Reflection Post

Considering at the start of this semester I had never attempted 3D modelling before; I am extremely happy with my progress over the past few months. I feel as though with this assessment my modelling skills have improved even more as I learned many more skills including sculpting in blender and retopology. I enjoyed every step of this assessment as it allowed me to be creative in new ways. I still have much to practice and will continue creating more characters so I can develop my skills even further. Hopefully with more practice I will be able to speed up my modelling progress as time was something I struggled with.

I feel as though I learnt much more this semester than last, as every piece of software I used was new to me. Completing this semester has made me more confident in my 3D skills as at the start of the year I was scared to start 3D modelling. It was a bit overwhelming at times as I felt there was much more work to be done, but nevertheless, I still enjoyed everything that I did. My favourite thing this semester was retopology. I find it very relaxing, and it is the main thing that I am excited to continue in the future.

Assessment 2

I feel very proud of my final outcome. It took longer than I thought it would, but the models I created are how I imagined them and I’m happy what I was able to use the skills that I have learned over the past couple of months to complete my design. I used skills from the previous assessment by using Maya for some of my model along with skills I have learnt since by sculpting much of my model in blender.

3D models by asmlong (@asmlong) – Sketchfab

Easter Work

Over easter I finished my cute character model. I started by sculpting the right hand of the gnome. I knew this would be the more difficult hand, so I wanted to give myself enough time to sculpt it. In my original design, I gave the gnome 4 fingers. However, when it came to sculpting him, I felt he looked better with 3 as I wanted his finders to be chubby, but I didn’t want the hand to be any bigger than it was. I used the crease and pinch tools quite a bit whilst sculpting these more detailed areas, such as the shoes and hands.

As I was following the wizard gnome tutorial for some of my sculpting, I wanted to see how my gnome would look if I made his nose a more realistic shape like in the video instead of basing it off of the small gnomes from Gnomeo and Juliet. I didn’t like how his nose looked after making this change as I feel the round nose makes him look cuter, so I went back to the original file.

The hat was the last part of the gnome I sculpted. To create the creases and floppy look of the hat, I used the pivot, crease, and pinch tools. I also used the layer tool to create the wider section at the bottom of the hat. This is my favourite part of the gnome as I feel like it adds the most character to him. It did take longer than expected to get the wider section just right as I wanted the edges to be quite sharp and they kept coming up v curved. I do think I got there in the end and I’m very happy with my model.

To save some time, I used the retopologized tool in Maya to retop the areas on my models with little detail, such as the petal, the gnome’s head and nose and his sleeves. Everywhere else, I retopologized myself. The hat and hands took the longest as they are the only non-symmetrical parts of the model.

I then created the pot, duplicated the petals and uv mapped my models.

Once in substance, it didn’t take me very long to complete my characters as I had a very clear idea of how I wanted them to look. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was the texture of the gnome. I originally added a ground gravel layer to his height and roughness channels, making him look like an older gnome. However, I wasn’t happy with how matte he looked, and I wasn’t able to turn down the opacity on the layer. After adding a little more dirt to some areas, I was happy with his texture and felt they were ready for exporting to sketchfab.

Week 11

This week I continued modelling my gnome. I ran into a little trouble with the torso as when I tried to change the resolution much of the mesh disappeared. I later realised it was because the torso had a hole at the bottom, and I made it up of two different parts so I could get the area above the legs the right shape. Once I group these two parts I was able to set the resolution with no problems. I then added a belt to the torso using the torus mesh and sculpted a mouth.

Week 10

This week, we had a lecture on retopology. Due to high resolution on a mesh when sculpting, this makes animating the object almost. Retopology is adding faces back onto the mesh in a lower resolution.

By making the selected object live and selecting quad draw in Maya, I started retopologizing Henry’s elephant model. I learned that placing four vertices and selecting shift creates a square on the mesh and selecting tab and dragging an edge creates another square beside the previous. Around the eyes and mouth, I created smaller squares as these would be areas that move the most when animating a character. I tired to create loops throughout the mesh so they polygons would flow into each well and the face could move without any issues when animated. I found retopology very relaxing and am excited to start on my own character.

I also began creating my gnome this week. I began by creating the gnome’s torso, legs and feet in Maya as I found it easier to block out the basic shape there than in blender without adding toom much detail in the beginning. I created a sphere and extruded a loop of faces to create the top shape, then widened 2 cylinders at the top to create the legs. I then exported the body as an FBX and imported the file into blender.

In blender, I started by blocking out the head, nose, hat, and arms, then modelled them into their basic shapes. To make modelling the arms easier, Mike told me to put them straight out and model them so there were no mistakes with the shape of the mesh. I created a bend in the right arm where the gnome would be doing the ‘hold on a minute’ hand gesture.

Week 9

This week, I stared modelling my flower character. I stared by modelling the basic shape of the head and petal by using 2 spheres. I kept the mesh quite low poly in the beginning until I got the proportions right.

After I finished the head shape, I increased the resolution of the face and started sculpting the facial features using the draw and smooth tools. In my initial design, I didn’t draw a nose on the flowers face, however, once sculpted I felt it looked a little too flat. I still wanted the face resemble the centre of a daisy, so I only sculpted a small nose and used a rabbit face as a reference so it wouldn’t be as prominent as a human nose.

