Pre-Production/Sword and Shield Design
The pre-production of this assignment was probably one of the easiest, and more enjoyable areas of this task for me, when i was given the various choices of things i could model, i decided to go for the Sword and Shield, as i thought i could get a interesting and cool design out of it than any of the other choices, i used wide variety of references for my blade, i wanted it to be a transforming weapon with an energy blade that extends out of it, so i decided to give the built part of the blade a sleek and metallic look, with a bright contrasting blue energy blade when it transforms.
3D Modelling/Maya
Before starting this assignment i did a small bit of practise on 3D modelling using tutorials and other videos to help me understand a bit of the process, though i used blender for this practise, and even though some skills were transferable when working on Maya, when it came to the modelling process of my Sword and Shield, i found myself running into various hurdles that i could only describe as Maya not exactly being a fully transparent software on showing the user how things work, many times i ran into issues such as vertices not being able to be deleted, random faces and topology appearing on the model, which caused it to become non-manifold and constant crashes of the software anytime i tried to UV unwrap the hilt of my blade, most of these issues caused me to have to start modelling parts of the blade over again, since i couldn’t find out what was causing many of the issues, however in the end i managed to fully model the Sword and Shield as well as UV unwrap them both into a stable UV map.
Texturing/Substance painter
Texturing and the use of substance painter was a slight breath of fresh air after the struggle and annoyance of working with Maya, despite it being the first time i used the software or even did any texturing for that matter, it was relatively easy, i was given a hand from a few people who told me some handy tips such as the black mask tool and the polygon fill tool which made the process a relative breeze, however i probably could have given my Sword and Shield a bit more detail to it, as i do think some of the model looks a little basic and too clean, which could of been helped with some detailing to give them a more distinct look, however i feel i had to speed through texturing as i spent so much time fighting with Maya that it left me little time for the texturing process
