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Virtual Environments - Finished Lair

Untitled from TomNTU on Vimeo.

Well this is my finished Lair, i think i have come a long way, i will update this with a 500 word rational evaluation !!

Visual Essay

After about 60 hours and over 100 images, i have finally finished my Visual Essay..i think. I'm really happy with it, considering a week ago i really had no idea of what i'm going to do or even what practitioners i'm going to use. I've always known what pathway i will choose but had no idea of how i'm going to show it.
I really enjoyed doing it, the research stage was the most time consuming part, having to look through so many artists and designers to find someone that i want to put my thesis across.
I haven't uploaded for copyright reasons...

Superhero Lair Research

Been looking a few diferent lairs for some inspiration on my own. I think im going to be going very close with the batman themed lair. To have rocky walls and staligtites hanging from the ceilings. This is going to difficult but i feel the 3DS MAX modifiers will help along the way.

Firstly, Dagobah;

Dagobah is a little-known, rarely visited swamp planet located in the Sluis sector of the Star Wars universe. Filled with foul-smelling swamps, twisted gnarltrees and dangerous creatures, on the surface Dagobah makes an unlikely home for our number one secret headquarters.

This would be difilcult to replicated but i like the idea of winding trees and swamps to create a lair.

Fortress of solitude;

It has pretty much everything going for it as far as secret headquarters go. A remote location in the Arctic region, just 130 miles south of the North Pole. A structure built into the face of a steep cliff. A locked front door which requires a massive key that only the Fortress's owner (or one of his fellow Kryptonians) can lift. And of course, the best security of all, Superman, who calls the Fortress of Solitude his home away from Metropolis. The Fortress contains living quarters, a gymnasium, a laboratory, an interplanetary zoo, all manner of extra-terrestrial equipment and various trophies of Superman's many accomplishments, one of which is the bottled Kryptonian city of Kandor. Superman rescued the city after Brainiac shrunk it down to microscopic proportions and has since kept it safe in his Fortress. There's even a top-floor observation deck and an entire wing reserved for Supergirl. Superman keeps his playthings here as well: a hyper-intelligent chess-playing robot, an oversized bowling alley and a gigantic diary made of steel which Superman writes in with his super-fingernail. In the loneliest place on Earth, Superman has carved out a familiar and welcoming home for him to take refuge in when he needs to think. While lesser heroes are forced to work under uncertain circumstances on rooftops and below the streets, Superman can rest safely knowing that his Fortress of Solitude is just a short flight for him from anywhere in the world.

The infamous Batcave;

There are few super-hero hideouts which are both better-known and better-appointed than Bruce Wayne's Batcave, located far beneath his Wayne Manor family home. The mansion itself is one of the most magnificent homes in all of Gotham City, but it's the underground lair of Wayne's superhero alter-ego Batman which truly impresses. Batman has slowly expanded his base of operations over the years; what was once just a simple underground tunnel which ran between Wayne Manor and the barn where Batman kept his vehicles has now become a multi-room fortress, complete with a crime lab, extra costumes, replacement gadgets, a gymnasium, a library, vehicle parking/docking/hangar spaces, medical facilities and a technical workstation for the design and creation of more gadgets. There are several entrances to the Batcave: a secret door inside of Wayne Manor, a chute beneath the desk chair in Wayne's office at Wayne Enterprises, an old well just outside of Wayne Manor and a holographic wall which leads out to a well-concealed road (for ground-based vehicle access). The centerpiece of the hideout however is a massive supercomputer from which Batman monitors the ebbs and flows of Gotham City's criminal population when he's not out patrolling the streets.

I'll be taking many idea's from this the most as its exactly how i want mine to be. I won't make it quite so big and make it a bit less roomy. But my intentions of a dark place and being scared are emphisised throughout my lair by the grungyness.

Crab Key Island;

The secret underground lair of Dr. Julius No. The structure offers all of the trappings which are typical of a super-villain's secret base: an on-site nuclear reactor, an imposing reception room, a mechanized underwater vehicle which resembles a dragon, an extensive network of ventilation ducts and a shark tank, complete with a convex window for magnifying the action within. And don't forget about the resident super-weapon, the aforementioned radio jammer which is capable of knocking out missile and satellite launches.

I will finally take somes bits from this lair as inspiration. I want mine to be very imposing and scared, that of Dr. No's entrance room does. If i get time i may also introduce a shark tank of some sort.

Its all well and good getting lots of inspiration from this superhero lairs, but lets just hope i can apply that in 3DS max.

HOLD TIGHT HENRY

I'm not following through with doing film, nor do i enjoy doing, yet i really appreciate a decent short film, NOT what 'urbanangel's' work that we had a 2 hour lecture on, sorry.

Found this cracking short by Henry Edward-Wood, filmed and edited by. Found his website, and his about me is just how i thought it would be, and would be the route i went down if was to do film.

Quality is top notch and the pans are second to none, considering i doubt any technology was used but a skateboard on rubber wheels and a camera.

Enjoy.


MPORA Action Sports >>

Mile End's amazing new park is definitely the London hotspot of the summer. To celebrate it's brilliance Kingpin bring you some of London's finest doing the park justice. Featuring Shaun Witherup back better than ever after a major knee injury, alongside, Will Harmon, Neil Smith, John Tanner, Scott Howes, Rob Mathieson, Sam taylor and others.

Material Editor

Lesson 3, and i'm slowly loosing the plot. I just can't get my head around the program, i really thought i would pick it up really easy. Any way, learnt material editor, this is very powerful, and if you know how to use it properly you can get some fantastic results.

Here are my attempts;


Above is my name printed on to the building, i used the same material as the building, a concretey material.


This shot shows the interier that is a wooden floor.


Finally an overview of the whole building. Background was a image i got from the material library and the floor was a sand gradient.

A lot more practise needed me thinks.

To finish, here is a great graphic designer i found, sadly the captions are in a different language but i love his/her work.

3D Studio Max Progress..

Made my way to Uni today to use the dreaded PC's. First misstake, using the wrong computer room that didn't have 3D SMax, but then finding some that do with dual screens. Well i just re-did the first lecture material, so started off with making a base for my apartment. Then extruding the walls. Also using the slice tool to create a door way;



Then i went on to slice some windows and cut them out. Once getting the segment heights correct, i could ensure the windows were the same height all the way round the building;


Then i went on to use the second week tutorial to make four corners to the floor and extrude 4 legs from them to make a elevated apartment. Also i added in some simple stairs;


Finally came to making a spiral stair case to the top floor balcony;


Troubles that were had is knowing the sizes of stuff. For example once the apartment was elevated and then coming round to putting the spiral staircase in, i didn't know how high to make it. I wanted it to stretch from the bottom floor to the top floor, but i wasn't sure on this exact height. I think a lot more playing with this program would be helpful, because i don't seem to be getting the hang of it that well.