I created the bottom eyelids the same way I created them on my elephant model. I created 2 cylinders and grouped them with the head mesh and smoothed the edges out after increasing and setting the resolution.

After I was happy with the head shape, I moved onto the stem/body of the flower. I found this more difficult that I thought I would as when I tried to bend the cylinder, the faces stretched too much making it too difficult to sculpt into the shape I wanted. Instead of using one cylinder, I tried again and used 2 to create the angle at the top of the stem I was hoping for. It also meant the majority of the stem was perfectly straight the way I wanted to be. I smoothed out where both cylinders met and grouped the stem with the head so there wouldn’t be a harsh connection between the two and it would look more like an actual daisy.

However, as they were in the same group and so close together, when I tried to smooth them, they would merge into each other. Instead of having them in the same group, I made each arm separate. I began smoothing them; however, I didn’t like how rounded the arms became at the end as I wanted them to be similar to the stem and have a blunt end. I recreated them and was finally happy with the model.

I decided once everything was imported into Maya would create the pot as I know how to create a flowerpot in Maya from watching Alec’s cactus tutorials. I will also duplicate the petals in Maya once they are retopologized which we are learning how to do next week.

Week 8

This week, I continued to practice in blender by creating an Elephant head while following Henry’s tutorial in class. I used more sculpting tools this week, including the grab and snake tool. I created 3 spheres, one for the head and 2 for the ears, and grouped them together. I also created a cylinder for the nose and the lower eyelids to make it look like he was smiling. I feel as though the cheeks could be a bit fuller to exaggerate his expression a little more. I also found the trunk hard to create. I had to keep smoothing the mesh and resetting the polycount as the faces on the trunk were becoming very stretched and difficult to work with. I am, however, happy with how to the ears turned out and feel he looks very cute regardless of the changes that could be made.

I also started concept designs for the cute character assessment this week. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to create, so I started thinking about my favourite characters in film, including Gizmo from the Gremlins, Toothless from How to train your dragon and Baby Groot from Guardians of the galaxy.

I then had the idea of creating a model based on a childhood memory of playing he loves me, he loves me not by picking the petals off daisies. I drew 2 different concepts, one where she picks the he loves me petal, and one where she picks the he loves me not petal. I knew I wanted to stick with this idea and created another concept with the two different outcomes in the same pot.

After these concepts, I decided I wanted to add another element to the model to create a small story. Instead of her picking the last petal and ending up with the he loves me petal, I drew another petal on the top of the flowers head, making it look like she forgot one. To make this clearer, I designed another character in the background (the bee) to make it look like he is about to break the bad news to her.

References

After talking to Henry, we decided the design was a bit too simple, so instead of having a bee in the background, I started to design a garden gnome. I love the small gnomes in Gnomeo and Juliet and knew immediately I wanted to use them as a reference. I also used south park characters as a reference as I wanted to give the gnome a very round and squished body shape.

Final references:

Week 7

This week I was introduced to blender. I found it a little scary to use at first as I am now used to using Maya and felt the change in layout would make the transition between the two difficult. I learned how to create mesh’s by pressing shift + A, how to freeze transformations by pressing CTRL + A, how to sculpt and change polycount by pressing shift + R then CTRL + A to set, creating a smoother object when sculpting. The first thing I created was an alien with 4 legs and large eyes. I found it very enjoyable to create and think I will find it more enjoyable to create mesh’s in blender than Maya. The body of the alien is all one mesh and they eyes are separate.

Week 6

This week instead of lectures, we had a one on one support session with our tutors where we were given advice on how to improve our assessment 1 models. I showed Mike my most recent skull and petal models. He showed me how to smooth my skull a different way than simply using the smooth tool, as using the smooth option created polygons with more than 4 sides, which can make animating a model difficult and must be avoided. He told me that selecting the object in object mode and pressing 3 on my keyboard with show a smoothed preview of the object. Then by going to modify, then convert and finally smooth mesh preview to polygons, this smooths the mesh, ensuring only 4 sided polygons are present on the object.

I am happy that I saved my smoothed and unsmoothed model on two different files, as I was able to go back and edit the unsmoothed version, fixing the errors I made previously when smoothing they eyes of my skull.

He also taught me how to create teeth using this method, and how to duplicate them so what was done to one tooth is done to all. This will save much time when I am ready to add texture to my model. To do this I go to Edit, then duplicate special settings and change the geometry type from copy to instance. Once this is changed, when I press CTRL + shift + D, the selected object will be duplicated.

Assessment 1 200 Word Reflection

I am extremely happy with my progress throughout this semester. In January, I had never used Maya before or any form of modelling/3D animation software. I was very worried at the beginning of this assessment as I wasn’t confident in my skills. Now, I feel as though I have exceeded my expectations. Everything I learned in the weeks prior to this assessment helped me immensely when modelling my Wizard Staff, and I was able to apply this knowledge to fit my own design. I am happy with how the texturing came out on my assessment submission, however, I think I need some more practice using substance painter, as I wasn’t as comfortable using it as I am using Maya. I have learned many of the basics, but I still feel as though I have a lot to learn in that area. Overall, I am extremely proud of what I have achieved this semester so far. I found it more stressful than last semester as many aspects of this module were completely new to me, but now that I have learned these new skills, I am excited to see what else I am capable of in the coming weeks.