Richard Vosper-Carey BA Hons CG Arts & Animation UCA Rochester Major Project The Toilet Terror

Project Details: A 15 week project to create and complete a narrative based 3D illustration. The toilet terror is an illustration based on a childs imagination of going to the toilet at night. Research: The illustration is set in the modern day, but pays home to the jazzy cartoon like style of the 60s. Some key influences for the project include the illustrative nature of Saul Bass, the innocent horror or Hitchcocks Psycho, and the jazzy feel of Pixars Monsters Inc. Art Work: The heart of this project lays in the design of each element in the illustration and their relation to each other. I began by designing the character for the project, which then went onto inspire the environment.

Modelling: I started the modelling process by creating some of the props which were going to be in the scene, such as the toilet and the sink. Each object in the scene has been created via primitive based polygon modelling. Once the low poly base mesh was in place, I then went onto unwrap the UVs, and smooth the object for a higher resolution. With the UVs already in place, and the object smoothed, I was then left with the simple task of re-projecting via a face selection in the UV texture editor, stitching together any possible seems, and arranging into the grid for a map to be exported.

Once some of the props were in place I then began work on the character of the little girl for the illustration. I started the process by blocking in a low resolution version of each body part - using a set of blueprints that I created whilst in the concept stage as reference. Once the low resolution model was in place, I then added in more edge loops for detailing, and used the sculpt geometry tool to smoothen out any lumps and bumps in the higher resolution areas. I modelled both the characters night dress and her body underneath, so that the option to use nCloth was available if so desired.

Once I had both the character and some props, using them as a guide for scaling purposes, I then went onto develop the rest of the environment. This was constructed using nothing more than polygon primitives such as the cube, cylinder, and plane. I followed the same pipeline to create the environment as I did the props, and set up the shot camera to get a rough idea of what would be seen in the scene. Once some of the props were in place I then began work on the character of the little girl for the illustration. The tentacle was one of the last objects to be modelled. I created the tentacle by

I created the tentacle by modelling just one segment, un-wrapping its UVs, mirrored on the Z axis, then again on the X axis. This allowed for the UVs to be unwrapped with ease, and also meant that the modelling process was sped up. I finished of the modelling but capping off the end with the fill hole tool, and added some more edge loops for definition.

Rigging: Both the character and the tentacle required a rigging system to allow me to pose the geometry to resemble the concept art. The tentacles rig features a lattice deformer which is smooth binded to a set of joints, which in turn are attached to an IK spline. The curve created with the IK is what is used to control the geometry via a set of clusters applied to the curves cv points. Using this technique allowed me to quickly set up and rig and pose the geometry without the need to apply weights to the joints. The same cannot be said for the character. The basic pipeline for creating a rig for animation was used, right up until the need to add controls. A set of joints where created, binded, and skinned with the addition of a jaw joint to allow me to add in the character throat. Once this was complete I then moved onto create a set of blendshapes to position the face.

Modelling II: Once the character and the tentacle had been rigged, I positioned them both, deleted their history and removed the rigs. Multiple tentacles were used to achieve the final position, as using just the one was not possible, due to the tentacle being too shot and too thin to make any sort of impact with the environment. The character needed some further sculpting to achieve a smooth, more refined model - this was achieved via lattice deformers, and the sculpt geometry tool.

Lighting: The lighting of the scene is one of the more refined areas of the project, as it includes an extensive set-up of mib_amb_occ nodes, ramp projections, directional lights, spot lights, and area lights. A two tone colour ramp is projected down onto the scene, which is plugged into a mib_amb_occ node, which is then plugged into the ambient node of a Lambert shader. This setup allows for the scene to be self illuminated, before the introduction of any lights, and also adds a stylised colour range which works well for the cartoon illustration.

A moon light has been replicated via a directional light which affects everything in the scene which acts as one strong light source. A spot light has also been created to replicate the interior light behind the camera which is also set to affect everything. This leaves just a series of meticulously placed area lights which act as bounce light, and also serve to create rim lighting. Each light was easily controllable via the light-centric linking editor, which allowed me to light separate objects in the scene using any number of lights, and not have it affect another area of the scene.

Texturing: The texturing and shading process was split into two main sections, Sub Surface Scattering applied to the character and tentacle, and some basic colour mapping applied to the environment. As the illustration is very style based, I did not want to work the textures too much and create a sense of realism within the piece that will take away from the cartoon based lighting. The skin shader for the character was created using an overall colour map, a subdermal map, and a scatter weight map. The rest of the shader was controlled via the generic settings. The tentacle also featured the Sub Surface Scatttering shader a colour map, bump map, and a water displacement map plugged into create the ripple like effect that can be seen.

Dynamic Hair/Fur The character hair was created using the dynamic hair system within Maya, and the rug in the scene was created using the fur system. The hair was created using some dynamic movement to get the base shape, I then went on to tweak each hair one by one for extra detail, as well as using some lattice deformers. The rug was created via a hair system which is being projected out of a plane with a texture map applied. A light and dark map of the same texture were plugged into the base and tip which were then baked onto the fur to achieve the coloured result. Some minor setting were then adjusted from scratch without the use of any presents. Both dynamics had a lighting set-up of there own which was rendered on a separate layer ready for comp in post production.

Render Layers: The illustration was rendered with a series of basic render layers, such as a beauty pass, ambient occlusion pass, a zdepth pass, an ID pass, and a pass for the hair and carpet. As the hair and carpet cannot be rendered as a beauty pass due to them not working in the light linking editor. They were set up on individual render layers, with a black hole lambert applied to everything else in the scene.

Conclusion: To finish off the illustration, some extensive post production work was created in Photoshop, my main attention was on pushing the lighting within the illustration further than what could be achieved in Maya. Overall I'm very happy with the final outcome of the project and look forward to pushing the what I have learnt this project further into the future.