Location! Location!

This project entailed us to recreate a scene from a book description.  I chose The Hall of Elrond from The Lord of the Rings.  I had changed this from The Hobbit Hole from The Hobbit and then from the Dragon's lair from the same book.  I then went on to sketching ideas as well as a perspective sketch {to both be scanned in and added} of what it would look like from my imagination rather than from the films which helped me design everything in 3D.  I knew that the setting was from the fourth age so I looked at old styles of buildings, furniture and cutlery which helped me again to design objects to place into the interior.  I created mood-boards of my findings.  The description included things such as the great chair for Elrond sits on a dais, a chair where a woman sits under a canopy, against woven cloths upon the wall and at the time, they were at a feast therefore I set it just before the feast.  The interior would be fit for a king therefore I included other aspects such a large painting of the king, fire places behind the great chair and candle chandeliers.  In another scene, they were entering another room and it describes the type of doors.  I also put a theme of red and beige marble to fit this theme.  For more inspiration, I looked at church interiors as I decided that it would replicate this quite a bit.

At first, I had practiced modelling several things and some of these such as the vaults and the columns which I then developed into the rest of the interior and I included in the design as these were very similar to what I had designed for my interior.  I then looked at the design of the chairs I had created and modelled these as well as the cutlery.  The modelling of objects I found very easy to do as I've had a lot of practice to do this.  I used other techniques from previous projects to model these such as the lathe modifier for the goblets and plates and new techniques such as the loft tool for the chairs. 

After modelling everything, I applied textures.  I used the textures which I had photographed myself apart from the painting of Elrond.  I had used the channel mixer on Photoshop to apply different shades of the same material such as the marble and the wood.  I found the texturing easy to do although I feel I should have perhaps altered the marble effect on the stained glass frames and fire place frames a bit more to make it accurate.  I also feel I could have made my own stained glass design as I used one from the internet.

For the lighting, I wanted to achieve an evening glow with mainly firelight.  I feel I could have used more of a moonlight feel through the windows but this wasn't so much of an issue.  I had used a lot of lighting and I should have used a volume effect for a natural glow.  I should have also used Final Gathering which I had applied on my still renders rather than the clip as this showed better lighting and it looked more finalised.  This however would have taken a long time to render and it was already taking between 3-9 minutes per frame depending on the scene.  I reduced this problem by reducing reflectivity on the marble effect as this caused it a lot.  I feel by doing this, the reflections looked more realistic and I compared it to my own fire place at home which is where the texture was taken from initially.

The rendering of this project took a long time and I had to use 2 machines and cut some scenes short so that it would be done on time.  The end result however was still visually done well and I am satisfied with it.  I will need to find out ways to shorten rendering times but maintain a high quality for future projects of a similar nature.

Location, Location!

For this visualisation project, I will be modelling a scene from a book.  The book I have chosen is The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien.  I have chosen to model the hobbit Bilbo Baggins' house.  He lives in a hobbit hole.  Here is a passage from the book that I have chosen to model by:

Page 3

Chapter 1

An Unexpected Party

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.  The door opened on a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors.  The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill – The Hill, as all the people for many miles called it – and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another.  No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

Because the hobbit hole is underground under a hill, there will be a lot of Earthly colours and dull shades which is what I have included in my colour palette.  Bilbo Baggins' is the name of the hobbit.  From his character, he is a very tidy person therefore I have chosen to make the interior very clean cut.  I initially drew out in perspective, what I thought to be the interior described in the book and then discovered an image of the interior in the book.  I will use this as the basis for the character description with the other items placed in the room as these describe Bilbo Baggins' personality and traits.  I will draw sketches of these items and then include them into the interior. 

I will also find other passages from the book that may describe the other half of the room and use my imagination from the character to create this section.  This will ensure that I can show more areas. There is a passageway that leads to the rest of the house and there are no stairs.  I feel that all of the furniture is wooden and he has a fair few chairs scattered around the room as he likes to have guests.  These I feel, as well as the rest of the furniture, will be antique style and have fine wooden carvings.  The shade of wood I will be using for these objects will be Light Mahogany or Dark Mahogany as these shades give an old style finish and feel to the furniture because of the finer streaks within the wood.  I feel that he would have a book shelf full of books as he seems like an intelligent character and somebody that likes to have them to fill up the room.  

The flooring of the room is tiled and flat.  It has a rug in the centre which makes the room look more tidy and cosy.  The structure of the room is a tunnel underground therefore there would have to be a strong structure where it holds extremely well.  The wall panels and the wooden beam structure around the tunnel would do this and it would have to be quite evenly spaced out.  The colour of the wood will be the same as the rest of the room's furniture and the panels plane.  This gives it an antique and tidy look to it which complements the rest of the interior and the character.

This room doesn't have any windows therefore the lighting of this interior would be from what I presume lanterns or more probably candles if the front door is shut as these would be more suited to the time period and style of the book.