Back in the day

When I was a young ling playing on Spyro gateway to glimmer on the Playstation there were calm places where you can collect a few gems/orbs and choose what level to do by running into the porthole, and each main place was named after a season, the first one you encountered was called Summer Forest, the next one was called Autumn Plains and the last one was called Winter Tundra.
All three of these places had a peaceful soundtrack, and what I want to do is create a song which is like this for my animation here are the three songs so you can understand what I mean.

Summer Forest

Autumn Planes

 

Winter Tundra

 

Picture Perfect

What I have accomplished in the last hour is making the animation for the Salts Mill which is now at 3000 frames and is a decent animation with the professional style of a slow moving camera circling the project twice before descending into the interior.
Because I have done the exterior and interior separately, due to having too many polys on both, then I came up with the idea of the camera viewing the building then finishing it once it reaches the door, then on the exterior make the animation start at the door.

My next task is to render out the 3000 frame long animation which I imagine, should take quite a while and once I've done that I will begin creating my interior animation.

The Green Green Grassssssssssssssss

Was thinking that the grass for my environment looked too smooth, dark, and too rich in Green, so what I did was add a grass texture onto the environment to get it looking even better than before, as well here are the rest of my renders I got today.

Let there be Light

Been fiddling around with the lighting for the past hour, what I am aiming to do is make get the light to cast shadows and make the environment nice and bright because what I'am trying to get is a peaceful scenery that gives off a warm summer feeling.

 These are the renders I got to show how many times I changed the lighting and the different angles I tried.

Changing my Mind as Frequent as Socks

Was thinking that the walls of the mill look too tacky so what I have don is changed it, this is what it looked like before.

This is what it looks like now.

And in all fairness I think that it is a massive improvement .

I Demand Land!

What I have accomplished in the last 30 minutes is making the ground for the model so it is no floating in mid air and looks more realistic, what you can't see here is the hills and bumps that surround the Mil, I have also placed a river going through like in reality but this one looks a lot cleaner and it's a river the real Mill has a canal but as I have mentioned before, this is my adaptation of the building that is only based on it, so there will be a few thing that are different but I can assure you that if I had plenty more time I would make it look exactly like the real thing, but this isn't far off.

This is from really far away to show you the rest of the land.

Every Creation Has Inspiration

What I need to do is get sound effects to go with the Salts mill video, I have already planned what will happen in the animation but for the sound I will have to look at a few professional examples before being able to decide what sounds I need.

žžhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o-rwNODTsU

žžHere is a example of the different gun sounds in the game Halo 4, all though I won’t be using gun noises I will be needing the correct music for the scenery.

žžHere is another example of what I could do with the sound effects,

žžhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZjrSoQRknc

žžthis is from the game Skyrim when you are walking through a blizzard in the wilderness, it give it a cold feel to the scenery when playing it and is quite effective for scenery sound effects.

žžMy scenery will be a fairly bright and peaceful scenery, so the appropriate music will need to be quite cheery.

žžhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuMRt_nwKIQ

žžHere is a Example from the Game Skyrim which uses this soundtrack when your exploring the land in the day time, especially when there are no signs of danger, it is used to mentally tell the player everything's fine and makes you feel more relaxed when playing.

ž

žSo what I intend to do is flex this to suit my needs, what I will need for my animation will be birds singing sound effect, a light wind sound effect for when the camera goes up into the sky to view slightly down on the building, I will also need the sound effects of an old door opening and closing for when the camera goes in to view the Interior, a hover car sound will be needed for when the camera goes into the showroom and a medium sized waterfall sound effect will be needed for the interior waterfall.

žI can get all of these sounds by using a portable recorder and a lunch time to go around recording all the necessary sounds.
žA idea I had a while ago was of instead of a camera it could be animated so its like a 1st person view and the person does a super jump in the air flying around the mill twice and landing just outside the front door ready to go in, adding sound effect before he jumps and when he lands, this is a Idea I came up with first but my animating skill are fairly rust so I’ll have to see what I can do.

The Dream Mill

Nearly finished with the Modelling all that is left to do is create a floor so it doesn't look like its floating, a front entrance with opening and closing doors, the canal between the tower and the mill. 

These first few pictures are in a certain order to show you which way the camera will be going in the animation when doing a 720 degrees spin around the structure.

From a different angle 

a side view showing the gap between the Main building and the back building where it will feature the canal.

Birds eye view of my almost complete Salts Mill.

I'm a Nice Guy

Finished the middle of the building, what I have done here is copied flat cubes around with the texture attached to create this, the reason with it being really basic is because before I was making too many polys which made the software crash multiple times, so this is a better way of doing it.

One Brick... Two Brick... Three Brick... Four

Added the chimney into my environment which was created separately then merged onto the main environment, the one thing that has changed is the Chimney base is a different colour, yet the outcome is better than before.

I'm a Environmentalist

After getting rid of all the individual windows I have been able to focus on getting my environment more complete, so far I have been putting my Tower into the scenery and extending the building, so far this is what I have done.

What I have done is made

Cracking on

Now that all the object are created I need to put them all together to create my environment, what I have finished is The Salts Mill Tower, Chimney, Interior and changed a major fault which was me being stupid and creating individual windows which became a huge problem making the computer go really slow and crashing majority of the time, so what I decided to do was delete all the individual windows and add a texture onto the walls which made it look better and it runs a lot smoother now.

Before
 As you can see its really tacky and unrealistic, even in this render there are way too many polys than I need

After

Straight away it looks a lot better, the roof is made up of two flat boxes and two pyramids, it has also escalated my work speed making it more possible of meeting the deadline.

Even Better Than Grand Designs

Finished putting the textures in my Salts Mill Interior model.
This is the Main entrance and the first thing you'll see when entering the building, obviously it will have a roof just better for showing this way.

Dining Area

Was made by shaping boxes to get this basic look .

The bedroom and bathroom are just a couple of features that I added into the interior just for comfort reasons.