This week, I mostly worked with xGen to procedurally generate our cityscape in Maya.  I also worked with Val to create the fur shader for Danforth’s hat.

xGen Cityscape

• Summary: I set up the foundation for our city in Maya’s procedural generation plugin, xGen.  It builds the city based off of a few input maps and some scripted rules; right now, it’s only scattering 5-sided cylinders but these can easily be swapped out for proper building models!
• Positives: The hardest parts of this are done.  I’ve gotten xGen stable, all values are in the right ballpark, and I’ve figured out how to export the resulting scatter as instances so we don’t need to worry about getting xGen to work on the farm.  What’s next is tweaking values and creating proper buildings to be scattered around the city.
• Negatives: xGen is possibly the least stable program I’ve ever worked with.  I averaged a crash every 20 minutes working with it, which is why I’m so keen on exporting as instances ASAP.  The sooner we’re not reliant on xGen, the better.
• Hours: 10

Fur Shader

• Summary: I’ve been working on creating the shader for Danforth’s Hat’s lining, which is supposed to be a dense fluffy fur.  I got it looking pretty good with displacements and a light coating of VRayFur, but it needs a lot of optimization to be viable for production.
• Positives: Got the look down pat, just need to make it faster now!
• Negatives: It’s slow.  Super-slow.
• Hours: 6

UPCOMING TASKS

1. Continue working with xGen to create the cityscape.
2. Optimize the fur shader
3. Start detailing  environments!