Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: City

Categories
Final Major Project FMP

Week 2: City Modelling in Maya

I tried to finish the overall city model this week to get it ready to start with the UV maps and texturing.

General city buildings modelling

I decided to make the general buildings of the city using some tools like ‘transform’ and ‘extrude’ to quickly generate random building shapes. I used the following tutorial as an example:

City Modelling tutorial (SYIA Studios, 2019)
I created a disc and reduced the subdivisions to have a irregular grid
I extruded the subdivisions to create the roads of the city
I extruded the subdivisions again but this time upwards to give some elevation to the terrain
I created some more subdivisions inside the current faces of the disc
I extruded the smaller subdivisions to give some separation between them
I used the ‘transform’ tool to give some randomness to the faces selected
I extruded the faces and, because I randomise them, these will elevate differently to create the effect of the buildings of a city
Top view of the buildings

Rocky base buildings remodelling

After modelling the city buildings, I noticed that the buildings in the rocky base were a bit off scale so I decided to remodel them and create a more cohesive design. I used the same technique that I used for the top city buildings, by randomising the faces of a cylinder and extruding them out. Then I picked a few faces I moved them inwards so it seems like entrances to the buildings or even garages for the flying cars.

Subdivisions created
Subdivisions reduced
Addition of more subdivisions within the previous uneven subdivisions
I deleted some random subdivisions to create more variety of shapes
Faces extruded slightly to give some separation between them
Transform tool to create randomness
Faces extruded
Random faces selected and moved inwards
Rendered view with rocky parts

For the bottom building, I tried to keep it simpler, and just extruded in the subdivisions (giving some separation between faces) and then extruded out some balconies. the bottom part has big doors as if they were entrances for big flying trucks.

Bottom buildings of rocky base
Rendered view with rocky parts

Skyscrapers and bridges modelling

To give some interest and variety to the city, I also modelled some skyscrapers that will be placed in the middle section of the city. I also added some bridges linking the lower buildings of the city.

Skyscrapers models
Skyscrapers models
City render view with skyscrapers and bridges added
Main view of the city to check balance of the design

City connections/pathways, entrances, & city barrier

Using the same technique I used for the rock of the city base, I created rocky connections between cities, with two main roads and a train track in the middle.

Stalactites made with ‘stamp’ tool
Rocky texture made with ‘stamp’ tool
Smoothed out the rocky texture and the stalactites length to create some variety in shapes
Render view of the city and the connections added
Render top view of the city and the connections added
Render view of the city base and the connections added
City entrances and barrier
Three connections created and attached to the city
Top view of connections and city

City details

Lastly, I added the city details like lamp posts, transit capsules, flying cars, cables, antennas, billboards, and cranes, to make the city more realistic and alive. I used MASH to help with the lamp posts repetition and with the flying cars positioning and animation around the city. I did not make many billboards as most of the advertising and signage is going to be holographic. Additionally, I remodelled the roof tops of the buildings with different shapes to give some variety to the overall look.

Big lamp posts for the city connections and small lamp post for the top city
Lamp posts added with MASH to quickly create a repetition of the object with equal distances from each other
Close view of lamp posts in place
Modelling of transit capsules to transport people between cities
Flying car bottom view
Flying car top view
Car simulation with MASH taking a torus as a base shape
‘Signal’ tool to create some variation in the cars movement
Flying cars simulation with MASH
I used curves to make the cables shapes
Cables between buildings
I also added some antennas and remodelled the roof tops of the buildings
Lamp posts added to the outside area of the city
Addition of billboards
Crane model
Cranes look on top of skyscraper
Overall look of the city details

References

SYIA Studios (2019). Maya Model a Simple City Quickly Tutorial (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2315V1g8fNw&list=PLAlv9GvsMvnMCUwPx_gcXaCj_yHYdIPqD&index=118&t=287s [Accessed 12 October 2023]

Categories
Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 2: Cinematography Foundation II

This week we continued with cinematography basics but this time more focused on video (moving picture).

A movie is a story told in pictures (moving images) which consists in capturing the light reflected or produced by a subject (exposure). In order to capture the amount of light desired, we will need to take care of the type of lens/optics of the camera (focus), the lens aperture (amount of light let through), the camera shutter (speed of aperture and closing of the lens’ blades), and the digital sensor of the camera that captures and process the light to store it in a digital file.

Depending of the exposure set, the image can be brighter or darker. Generally, the image should be balanced by the mid-tones. If there are too many highlights or whites the image will be over exposed and if there are too many shadows or blacks, the image will be under exposed.

In order to reach the desired exposure value (EV), we will need to take care of the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. With the ISO, we can change the sensitivity to light and can be measured from 25-6400 or more. The more sensitivity added, the more noise in the picture, so this only should be increased if really necessary. With the aperture of the lens (f), we can add more or less light as well as depth of field (DOF – focal point of an image). If the aperture of the lens is wide, the DOF will decrease (shallow) and more light will come through, whereas if the lens opening is small, the DOF will increase (deep) but the light that comes through will be low. With the shutter speed (how long takes to the blades of the lens to open and close, measured in fractions and seconds), we can expose the sensor to more time of light or less. With a fast shutter speed we can freeze motion in the scene, but with a slow shutter speed we will capture blurred motion instead (more light comes through). In cinema, this is measured in frames per second (fps – frame rate) and depending of how smooth we want the movement to be or more realistic we can make it higher or lower. Shutter angle is used to describe the relation between shutter speed and frame rate in cinema (cinematic motion blur), which has a golden rule that says that shutter speed should be set to double the frame rate.

Another important aspect to take in consideration is the type of focal lens used (distance between top of the lens and image sensor and measured in mm). The shorter focal length, the wider the angle of view and vice versa. Also, the digital file in which we export our video (MP4, MOV, AVI, ProRes, etc), will also determine the quality desired depending on where do we want to reproduce the final video (social media, TV, cinema, etc).

The assignment of this week is to shot 2 to 3 seconds videos from the city (using our personal phone cameras) and put them together in a short video (can add music too). As I live in Cambridge, I decided to show the life in this city which has a slower pace and it is not as big and noisy as it is London.

City life in Cambridge – Week 2 video assignment

Most of the scenery has been filmed with a long shot, since my phone’s zoom has a really low quality and it doesn’t look as neat. However, I tried to add a zoom in and I also used some pans following subjects in movement to give more dynamic to the video. I tried to use diagonals and leading lines in the composition of the frame to add some depth to the frame. Finally, I put it together in Adobe Premier Pro and colour-corrected it to have a consistent style.