Model Creation

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.

This is the final still life for this week. The pen and inkwell, horseshoe, and knife. The knife was really fun to make but challenging to UV because of the swirled handle, and even then my maya file didn't save right and I ended up turning it in with messed up UV's on accident. The horseshoe was the easiest to make, and I'm actually pretty proud of it.

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.

3D Fundamentals

I never imagined how quickly I would pick up modeling, especially since I never even dabbled in the software before (besides Blender). I know I still have a lot to learn as far as Maya goes, because I have barely even scratched the surface of everything that it's capable of. But this month was still eye opening, and fun to say the least.

This was our first blockout exercise. The mailbox was probably the hardest out of all of these because of the rounded top, and I just couldn't get it to fit right. I spent about two hours putting this together, although it felt like much less. My finished product was mind-blowing to me, because I had no idea how simple the concept was.

The final scene for the five objects I had to block out for the second project in week one. The razor is probably my least favorite, and the ladybug, jar, and tin can are my favorites. Each took a variating amount of time, but around three to four hours each for blocking, and a few hours each for planning and research. I learned to manipulate faces and expand or contract them while blocking the tin can, which was extremely helpful and made my objects more similar to the silhouette.

 It may sound silly, but this spray can is my week two pride and joy. It took me around four hours to complete, and was from the Level 2 downloads section (pretty proud of myself for that) I don't think I ever thought about what a spray can actually looked like until I started this asset, and as soon as I reached the top I cursed it for having so many intrusions and extrusions, and little edges. Even so, I love how it turned out, and this model definitely taught me some patience and attention to detail.

This little bottle stopper is entirely one piece and  made of extrusions. This, I will admit, did not even take me an hour to make, but in my defense it was three in the morning and I needed another model for the assignment (family obligations the next day, I wouldn't have time to make one). However, I liked how it turned out so much I used it as one of my assets. It really helped me understand how edge loops really encourage the curvature of the form in a model, and it also showed me how far I've come from never even touching maya to making curves and actual models with straight edge shapes.

 This was our practice assignment. At first, the highlighted gun was outrageously deformed, with hidden illegal geometry. The assignment was to clean it up to look like the gun farthest to the left, and the middle gun is the minimum completion requirement. This actually took a little over two hours because I kept messing up the cleanup. Instead of having the "select faces" box checked, I had the default selected, so Maya kept triangulating my geometry. I must have cleaned it up three or four times before I was fed up and turned it in. Moral of the story: when something goes wrong, double check your settings.

This beautiful little gum-ball machine was my favorite at first, until after I turned the scene in and realized I forgot to sculpt the little shelf in the bottom left picture! Considering it was one of my graded assets, I'd settle for a B+. But still, about four and a half hours, headaches from "N-gons" and going through my "Inspiration" playlist on Spotify twice, it was done. This one helped hone my skills in curving and slanting edges while attaining clean topology. Looking back, it's definitely not perfect, but besides the shelf I'm happy with it.

 The hard part about The scene was composing it. I found myself overthinking it, and when I was happy with the positions, I wasn't happy with the render. Even so, it was fun to put it all together, and it was really awesome to see my models in a finalized space. In total, the final scene took me almost three hours to finally be happy with it.

This is the marvelous ambient occlusion map for my spray can. The UV's took me about five hours to finally set up, and I will admit some of the time was adjusting the model itself. But while completing this part of week four, I had so much trouble with my textures baking incorrectly, and occlusion maps being saved over other occlusion maps. It wasn't until about two whole days passed and too much troubleshooting that I realized I never gave the AO maps different names. I felt both stupid and relieved. Note: always rename files.

The final render! I'm so happy with it. Like I said before, around three hours of work, and just in time, as it's due tonight. It really takes the ambient occlusion to the next level, and it softens and professionalizes my objects. I've learned so much this week, and I even started to model Spyro the Dragon for practice. I think this makes all of my struggles totally worth it.

          I'm going to be sad to be out of this class, but also kind of relieved because I literally could not have had a class like this at a worse time. Working retail during the holidays is nuts, on top of ten to twenty hours a week of assignments? But I did it. This class is perpetually invaluable to my upcoming portfolio class, and the readings that were assigned got me thinking about it, and how I think I'm going to do something unordinary instead of an average prop. I know how to put a professional spin on my models, so perhaps now I can play around with the hypershade and make some awesome models because, as Professor Bagsby says, textures can make a model stand out, and they're fun too. I have the upcoming weeks off for christmas break, but I feel like I'll be spending it making something awesome.