This month we blocked out large and small assets, and used the "3" method to smooth out edges. That is to say, rather than beveling, like 3D Fundamentals, we placed our own holding edges around our props to improve edge quality. This was more difficult to achieve at points because, with complex shapes, if you have extra faces or vertices the insert edge loop tool doesn't work all the way. This makes things difficult at times, but can help you identify illegal geometry. The hardest part about this month though was that for some reason my append to polygon tool wasn't working, and this made it extremely difficult or impossible to make a lot of the props. Upon doing some research, I only found two threads discussing that problem, and neither had answers. After we blocked out four assets though, we put them in a final scene.
This is table two of my large prop designs. It has 24 different screws on it, and the metal supports on the bottom go through a hole in the wooden support like they would on the actual table. This week helped me learn the importance of modeling realistically and with pieces, like how something is made. Each prop took me at least 3-5 hours to make, some over two days because of my retail ob. But I'm happy with all of them.
This is the final scene for this week. It has the two tables, the chair, and a shelf. Next week we'll be making smaller props to place as a still life on our larger props, and we'll also be UV mapping them for textures. I'm really excited to get started this week, and hopefully my geometry is okay to map.
The horseshoe and it's UV's. This maybe took me an hour and a half to make and an hour to UV. It's one of my cleaner assets, and Maya shut down on me while I was making this, just as I was finishing up with the modeling. The force quit took me back to when I was putting the very first holes in the horseshoe, and for that I was kind of furious. If you don't learn patience by modeling, I don't know how you ever will.
This delightful little shield was easy to model, but the baking for normals added way more time onto it's production than I would have liked. for modeling and UV's, this only took me an hour or so, but the sculpting in ZBrush, plus making the alpha of the lion, probably tacked on a few more hours. I found a lot of my time is used by trial and error rather than actual modeling. I decided that for this week, I'd do an easy prop, an intermediate one, and then one that seemed difficult in some aspect to me.
The snake candle was my "difficult" prop. Mostly because of the snakes and getting them to correctly wrap around their base. for the snakes though, I used the create CV curve tool on the front orthographic view, lined up the curve to the reference, and then tweaked it in perspective to wrap around the candlestick which I had already modeled. Then, I duplicated it and scaled negatively to appropriately match the other side. This prop, plus baking, took me four to five hours because of tweaking.
This is Edward's sword. Who is Edward? I don't know, but his name is engraved on the blade. Modeling was about an hour, Zbrush maybe another. I loved modeling this sword, mostly because instead of placing some boring little swirly shield alpha on the ball at the end of the hilt, I sculpted a little unicorn in the shield instead. Probably my favorite part about this week's props.
The little vase was fun. Joe helped me out with learning how to create smoother topology and edge flow with this, and especially with the guitar. This vase took me about an hour as well, and a half an hour for ZBrush. The handles on the sides were good practice for cutting my own UV's, and the body was good practice for obtaining the illusion of texture with ZBrush. I'm pretty happy with this one.
A picture of the most interesting view of my final scene. I chose this view for the chandelier, picture frame, and overall view of the props. You can't see some of them, but that's okay. This week was the first week that I had all of my weekly props done before Sunday since I started this class. Like I said, shout out to Joe. Anyhow, besides forgetting to rename one piece of my guitar, and forgetting to center the pivot on one group, I'm really happy with it. I spent my entire Sunday placing assets and arranging this scene.
So I got an A+ on my final scene. Which, I am completely elated about. Of course, upon looking at my next class, this means I'll have to do some advanced modeling. But, I'll take this victory of surviving model creation. I will say that if you have a habit of procrastinating this class will break you and force you to work. This class has taught me not only that, but also that networking is important, as well as peer feedback, smooth edge flow and clean topology. The other nice thing about this is I'm seeing the progression of my first modeling class to now and it's some great motivation to keep going. Professor Bagsby was always saying that we'd get to where he was some day and I feel like I'm on the right track. This is an amazing experience.
