3D Backgrounds

For Kiwianna, I decided to have 3D backgrounds for all of my shots. I used Maya to model the backgrounds. I wanted all the backgrounds to have a bit of a 2D look about them. I started off by modelling Pipi's house and garage (interior and exterior), complete with fences, driveway, footpath, mailbox and lawns. I textured everything with lamberts as I was intending on using the vector renderer in Maya which has an option that you can add in outlines to give it a more cartoony, 2D look. To make this happen each piece has to be a seperate plane so that the outline will automatically put itself around the edges that you want outlined.

Pipi's house and garage modelled in Maya and textured with lamberts.

The next scene I modelled was Terrence's (the old man) house with a front white picket fence, footpath and back fence using Maya. I also textured each plane with lamberts just like the previous scene.

Terrence's house modelled and textured with lamberts in Maya.

The last thing I modelled in Maya was a scene with a road works sign, road cone and "closed for maintenance" sign that are blocking a pathway. These were all textured just like the previous two scenes.

Road works, road cone and "closed for maintenance" sign modelled and textured with lamberts in Maya.

I modelled each scene and textured them all in the same way. Then I moved the camera to the appropriate place in scene to match the shot that I had drawn into my storyboards/animatic. Once I had the correct composition, I rendered the scene using Maya Vector renderer. Maya Vector render only uses point lights for lighting anything in the scene. Also if the ambience of the lamberts was a darker shade, it would show up as a dark shaded colour in the render. I had to change some of the ambience settings on some of the lamberts to make them show in the render, especially the darker colours. I also had to put point lights in to help lighten up parts of the scene. Once the scene was the way I wanted it, I saved each render as a targa and then imported these scenes into the correct Toon Boom Harmony scenes.

The next thing to do is to put the correct characters into each scene and position them into the right place in the appropriate background/scene.