My First Project

[Aetius]

Hey everyone, trying to get some tips with this little job of mine. I'm a student out here in LA, and a friend of mine is wanting the Parthenon to be in his introductory-film-company-sequence. I took up the offer and now have gotten a little ways into it, but since I'm very new at Maya, I'm really needing some help. I tried using one of DT training DVD's but it keeps crashing on me, and it's not even scratched, that's why I'm here on the forums.

Here's what I have so far as far as attachments go.

What I need help with now is:

1. How to make the middle triangle missing from the ceiling parts
2. How to set up a light that looks like it's night time.
3. Create a fire effect in the center of a fire brazier I'm going to create
4. How to set up a camera so that it will zoom through the building itself, and end somewhere in the back.
5. (Extra Awesomeness) Create the words "Athena Films" just about the fire brazier mentioned just above with shading.

I know that seems like a lot but I just need little tips/hints here and there of how to do it, I'll put in the hours to make it happen.

:)Thanks for any and all help!!:)

[dekmar3d]

For the camera I would animate one attached to a curve. Use a camera with aim to be more precise.Paint effetcs has an ok fire preset but it is slow to render. Using colr in your lights (blues) will create the nighttime feel. BTW here is the Partenon Ive been working on. I need to finish the top relief and the statues on the roof.
You've chosen a pretty complicated piece of architecture use alot of reference.

[Aetius]

Haha, wow you 1up'd the hell out of me just now Dekmar3d, but I appreciate both users advice here, I'll be sure to get started on this again soon!

[DjVoyager]

Aetius, your thread has been moved to Member Projects general area since this forum is reserved for projects relating to August's theme.

[BlackDeath]

For the fire effect I would use Maya's fire effect which found in Dynamics --> Effects --> Create Fire. It is more nicer than paint effects.

[Aetius]

Hey everyone thanks for all your posts, but now I'm needing some creative feedback. Attached is a sample of what I've done so far, but I need to know just a few more things. Some of these have been answered before but I still how to make:


1. A night sky background, with the moon, if possible. (I tried google searching for a HDRI that was of just stars, but nothing came up and those images of stars that did come up didn't work to well, in that, they became burry whenever I attached them to an NURBS and/or polygon sphere large enough to encompass my entire landscape.)

2. How to actually make the final "movie" part of it. I have a vague understanding that I need to create a camera, and create key frames, but is that all there is to it?

Thanks for any and all help. Again I am pretty new to this so any descriptions of how to do things would be most welcomed if they were in the format of " do this--->then this--->then this " like BlackDeath has done above.

Thanks everyone!

Aetius

[ahiles]

Regarding the night sky, its a little more complicated than getting an HDRI image and the just mapping it onto the back, the image u are using gets hazy due to the fact that u dont have the proper resolution image for the resolution u are rendering in.

Rearding the lighting u are going for a ngiht time look, so the saturation of colours will be high therefor u want to create a directinal light for the sky and a directinal light for the sun. Damn of to the gy back soon will add more on the lighting.

[amazing]

Good work man!

You are lucky that people answered you.. in 3Ds max forum.. no one ever answers my questions... it's a kind of graveyard there...

[brandeil]

U also need to find a higher rez picture if the ones u have go blurry, best thing to do is take your picture of the sky. U still working on the textures on your temple ? bumpmaps?

[Aetius]

Haha thanks Amazing, sorry to hear that you're not getting your questions answered, tried any other strictly 3D max-based forums?

Brandeil, I would take a picture of the sky and use that, that's a good idea but I'm a college student living in LA with just a bike so that's almost impossible to find a place that isn't completely lit up with city lights close by. Not only that, but the best kind of photos I'm looking for are ones taken by the Huble. Also on your post, I would like to keep working on textures, but since I'm new, all I've been able to do is just completely random, basically finding and image on the internet and tweeking it until I say "yeah that looks good." I've heard of those maps before, but don't even know what they do, where to find them in Maya, how they work, and so on...

Should I just make a plane large enough and map an image to that?

Aetius

[brandeil]

Try finding stuff here;
http://www.mayang.com/textures/

[chrisg]

those images of stars that did come up didn't work to well, in that, they became burry whenever I attached them to an NURBS and/or polygon sphere large enough to encompass my entire landscape.

Were they just too small? Try turning off 'filtering on the 2DTexture node.

[Aetius]

Yeah they probably were too small, and where do I find the 2D Texture node? I know I've seen it before but I'm not for certain where it is exactly. By the way thanks for the link Brandeil.