Hard Surface Modelling (HSE200)

I’ve decided that I want to explore a witchy castle scene. This will allow me to explore creating a building, and small assets such as trees, rocks, windows, doors, etc. 

Here’s a few references that I picked from Pinterest, I plan to take bits and pieces from each image and add them to my scene to make my own environment

I like the style of the first one but it is less of a castle and more like a witchy house which is something else I am interested in so I was thinking of ways I could combine the two ideas.

I will explore this more when I do some concept sketches

I like the props in the third image and will likely use some similar ones in my final project.

I like the medieval themes in these references and will likely take components from each of them, I especially like the last reference because it shows a lot of props that i could create.

I really like the idea of procedurally modelling a water well and having a little courtyard in my final project with the well in the middle.

I like that the middle reference shows ways that you can modify models in Houdini and hope to explore that.

I really like this stylised look and I think it would be easier to model in this style for my first time using Houdini.

I also really like the storybook feel in the last image with the stylisation and the clouds and stars. I think this is an image that I will be using frequently to reference style as I really like how it looks.

Here is my initial sketch, I have separated all the individual assets that I would like to create, I am not expecting to create every single one of these before the final assessment but I would like to try.

The main features I would like to explore are the building as I believe there is plenty of opportunities for adjustments such as amount of windows, doors, height, amount of castle sections etc. This will be a great opportunity to really get a grip on how Houdini works and what it is capable of.

For my first assessment however, I wish to make simple rocks as my first asset.

During this week I will be exploring and learning to navigate Houdini, I want to try making something simple like a castle wall or a fence. I will be going through some beginner video tutorials to get an understanding of the workspace.

This week I started out by experimenting on my own before I found a helpful video explaining how to create a simple picket fence. I followed the video and was able to create a fully functioning asset which also could be useful later in this course. This also gave me a good understanding of how to navigate Houdini on a very basic level. I did not get to make a wall like I planned but I still developed some valuable skills.

Here I have attached a video displaying the assets and sliders added to make it adjustable.

Here's the link for the video tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRNlxz74suw

Here is the video showing my little play around before making the fence, I wanted to experiment with creating a simple tree and adding some very basic sliders, it didn't turn out very good though.

This week I will be working on my final asset for assessment 1, I have chosen to create a witchy tower based on my sketches from module 2.

I will attach a series of videos below displaying my sliders, I apologise for the lag in some of the videos my laptop started to struggle a little bit.

Here I have a video demonstrating my tower sliders.

And my roof sliders.

And finally my balcony sliders.

To create this tower I followed a tutorial from the side FX website then made adjustments to make it suit my concepts and style. I also added support beams to the balcony after recording my videos, I just added a check box to turn them off or on.

Tower video link - https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/lets-learn-houdini-fully-procedural-basic-tower-01/

I really struggled with UV wrapping as I found it really difficult to understand and I had to use a lot of trial and error, I still did not manage to get it right but I decided to go with the best outcome of all of my combinations that I tried. I found that a lot of the videos I found online were very confusing and hard to understand. I experimented with UV Unwrap, UV Flatten, UV Project, UV Layout, UV Transform and UV Texture.

Here's a screenshot of the UV wrap that I settled on, the squares all line up but there is nothing displayed on the UV view.

This is how I would like the tower to look in my final scene, I like the stylised look with the crooked roof and pinched tower. I feel like the bent roof resembles a witches hat which supports the witchy theme.

I personally found this assessment very intimidating, I have never used Houdini so it was hard to learn a whole new program but I am really happy with how the tower turned out and am feeling a lot more confident about procedural modelling.

I found lots of video tutorials to help me understand what I was doing but was also able to do a lot of experimenting on my own.

 I definitely see the value of learning Houdini and procedural modelling and I'm glad I've got the opportunity to learn such a useful skill.

This week I am finalising my UVs for my tower now that I have received help in class.

After receiving help from Sean I was much more confident working with UVs and was able do get it looking pretty decent.

This week I will be creating 1-2 new assets which include a tree and rocks.

