Building the Environment - Concepts

In response to the learning contract I wanted to further specify what type of environment I wanted to build. I want to convey an alien planet, with inspiration from the planet of Mars and Saturn's moon Titan.

I didn't want to concentrate too much on the terrain and modelling aspect as this project is mostly about the air, the atmosphere and the dust particles that make up the rest of the scene. However I did want to consider the colours and composition of the scene.

I put together an environment in Photoshop that I tweaked the colours of to see what would work. They aren't meant to be works of art but they are a good representation of the direction I'm aiming for.

I wanted to make a clear difference between the planet in its calm state and when the big toxic dust storm came into the scene. For the planet's calm state I think the colours that work best are the second two which are slightly more blue.

The yellow is too close to the orange-brown dust so it gives the impression things are already hostile, whereas the blue is a complimentary colour to the ground. The blue is also more representative of our own atmosphere which we already come to recognise as safe. I liked using the blue to hopefully make people associate the blue with "breathable" air.

This idea is also used in Total Recall (1990) but they use a very dark red to identify the hostile environment and the blue with the breathable environment.

The below concept is an attempt at showing the planet enduring a toxic dust storm. My environmental art skill isn't fantastic but it gives an idea of what type of additions I want to include that invade the calm environment.

Tool Interface

As I want the environment to be controllable by the user, a small scripted tool will accompany the scene. It will be used as a simpler way to interact with the variables in the scene and allow the user to set-up the environment to suit their needs.

I have created the interface in Maya and although not functional yet, it serves as a good outline for what options I want to have.

I've used frames in order to split up the various sliders. The environment controls will handle things like the time of day, and the properties of dynamics already in place in the scene (such as the vents of gas on the surface).

The storm controls alter the variables which will be used in the storm expression. The storm expression will be coded separately and will use the user set variables to control the attributes of objects in the scene.

Last semester I used a form layout to position objects on the interface. This time I have used frames which allows me to split up the sliders, as well as allow easy addition of new sliders into the window without the need for manually inputting form positions.

Most of the sliders will go from 0 - 100 for ease, the "Time" slider will probably go from 0 - 24 to represent hours of the day. I may change this to a simple day/night slider or restrict this to certain hours as I am not yet sure how I would move the light source around to achieve a day/night cycle.

The "Master" slider would remain at 0 by default, setting this to 100 is essentially turning the storm on and choosing its intensity.

Tool Interface Ideas

Part of the requirements for the brief is that some sort of scripting must be included. I've been thinking into how I would include this in my environment dynamics scene,

I have drawn up an idea of how I'd like to set-up my environment. I'd also like to allow the user to be able to activate the storm on and off via a separate window.

The interface could include sliders for things such as the time of day, intensity of the clouds and dust, or the turbulence and nature of any wind in the scene.

I am thinking about creating a storm script which would run off an expression. This expression would use the slider settings and generate the storm scene. The storm itself would likely be ramping up and down air turbulence, adding in sudden wind gusts and varying the degree of dust in the scene.

The tool and scene together would create a helpful tool for the user to set-up different scenes. For example if this was a CGI scene in a movie, the layout artist could quickly set-up how the weather is on that planet.
Unfortunately I don't think the tool could be used to dynamically change the weather in a scene. I would need to be able to bring in the weather from off-screen and more work would be required to get this advancing weather front to look natural. I will focus on purely allowing the sliders to set-up the scene beforehand where it looks good constantly playing. The storm script itself will vary the intensity based on settings.

Scene Composition

In response to the learning contract feedback, I needed a better plan of what sort of environment I'd be making and what would be included in it.

I came up with this quick sketch which identifies the different dynamic components that make up the scene.

In addition, I also considered how I may want to include the use of expressions and scripting in my project. An accompanying scripted tool that has control over certain aspects of the environment or attributes within the "storm" expression may help to give me a chance to script and also enhance the usability of the scene.

Particle Emitters

I've been playing around with particle emitters in the hopes that I can use them to add dynamics and visual interest to my scene. On my alien planet I'd like to have volcanic vents that rise up from the ground to give the scene some atmosphere. It would also interact with the air and forces can be applies during the activation of the storm.

In this particular instance the particles increase size over time. A 'Radius Scale' ramp is used to control this which helps to achieve the effect that the smoke is dissipating over time. This scale is also randomised to a small extent to reduce repetition.

I've also applied a "Volume Axis" field which applies turbulence to the particles as they enter the field. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between a volume axis field and an air or turbulence field is but it seems to do the job.

I will use something like this field that can be tweaked along with the storm controls.

Learning Contract - Feedback

I've received feedback for my learning contract submission.

The project aim and breakdown I want to achieve are within reason and the project seems to be relevant and complex enough to progress in. The project so far is a good start and I will definitely have a good amount of material to explore. Of course there are also a few things I missed out:
Further conceptual consideration should be addressed, for example, I will need to consider what kind of environment I want to make.
There is also an issue of my scope not being entirely defined, as in what I will be handing in at the end of the semester.

The feedback also states my project could benefit further from the "discussion between scientific data and creative license" and "whether there is a tension between realism and creativity being explored" or is it "utilising facts and data to inspire new (personal) creative approaches". I believe I have made a start in considering this, my blog posts so far definitely look into the science behind my creative approach but I would've benefited from further exploring this in my learning contract. I think I am on the right track here but can continue to look at the relationship between the realism and imagination.

From the feedback I've come up with a few points I will attempt to address:

• Scope - I'd like to aim for 2 rendered scenes. These 2 scenes will actually be from the same environment but with different weather situations.
• Video Report - My video report will include these renders as well as a walk through behind the scenes, and showing various other implementations and experimentations.
• Environment - I need to focus on what type of environment I'd like to create. In short, I'd like to create an alien planet that seems relatively calm but endures frequent dust/smog storms. I will create a blog post in the future to properly define what environment I will build.

Test Scenes

These are a couple of test scenes I've created which compiles the tests I've done on generating a volume of "atmosphere" and also the tests on creating clouds.

I created a simply terrain mesh and added a light, positioned a camera inside and it looks pretty good.

This is the same scene but at different times of day. I also tweaked the colour of the atmosphere and changed the position of clouds to make it look like time had progressed.