Final Major Project.
For my Final Major Project for my Masters, I decided to create an environment of a 1930's circus and freak show. This is my first full scale environment, and I chose to do this because I really enjoy asset creation, and wanted to be able to place characters and props into a proper environment.
I knew that I wanted a couple of characters in my scene and I really wanted to practice and improve on my character design and creation, and so created 3 characters for this project. I chose to create a trapeze artist, a ring master, and some conjoined twins.
I started off by modelling some of the bigger props, like the wagons and the posters, and then went on to create the circus tent itself using the wagons as a scale indicator. I also sculpted one of the characters in this time as well, who was added into the scene as an extra scale indicator.
The circus tent was originally intended to be a one peak tent, but I was struggling to keep the scale consistent, as the inside felt far too small, and so decided to widen the tent and make it a two peak tent.
After modelling and texturing the tent and the structural aspects of the scene, I took it all into 3ds Max, to complete the layout and start lighting the scene. I also began to add in all of the props and the characters into the scene, and finish texturing all of these.
I knew that I wanted a night time scene, and so would be using a lot of artificial lighting in the scene. But I used a Vray Sky light and later added an environment map which I used to darken the scene to night time. I also initially intended on using Vray Fur for the grass, but then decided against this and instead chose to use a grass image as the base, and add in grass alphas in certain areas later on, so that I could have more control over the look of the scene. I also chose to add in some dirt alphas (that need tweaking) to show a run down path leading into the tent.
The main area that needed a lot changes is the inside of the tent. The lighting needs to be fixed, and some texturing also needs changes, as it looks rather low resolution. For the inside of the tent I would love to add volumetric lighting, as it will show the spotlight areas really well, because I feel like at the moment they look rather flat.
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The wagons and crates are placed at the side of the tent, out the way a bit, and so I decided to add in some lighting to these areas through camp lights, so they could be a bit more visible.
This was a very big project for me, incorporating many different aspects of animation that I have learnt over my 4 years of education. Overall I am happy with the result, as I pushed myself to achieve my goals of creating some good quality stylised characters, a larger and more realised environment than my previous work, and better lighting to amplify a mood.
In the future I would like to re render this piece, with a smoother camera and more focus on certain areas, as there are a lot of props and details that are barely visible in this video which I spent a lot of time and effort working on.