Here's the video tutorials that I used to learn how to make the procedural trees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfTwUxAgJXs&list=PL5V9qxkY_RnKADzeqvS7tFh10ip3gBJJx

And the link to the rock generator tutorial:

This week I will be creating the house to be attached to the tower and also the door arches and doors.

I will also be adding UVs to all of my assets.

I would have liked to be able to give my bricks more of a worn down look but unfortunately my laptop could not handle it and kept crashing.

Complete UVs

(Not including first asset, also some videos were sped up due to really bad lag making the videos take forever.)

Fence

Rock Generator

House

Tree

Door / Archway

I feel so much more confident working in Houdini now and have noticed a massive improvement in my own skills. I am now able to make simple procedural models without a tutorial and can work out UVs without assistance. I found working with class mates and searching for solutions myself was a massive help. I also found it very helpful to help other classmates as I find teaching to be another way of learning. I found myself exploring a lot more during this assessment and really tired to develop my style and fit it into my models.

The main issue I faced during this assessment was limitations in my device as I was unable to make the bricks on my house and tower look textured and worn due to my laptop crashing which was unfortunate.

This week we went through Substance Designer and were assigned homework to create one texture for homework.

I decided to do a wood texture as my test texture as it seemed nice and simple to introduce me to substance.

This week I decided to sit down and pump out as many textures as I could throughout the week, I was able to solely focus on this assessment this week which gave me heaps of time to work on it.

I managed to make a rock, glass, stone/brick, foliage, grass and new wood variant.

Here's all of the tutorials I used to make my textures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5HZHA89teI&ab_channel=PixelFondue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rORePc5HuWs&ab_channel=DanielJRGameArt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_v-Rq1RYGs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK8g44sJ344

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mFNx_632xs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr5xutRazB4

This week I will be applying my textures to my models so that they are ready to compile in the final week to render. I will also be creating a terrain to place my scene on and I still have to create a texture for my roof tiles.

To start the week off I finished off my last texture, the roof tiles. I made two alternate colours as I originally had green but I thought it might clash with the green grass and trees so I made a purple variant.

I had to later adjust this to a single tile so that it would work with my model which was pretty upsetting but it sort of worked out. The only issue is I forgot to save the substance file so I don't have a screenshot of it in substance designer.

Video link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKtFzTkP5I0&ab_channel=brainchildpl

I had to play around with the colour of the rocks as the original was too dark so I changed it to a lighter colour as seen on the right image.

I am also not super happy with how the foliage texture turned out on the tree, I might go back and tune down the yellow colour a bit.

I had some trouble with my house and my tower, with the house, the texture was 2 dimensional and didn't look very good so I had to go back to my original house file that had actual tiles built into it, I then had to adjust my texture in substance to be a single tile.

I also played around with the colours a bit on the house because I wasn't super happy with the original.

As you can also see, the roof tiles on the tower do not line up properly, this would be a UV issue and I am in the process of fixing it now.

This week I will be compiling my models to create a scene ready to render, I will be playing with lighting and choreography to get my renders to look how I want them too, I will also have to allow a few days to render as my laptop is a bit slow.

I started the week off by making my models into HDAs and opening them all into a scene with my terrain. My tower is not textured yet because I need some help fixing the roof tiles, I just wanted to get an idea of how everything looks in the scene.

Here I have my re-modelled and textured tower roof.

And a comparison between the old and new towers, I decided to shape the new roof more like a witches hat to really push that witches' house concept.

Here's some screenshots of my scene all set up ready to render, I made 4 variables of my tree and used copy to points to scatter them around, I would have liked to have more trees to fill out the 'forest' but my laptop could not handle it.

I also got a bit creative with my rocks and flipped them upside down and used them as a little stone path which I thought was cute.

Final render 1

Final render 2

Final render 3

I am not overly happy with my third render, it is very over-exposed and glary, I didn't have enough time to do a new one though. I am really happy with the other two though they really set the mood how I wanted it with the night-time scenery. I wanted to have some variation with my renders so I did a low angle close-up, a mid shot from behind the trees so you could see the wood and foliage texture and a high-angle, establishing shot.

As stressful as this was I think that Houdini and Substance Designer will be incredibly helpful to me in the future and I'm so grateful that I hat the opportunity to learn it here even if it is just introductory level.