Developing a 3D Room

In the development of my room, I have had to research and test many different modelling, texture and lighting techniques to make it look realistic to my theme. My ideas and models have changed over the development of this room, but the feel of the room was the way i intended. Firstly this is what my room look liked at the half way point of the development. 

Not much. After I decided what additional assets I wanted, I started to plan out the colours and texture. I wanted an intimate room, but a mysterious feel to it. I decided on changing this current room. I removed the wooden border, shown above, and start design a wooden panel that could be placed around the room. The windows need a framework for inside the frame, also a door needed to be added. After these were made, I still needed more. the room looked bare and lacked personality. So I also made a desk, with a desk chair, dotted the walls with paintings, a diploma, a hat stand and a large marble vase. 

During the whole process of developing this room, I encountered many problems, which i will go into more detail. Firstly, modelling, I have had various problems with this. I wanted to add a series of wooden panels around the lower half of my walls to add detail and keep to the realism of the era. Using the sweep tool, I able to use a detailed border design, while being able to texture it. Below is an image of an early texture test of one of the panels.


One of the problem I encountered during the modelling of the room and applying textures. The problem was when I was applying textures to the walls, the textures would be different sizes and shapes according to the faces that they were displayed on. This happened from the boolean created when I made the windows and the door. This was quickly researched and when i found out that the boolean modifier is not right way to do this, i quickly changed the room and the solution was to create boxes and using the top and bottom segments to bridge from one box to another, and top only for the door way.

When I was applying textures to my floor and walls, or anything that was a big, flat surface, I played around the with specularity and bump maps. I wanted to create a realistic floor one that would reflect a small amount of light and have the definition, so it doesn't look just flat. After a few trials, I found out that having specularity on roughly 10% it didn't overdo it and added a nice effect. The images below show the difference it made. The top one was with the specularity map on 100% and the one at the bottom was the adjusted 10%.

After I decided what style of coat/hat stand I wanted, a problem quickly arose. How to get the legs and the hooks a equal distance and angle. After a quick search online, I found out how to use the array tool in 3DS max to change the angle which the hooks would be apart, all that was left was to align them to the centre. Add the left hand side there is a render of the final model.

Another modelling problem, just what I needed. Well this problem occurred when when i made the large window, and wasn't realised until I textured and rendered a test shot. I don't know what happened exactly, but after a few tweaking, I deleted the middle connections as it was 2 of the small windows joined together with 3 rectangles and deleted some faces, added a bridge modifier and problem solved.   

.

I had a few texture problems also, mainly to do with the bump and displacement maps. Firstly, the render crashed each time as the displacement map was set too high. After a quick change, this was quickly resolved, however, when the models were rendered, there still some bugs and some looked too unrealistic.

On the right hand side is 2 images of a textured and rendered desk, same textures but different values in bump and displacement maps. The first is set on 15% to 20% Bump and Displacement, as you can see, Parts of the wood stick out at weird angles and looks very rough, which is different to the reference image. So to keep the 3D look but remove that roughness, I lowered the maps to 5%, which keep a small amount of the detail. I think the final model came out well, however I still had problems with the top of the desk.

On the top of the desk I want a leather center with a wooden border around the edge. However, after several different techniques, such as multi sub object, adding a box in a hollowed out section, UVW unwrap, I came to the conclusion that it won't going to work. I either had to remodel, and somehow incorporate that design or get some professional help. However, I left it with a normal wooden texture.



Since my room is set in the 1920s and electric lights were used in rural towns and villages, I had to modelling candles. I wanted to create a realistic model of a candle, including the texture and the light it projects. Firstly, I researched how other people had made candles, most of the time people used 3D modelling software normally used in the industry, including, Maya, Zbrush, Sculptris and Mudbox. I used Mudbox. Exporting a cylinder shape as an .obj file and importing it into Mudbox. When it loaded I when into several sub-divisions and used the sculpture to create the hole left by the the burning wick and the melting wax down the side of the candle.


After I was happy with the finished model, I imported it back into 3DS Max. Then started to create a wax texture. I used Arch and Design, however there was no template for wax, I played about the reflectivity and glossiness to get that realistic wax look. 

After I was happy with the colour and the shine, I needed a flame and a light source. The flame was created using a plane and a image of a candle light, then using the cutout and lume glow modifier. I as able to create a realistic looking flame. After I finished it, I copied it and placed it 90 degrees from the center to create a cross, making it viewable from any position. However it didn't provide light to the scene. After a few searches online, and having no luck with finding as tips as to making a realistic candle light, I used trial and error to get the final product. The light is a free light, using online research to determine what colour the flame is, the kelvin, and the brightness it should be. I placed the light in the center of the 2 planes however the planes stop the light and cast shadows. Going into the object properties and turned off the 'Cast Shadows' and 'Recieve shadows'. After that I was left with this finished product.


After the candles were added to the scene, along with the daylight system, I started to find key areas for the candles to light up, as I wanted to give the room that imitate feel, which helped with the warm colours. After a few tries, it came clear that it didn't look right. So after a modelling a candlestick that attaches to the wall, I added these new lights along with a few of the free standing ones. The result was amazing, the candles attached to the wall, showed the details of the wall, additionally they helped light the paintings dotted around the room. I adjusted the lighting intensity of the candles to give a better coverage so the room doesn't have large areas of dark shadows. 

Finally, to give my room that last bit of atmosphere and time, I needed an background image to outside the window. First, I tried a plane with a photograph material, but it didn't look right and didn't cover every angle in the room. So I looked online and found a quick and easy way to make an image be the back ground of my scene. I simply added a photograph of a nice sunset that fit with the colour, time and position of my lighting. Then I used the environment settings to apply the map to the scene and it worked superbly.