CAGD 330

Book Project - Ideas

Poly Painted Book Project

This project was quite tough for me to handle, it leaned more into the artistic side rather than the modeling side which is not my strong suit. This caused me to crunch some deadlines due to struggling to get the basics on a model. I always hold myself to a standard of work, this project even though things looked bad, worked out in the end.

I decided to base my book model off this image, more specifically the book on the far left. 

To start off, I had to create the initial model in Maya. I actually did not encounter too many problems in Maya since I was able to piece together the general shape of this very quickly. Here are some progress shots, I'll explain them each.

 

Towards the start of the assignment, I had a strong model of what I roughly wanted the book to look like. This was very plain since the detail of the leather straps and the metal lock were missing, but I did not have much trouble creating this general shape.

Afterwards I created the leather straps which was not very hard, just time consuming. I created one and then copied it 3 times and bridged them all together on the back. It looked pretty cool and tidy.

This was what the book looked like at the end of Maya. Honestly the lock could have a little more outline on it according to the reference, but it looks really good and I'm happy with how it turned out.

After Maya is of course ZBrush, this was the massive hurdle of this project since I am not particularly great with sculptural details and things of that nature. I gave it a shot though, I will show off my in progress shots and then talk about each of them.

This first image was my first attempt at detailing the book. Sadly this happened to be on the due date of the book detail, so I rushed the detail and it looked awful. Not to mention that I had 2 ngons on my mesh which were in spots you could see if you looked, so I had to redo my detail. 

After I fixed my model in Maya by making it entirely quads, I went back to ZBrush and went more slowly to get the level of detail that I wanted on the book. I believe it came out decent, could always be better but I liked the results.

This was my first attempt at poly painting, I forgot to include the gold buttons on the side straps, it's the same gold color as the lock. This was very hard for me to gauge correctly since I struggle to put decent colors together or make a decent judgement call on what looks good.

This is what I finally decided would be my final poly painted model. Honestly the model looks pretty flat and I wish I was able to put more details into it. Specifically my problem with the paint was the leather straps, if I were to improve anything about the model it would be that.

I finally moved on to Marmoset and was really surprised at what lighting and ray tracing can do for your model. From my experience in this project, it kind of changes everything since you can tailor a background and lights to enhance your models appearance. Here is my final render for the project.

I did encounter one final problem while trying to render my scene, I would get white spots on certain parts of my model when using Ray Tracing. This made it so that my renders would appear unfinished, I looked around the web and found no concrete answers. However, after messing around I figured out it was the Radiance Clamp setting. 

The book is by no means perfect, I constantly compare myself to others when I look at the outcomes of people's books. I tend to struggle with giving the proper colors or textures even though this is not my strong suit. However, I believe that I did the best I could and came out with a pretty good ending outcome. I am happy that I gave this assignment a good shot in the end, I ended up realizing that I can make pretty decently complex models. Finishing this book though has given me confidence to attempt more modeling over winter break. 

Book Idea 1

For this project, I figured for the book that if I was going to have something sticking out of it, on the top specifically that it would be something that is geometrically simple to comprehend. The book on the left is the one that I am referring to for the project. This would be my first choice for the assignment, my goal is to pick something that is within my skill set. This book is also a nice choice since it has a mixture of fabric and metal, and not just all fabric. That will make the textures come out better due to variation of color.

My workflow process for that book is to model the entire thing in Maya, I don't have nearly enough confidence to model from scratch in ZBrush, especially on an important project like this one. Once the model is done, I would go into ZBrush and detail it up to a point where I am happy with it, then I would texture it in painter. The normal process that we have been doing, I am going to make sure that every piece of the book is done in Maya because I would rather not go back into Maya just to quad draw the whole model due to one part I added in ZBrush.

Book Idea 2

If I had problems with my original idea, this book would be my second choice for this assignment. It is still relatively simplistic in terms of shapes, simple enough for me to grasp how the separate parts make up the book. I believe that I could realistically tackle this kind of book based on the appearance. The amount of colors and materials in this book will make texturing and detailing in ZBrush much more involved to reach the final product. Due to the variation of color this book will stand out much more than the other one thanks to wood, metal, leather, and paper being involved.

My workflow process for this book is identical to the one above. My first step would be to model the entire thing in Maya so that I would not need to quad draw the model later. Then I would bring it into ZBrush so that I can get all the rich detail on this book in particular. Then I would go and texture the thing in painter so that I can make sure each material stands out on the book.

Both books I can see being doable by my standards and relatively simple in terms of creation. In terms of problems, nothing is screaming out at me as a problem, for either book other than my ZBrush experience. I'm very curious to see how this assignment plays out since I haven't tried making a book with a complicated cover before.

