The Mushroom Kingdom Has Risen

Finish Finale

          The end has come to my project at last. I am excited to see the final project after an entire semester! There was only one real purpose for this project and that was to practice my texturing even though my textures on the mushrooms are just solid colors. However, the textures on the ground, the rocks, the doors and windows, and the grass look really good in my opinion. But alas, let's just put that aside for a second and move on to other thoughts.

The Creation

          All right, so in the beginning of the year, I had no idea what to create for my semester project. It needed to be simple enough so I wouldn't stress and cram it all into three quarters of the year (like last year...) and it needed to be complex enough to possibly place in the top five for eMagine in April. I thought of all of these cool projects I could do like a Native American campground, a campsite, an enchanted forest, a carnival (which I plan to start on next!) or even a kitchen. The thing with most of these ideas was the fact that they were all too simple or too complex to finish within a semester. Then the next thing I thought of was Mario Kart on the Wii and the one race track map called "Mushroom Gorge", I thought I could do mushroom houses! It was simple enough to complete within a semester and nice enough to enter into eMagine. It was a perfect idea. So I got started right away and made nine mushroom houses that were each a different color and each had their own uniqueness. Building the Mushrooms was the easy part and more of the fun side of the project, and then came the downside of the project. I had to create the ground, grass, big rocks, flowers, and all that jazz to add some shine to the project. Texturing and creating that is easy but when you get to the texturing part, it gets a little dull and boring and it almost wants you to not finish it. However, I am a committed person and I wanted to just get it over with. Next was lighting (my second favorite part of all of this) and it was quick and easy yet exciting to work on all at the same time! Lighting just brings all of project together and really makes the project look nice. It's amazing what good lighting can do to a project. Lastly I had to set up cameras and render out all two thousand frames. The rendering is the worst part of it all because I have to stay after school really late and do nothing. The good thing is though, it all comes to an end and you have a good project!

The Learning Part

          A few things I learned on the way were mainly technical related. I learned the most important thing on this project and that was texturing. Texturing is just as important as modeling because it adds so much to the project; there really wouldn't be a project without texturing. Not only did I learn about texturing, I learned the more in depth stuff in texturing like the alpha gain and the coloring portion of it. I also learned a little more about lighting since I had to really focus on lighting unlike the last project I worked on. I learned that with some lights you have to have more than one light or else the shadows will just be completely black and you wouldn't see any texturing in that shadow. Other than those two things, I didn't really learn much from this project since I learned a lot last year both technically and professionally.

Repeating and Changing

          There are a few things that I would change about this project but I sadly do not have the time to change these few things for now. The main thing I would change would be the option to put trees around the grass that's around the village to make it seem like the village is not out in the open or in the middle of nowhere. Usually mini villages are more discreet and are hidden amongst plant life. Another thing I would like to change would be a different design to the mushroom houses to give them more of a variety because a lot of them are alike. There are also a few things that I missed when creating smaller things like the kitchen sink in the blue mushroom house. The sink in there has a sharp edge to it and I just forgot to use the bevel tool to make it smoother along the edge so it doesn't look so sharp. Other than those three things, everything else is really good in my opinion.

          The main thing I loved about this project and would definitely keep the same would be the texturing and the coloring. I absolutely love the colorfulness in my little village, it has a lot of character to it and really brings it to life. Color can do a lot for a design and when I see lots of different colors, it gives it uniqueness and makes it seem different than others (to an extent.) I also really love the types of textures and the things I textured in my project. I textured the grass, ground, pavement, fences, doors and windows to give it a realistic look, but then I colored the actual mushrooms just a plain Lambert color that didn't have any texture to it. I chose to give it this because I wanted to make it realistic but also cartoon-y at the same time.

For the Future

          This project was meant to focus on texturing as I said in a previous paragraph so I would mainly draw experiences from texturing to apply to my next project. I learned how to control the textures more and give them a specific look that I like, so I was able to make the textures (especially the pavement) look more realistic looking and that gave the environment a more believable feel to it. I also learned that I might take the Lambert textures and put them with realistic textures to give it that realistic, yet cartoon-y look or feel to them. Those are the two main things that I will definitely take with me so I can apply them to my projects in the near future.

In the End

          Overall, I believe that my project turned out great. It didn't turn out how I expected it to be, but it definitely was worth my time and was one of my best and most colorful creations. I did come across some problems along the way such as texturing and figuring out how I could make each mushroom house different, but I figured it out in the end. This may seem like a simple project, and it was, but this project is simple enough that it is a great creation. My favorite thing about this project is the idea simplicity but yet there is great detail in the texturing that make it more realistic. In the end though, I had a great time creating this project and will use my experiences and new abilities that I learned from my instructor in the future for other great projects to come.

Note to Reader: This project did not take and entire year to create, it only took me the first semester of senior year but I got busy again with another project (which I will fix and post about soon) and didn't finish and post this project until the end of second semester of senior year.