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TEXTURES AND LIGHTING MODELS

REPORT

(3000w. Max.)

Word Count: 1,681

Unit Lecturer: Mel Krokos

Assessment 2: create a realistic scene

By

Chris Westra – 370900

PART A – Lighting, creation and application

of materials methods.

PART B – Critical methods appraisal

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PART A – Lighting, creation and application of materials

methods.

As a set goal to create a realistic model using a real reference and

recreating it with textures and lights, I chose to recreate my current
room since it was an easy choice. This way I was right in the centre
of my model in reality so remodelling it in 3d wouldn’t be too much
of a hassle.

The first thing I needed to do was plan out how I was going to
undertake the task at hand. The first thing to do was obviously
provide myself with the sources and material in order to complete
the model. Having chosen to create my room I then took pictures of
the floor carpet, the walls as well as significant areas of the walls
with cracks or paint marks, the ceiling, door, window, as well as
pictures of the furniture. Having done that, next would come the
modelling of the room followed by the application of textures, and
finally the incorporation of lights, to finalize the model.

Modeling

To model the room I started by creating a box, considering that

the initial shape of my room in reality resembles a box. From there I
could easily apply modifications in order to obtain a near identical
shape of the room. I then converted the cube into an editable poly in
order to be able to perform the necessary modification to reach the
similarities desired. When that was done I selected all the faces in
the “face mode” of the editable poly drop down list, and “flipped” all
the faces. This way when the textures are applied they will be
applied only on the inside of the box and the outside sides of the
planes will be transparent when viewed from the exterior of the box.
I also included the wooden frames at the bottom of the walls which
go around the whole room and the door, which was given a door
handle very similar to the one in the real room.

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After having done the main shape of the room what was left to do
was create the props inside it: the furniture. Same as the room they
all are basically modified boxes, so I started by creating a box,
reshaped it, added more boxes and with this method I created the
desk, drawers, cupboard, shelves and night stand. Also I added a
cylinder, which was modified to be like the real one and create the
handles of those pieces. The last piece of furniture was the bed,
which was no harder being also a cubic shape however I added two
additional rectangular shapes which were applied with modifiers
that give them a roundness around the sides. This way I created the
bed along with the blanket and a pillow.

Texturing

To create the textures for the room I mainly used the same
method for most of the objects in the scene since they have the
same sources. However some other needed to be created from
scratch.

In the same way that I started modelling with the room, I also
started the texturing phase by that, which is the largest object in
the scene. The main texture in this case was the yellowish paint of
the room, so to create I took referential pictures of the walls in my
room which I then opened in Adobe Photoshop. The pictures with a
good view of the colour is what I used to create the diffuse map of
the walls. After that I needed to create the bump map. So taking a
picture of an area of the wall where there were significant paint
marks, cracks and whatnot, and then opening it in photoshop in
order to clean and remove colours by making it a greyscale image
and tampering with the contrast to get the right colour values for
the bump map. Then all that needed to be done was add them to a
texture in 3ds max, adjust any scaling and positioning values for the
tiling and the wall texture was finished.

By using this same method I applied textures to the wooden part

that surrounds the room, as well as the ceiling, the carpet and the

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wooden furniture. For the bed however, even though I used a bump
map issued from the picture I took from the real sheets in order to
get the sheet effect, for the colour I created a colour that resembled
the real one using the colour swatch in the diffuse option.

For the handles I created a custom metallic colour that is grey and
very similar to the colour of the real handles. And then finally I
created a transparent glass material for the window in order to
allow light to come from the outside and react like a real window,
from transparency to refraction and reflection. To create the glass I
used Raytrace.

Lighting

To create the lighting set I decided to follow through the 3-point

lighting taught within the unit.

So I first started by creating the light that would come from the
exterior and project to the inside of the room. So I created a “mr
Area Spot” and placed the target within the room and the spot
outside near the window. I turned on shadows and selected raytrace
shadows and also reduce the multiplier to 0.48, in order to reduce
the intensity of the light projected into the room. Finally I changed
the colour of the light projection to a very pale yellow in order to
simulate the colour of the sunlight.

The next light I created was a “mr Area Omni” which was
strategically placed near the window, this way it compensates to
the light that comes from the exterior and simulates the light
projected by each object without becoming a new light source. It
was also necessary to turn the shadows off for this light, so they
won’t interfere with the shadows created by the external light. Also
the multiplier was reduced to 0.2 so it wouldn’t be more intense
than the outside light.

The last light I created was also a “mr Area Omni” light, which
was placed at the top of the room in order to lighten up the whole

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scene and not leave it in darkness. Shadows are also turned off for
this light for the same reasons as the previous light, to not interfere
with the shadows cast by the external light source. The multiplier
on this one is also set to a very low value.

In addition, I created a sphere which would contain the whole

scene in order to texture it with a sky like material. This gives the
view from inside a sky to look at and also contains all the light
sources within the sphere and also restricting it.

PART B – Critical methods appraisal

Modeling

For the methods used to model the room I am quite satisfied as it

allowed for a clean results using an easy method and also obtaining
near realistic objects. However some objects lack detail, and the
scene itself lacks items with higher detail or smaller objects in
order to add some complexity to the scene.

Overall the techniques used to create this scene were satisfying

and easy to undertake.

Texturing

The methods I used to texture the scene were satisfying for some
objects or areas of the scene however, some others could use either
a different method or a more thorough use of the method to create a
perfectly fitting texture. For instance, the texturing method used for
the wall fits fine, as well as for the furniture. However, even though
the texture of the carpet looks quite realistic there are still traces
visible which show the tiling of the single picture taken, which in
the end reduces the whole realism of the photo considering the real
carpet shows no traces of tiling. The same issue happens on the

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ceiling however the white colour of the texture masks the tiling
lines so they are much less visible unless zoomed upon. Also the
ceiling isn’t an eye-catching source so it’s a lot less noticeable.

Another issue is the material created for the bed. The colour
although matching completely the colour of the real sheets, doesn’t
give the impression of being a proper bed sheet when it is rendered.
Perhaps using a different bump map or an additional channel to the
bump map already used could increase the realism and natural look
of the bed. The same goes for the pillow which is of the same nature
of the bed sheet.

The textures that were created from scratch seem to fit perfectly
to the role they are assigned to. Also considering that the handles of
the drawers and the door are small and thus not very visible, the
texture detail is very important. However the texture created for the
window which was created from scratch, has a very important role
within the scene. It is the gateway for the lights from inside to
outside and outside to inside. It must look realistic and window-like,
and that realism, has in my opinion been reached for the texture of
the window.

Lighting

For the lights, the methods I used have given suitable results in
order to reach the goal of realism. However the scene is very well lit
and thus has a very high brightness. Perhaps it is the nature of the
scene or just a too intense brightness, but I believe that some
darkness would benefit greatly to the realism of the scene. Also
some details that have been deemed unnecessary to be modelled
within the scene could have been potential light scene; objects like
a computer screen, an alarm clock.. Adding these would most
certainly add to the realism of the scene and create a more complex
atmosphere but also better and more satisfying result.

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