Game Controller Project - Concept Art Blog

I will start off by saying that this was a hard project to tackle. I am sure this happens every single class, everyone thinks that they can do the assignment, no biggie. However, for me in the final week of the initial model I was at a loss as to how to approach my model. Here is the progress that I made from the start, to the finish of my controller modeling assignment.

At the start, I actually went for the N64 controller first. However, after thinking about the general shapes a bit more, I figured that the Xbox controller would be easier in the long run. I'll honestly never know if I was right in that judgement call, but it surely did not feel like it. I modeled off and on for the first few days to create a base model of the controller, the issue I had with this portion of the assignment was getting the proper measurements of the sides and back of the controller. I learned that I just had to keep playing with it, over and over again in order to get a shape that I thought was good.

After another few days, I got the buttons and other components into the controller. The hardest part of this section for me was just wrapping my head around how to fuse both meshes together without breaking everything. I figured out that it was easier than I thought it was, so once I got the first one in, I was able to get the rest in. As you can see though, the topology is really bad on the front since I made so many indents. This was where I lost my neat edge flow of the model, I attempted to fix this later on.

This was the final submission that I planned on turning in for the controller model, everything was in order. The best part is that I fixed my topology of the front part of the controller, or mostly fixed at least. However, I learned that my final scene was empty, so I had to go back to a previous scene. I ended up losing 2 hours of work because of the lost scene, I was reverted back to a version of the controller that did not have a fixed topology. 

I then went on to the next stage of this controller project, the UV's. Honestly, these were not nearly as bad as I was expecting them to be. This did not take much time at all, and the only problem I ran into was accurately doing the UV's for the Mic and Charging ports. I did extrusions inward, so the geometry was a mess in there, but if I deleted any faces from the back, the smooth versions of the ports would look awful. So, I just gave those parts a good shot in terms of UV's, and I got close. However, I figured that in the end that nobody will see that so I left them as is and moved on.

With the UV's done, I moved on and textured the controller in painter. The hardest part of that process for me was remembering how painter worked. I have not used the program in a long while, so I forgot some of the smaller details, like why my font wouldn't let me stamp something other than default "Substance." I was later told by a friend after looking for a good while, that only some fonts allow you to change what you can stamp on things. After that revelation, I finished up my textures without too much hassle. 

Here is my final render from Marmoset, after I took all of my components over to Marmoset and baked, I started getting into the tiny details. Textures were not that hard to apply, I messed around with the height map, but the letters on my buttons were not going into the controller. However, after the fact I believe this is because I did not actually model around that. I struggled to find the wireframe button for the render, but after watching my teachers video again, I realized that this was touched on, but only for a very short moment which caused me to miss it. I had one more issue which was not being able to render the controller angles along with the controller on the bottom. Every time I got them all into a shot and framed, I would render and find out that the bottom controller was cut out of frame. I never actually figured out how to change my render window size, not the size of the end image, but the actual size of the render window. I ended up having to settle with two different renders, then I had to combine them in photoshop, unfortunately the lighting was different for the single controller compared to the group of six.

As far as the end product is concerned, this is not a perfect controller, but I'm glad that I was able to create a model of an Xbox controller that can be recognized as an Xbox controller, even at a glance. The textures are not amazing, the details could be a little more fleshed out, but I was able to make something cool in the end while also improving my modeling skills.

 Controller Idea #1

Since I own an Xbox console, I would want to model an Xbox controller. I currently have an Xbox one controller and I believe it would be rather helpful to have a physical version of the reference. I want to attempt this controller so that I can prove to myself that I can model at this level of detail in my models. 

In terms of problems that I can see with this controller, the controller itself is very smooth and shiny which will be hard to replicate with a limited poly count, however I am down for this challenge. A problem that I would have to say that I'll end up having issues with are bumpers of the controller. I believe that the weird angle along that the bumpers make towards the center of the controller will end up being harder to model than what I can see. Another potential issue is doing the triggers for this controller, they have a weird shape and I'm curious how I will tackle that.

Controller Idea #2

The other controller I would like to attempt making is the N64 controller. The reason I want to make this controller is also because I own one so reference would be easier to acquire. I want to model this controller because it looks like it has a complicated base mesh and would be an interesting challenge.

Problems that I can already see, this controllers shape as I mentioned above is weird and I have a feeling I will struggle on combining these pieces together correctly. The other thing that I feel I may struggle getting right is the opening in the controller shown on the bottom right in the second image. It's a weird gap and it has small details inside that may prove challenge to achieve properly. 

These are the two controllers that I would like to model, this should be an interesting assignment and will challenge all of what I have learned in Maya.