This week for our development we focused on refining the Balloon from last week. We examined how to use hypershade’s node system along with bump maps and downloaded textures to add detail to existing objects through texturing. This mostly came through in the addition of nicks and scratches in the hoses and burner chassis and metal parts.
In addition to this I remade the ropes to make them look thinner and more realistic. Along with that we added further detail by giving them a realistic looking point to attach to the balloon. Previously they disappeared up into the balloon itself but now using polygon primitives and bend tools we created rings to wrap the ropes around and bind them.
Lastly we set up a small turntable animation for the balloon to rotate around in 3D space and to render it out as a .exr sequence to use in our Nuke class for our rotoscoping training.
As a clever trick as I was running out of time to add any more details I made small tubes that go into the bottom frame and have the ropes feed into them. This way it does actually look like the ropes are attached to the frame by appearing to enter the frame itself.