in amongst a real scene. However I found that I could only go so far with this technique as it required a whole host of images from all manner of locations and angles. So a decision was reached to return to the 3D modelling software as i could utilise any location, angle etc I wished. But with my focus now back on creating a fully 3D scene, I now had to tackle the problem of making the buildings more than just grey, building shaped objects. An epiphany was reached while
modelling a 3D interior scene as an experiment. Cinema 4D, and indeed any 3D modelling program come with a range of materials and textures that you can add to an object. So for example, you could make an object have a distinctive metal quality and at a click of a button, could make the object more of a wood texture. While looking at this, I found that all these textures were essential the same file format as a normal digital photograph. So it occurred to me that I could in theory take a picture of a brick wall using a digital camera, then import that image into my 3D modelling program, and using UVW mapping technique. It wasn’t long before I had build up a collection of images of various buildings which had subsequently been cropped and mapped onto the walls of my 3D buildings giving them colour, texture, windows, doors and various other details. This technique produced so highly detailed, photo realistic renders. The next step was to add some context to the scene. At this stage, the street scenes being produced could have arguably been from any city, anywhere in the world. So, since the narrative being developed in tandem with the images was set in London, I set about creating a series of ‘visual markers’. Various object and props like London underground signs, red phone boxes, street signs etc which when seen would be
instantly recognisable as London as they were all objects common to the city. As the images became more and more detailed I began to think about post-production of the images. While the level of realism had greatly improved, I felt that some post production effects might help to improve upon the quality. But i thought i would explore that more in the third stage. At this point I returned to my narrative for inspiration to further develop my scenes. One thing that immediately jumped out was the dystopian feel that I wanted to get across which was lacking in most of my images up until this point. I wanted to portray a world that while some parts were almost utopian, in which everything was new and clean but was predominantly a dystopian one. A world where this dystopian feel would be characterized by the living conditions, poverty, disease and general human misery. So for the next phase of my practical work I set about destroying rendered scenes which up until this point had been clean, tidy and well ordered. And which has always been set on bright sunny days when in reality London would probably be just as damp, and over cast as it is commonly characterised.
So I worked on visualising rubble, debris, destroyed buildings, rubbish etc. I also learned how to model the elements like fire, rain and smoke and incorporate them all into my visuals. So for the next phase of my practical work I set about destroying rendered scenes which up until this point had been clean, tidy and well ordered. And which has always been set on bright sunny days when in reality London would probably be just as damp, and over cast as it is commonly characterised. So I worked on visualising rubble, debris, destroyed buildings, rubbish etc. I also learned how to model the elements like fire, rain and smoke and incorporate them all into my visuals. It was this drive to destroy that lead my back to an
earlier technique of modelling full buildings. I found it hard to destroy my current buildings in my scenes as they were essentially nothing more than cubes. I couldn’t smash windows or destroy walls etc. However I didn’t want to lose the level of photo realism UV mapping brought to my renders. So in the end I used an amalgamation of both. Using an image of a building as a reference, I began to build a series of 3D replicas using Cinema 4D. Modelling things like pillars, walls and windows as individual components allowed me to then play around with different elements of the building as I wished. I then cut the reference image I used to create the building into similar corresponding components. So
when I added them to the model I could have more control over were they went. This technique had both pro’s and con’s however. While the level of detail on the buildings had been greatly improved and the quality of the images now exceptionally high the render times now became a series problem. The level of detail was now so high that it was taking the computer hours
to calculate the position of every individual object in the scene let alone the position of all the shadows and other small details. In some cases, rendering was taking upwards of seven hours and in later renders the computer simply couldn’t cope with the amount of information, claiming that it was;
“out of memory”
STAGE THREE
It was at this point that my practical work for my MA hit a proverbial brick wall. Normally, when images reach this level of detail in the industry, a CG artist would employ a render farm, a cluster of networked computers which each take an individual section of the image to render, thus cutting down on render times, and allowing the computer to take more time on its own individual task resulting in far greater detail produced in half the time. However with the render farm I had at my disposal incompatible with the cinema 4D software, and no time or money to buy additional equipment I had to modify my modelling techniques. I decided upon a hybrid of utilising reference images to construct 3D models and UVW mapping. I would firstly employ a basic UVW texture
technique to a simple building shape. I would then play around with the mesh of the basic shape with the building texture applied. Essentially, I could extrude basic building details like small shelf’s, window ledges etc. In so doing, I created the illusion that the building was fully 3D when in reality only small parts actually extruded from the basic shape. Not only did this technique have minimal effect on the quality of my images, it also cut the render time of a scene from hours to minutes. The final stage of the development of my practical work was to add more visual aids. However rather than the previous visual aids which placed the scene in London, these would help put the scene into the right historical context. In so doing, the viewer would know
that not only was this London, but it was London at some point in the future. So I once again created a series of props which could then be added to my scenes. Some of these took direct inspiration from current news stories such as global warming, fuel bills and energy requirements. While other drew upon some of my early research and project ideas such as the idea the information could be accessed on any street corner or from the street is self. Moreover, research into the city’s actual plans for the near future helped me in some of the post production of the images by adding London’s sky line as it will appear in the coming decades. The adding of buildings that would really exist in the year the narrative is set really brings the images into a
historical context. I wanted to give the images a very distinctive look with post-production. I wanted them to have a very desaturated and almost tired quality which would reflect the general mood feeling of the world and city I had created. I employed a postproduction technique originally used in movies called ‘bleachbypass’. The technique involves placing a black and white image over a colour image resulting in a reduced colour saturation, giving the image more contrast and an almost grainy quality. The result is an image which looks quite ugly and dirty. I would continue to play around with this effect for a number of weeks before i came up with a balance that I was happy with.