Category: 3D Digital Literacy

Oh boy this week was hard:

This was my own attempt at the snake, and I was actually fairly pleased with it! I used the following Youtube Video in order to get an idea of how to start sculpting the branch:

When I presented it to the channel, MIke suggested that perhaps it needed to cling tighter to the branch – I agreed with that, and tried to manipulate the snake a little more, bringing it closer to the branch:

Honestly, I don’t think it looks particularly great – the snake looks a little lumpy, I could have done a better job at smoothing out the bumps. Overall, I’m not particularly happy but, the fact that I even knew how to sculpt this is a big achievement. Two weeks ago I didn’t know how to sculpt anything! So I have to keep the little wins in view! Next time, I’ll try to do a better job and have my model a little smoother. I’d also love to present some more low-poly sculpts, as I really love how it looks.

I also attempted the roller skates, however this was a bit of a fail. I tried sculpting this independently after watching the following speed-model:

It didn’t go particularly well, to be honest – I think by going in for a very realistic view, it stumped me a little when it got to sculpting the more technical parts of the model, namely the wheels and the front-break. I just really had absolutely no idea where to go with it, and the boot I sculpted did not look good or correct. But, I tried:

After realising this approach wasn’t really working for me, I tried going for a more cartoon styled approach after watching a speed model of a fairly simple shoe:

I didn’t follow this section by section, I just used it to get an idea of where to start and went from there:

Honestly, still not great – these actually make me laugh a lot, they’re a bit silly looking. But, it’s a roller skate – I think at least that much is clear? And I’m happier with it than my first attempt.

I’m pretty underwhelmed with my efforts this week, however after testing positive for covid last Thursday I have been incredibly fatigued and sick which caused me to sleep a lot. I also have a presentation due this week. Both of these situations have meant I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to modelling this week – not as much as I had last week – so I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. I’m still super determined to improve upon my modelling skills, hopefully next week holds more achievements for me and will be overall more satisfying! Very hopeful that I am negative for covid so that I am able to attend my classes in person.

In this weeks class we were tasked with modelling a milkshake, and then a sword in the afternoon. There are a few more things that we can choose to model through the week if we want to, which I think I will have a go at. These were my attempts at the milkshake and sword:

I’m happy with the milkshake, but the sword seems a little amateurish to be honest – but, this was my first time attempting sculpting by reference, so I’m not too mad about it! As I’ve been in close contact with someone with Covid, I decided to stay at home this week, therefore I was worried that I might miss out on the full experience of modelling in class – whilst I definitely think that attending in person is the better option, I’m happy with what I was able to achieve on my own…

This week I will attempt the other references Mike provided, possibly by utilising guides again. I also need to make a start on the group presentation!

This week we were also tasked with creating some mood boards, and thinking about what we might want to model for our first assignment. We were given the following list to choose from:

• Windmill
• Cuckoo Clock
• Treasure Chest
• Sword and Shield
• Sci-fi Helmet or Radio
• Old Well
• Magic Staff

Immediately, the staff or the treasure chest captured my imagination. These were the mood boards that I made up for these models:

 

I am taking a lot of inspiration from video games like Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot (the work of Toys for Bob, basically) in terms of how I would like to model the item I choose. I want it to be quite clean, chunky and blocky – very stylised as opposed to realistic:

I started by concepting some designs for my staff idea; I knew I wanted to go down a warlock/necromancy feel with my design – as soon as I read staff, the ‘Replica Staff of Gul’dan‘ popped into my head and I wanted something along the same theme. By looking at my Pinterest board, I think it’s pretty obvious that I took a lot of inspiration from the references:

I knew that I wanted the wood of the staff to branch off and act as the horns/fingers and that I want to go for a super warped look. I think this adds to the creepiness. I tried a few ideas including fingers, ram horns but my favourite concept was the staff split into two acting as ram/demon horns with the skull set into the centre; I drew this up digitally just to cement the idea:

I experimented with two colours for the glowing eyes, green is creepier and gives off a sense of fel-magic which is ominous. However, I am a sucker for a saturated pink/red and wanted to test how that would look too. I absolutely love how this concept turned out, and I think this is likely the option I will choose provided my lecturers think that it is achievable! I might continue to play around with the charms that are dangling from the ram horns; I used a dream catcher in one iteration and I would like to look more at that.

As for the treasure chest, I had pictured an incredibly saturated chest that was open, and had assorted gems and golden coins falling out of it as it’s filled to the brim with treasure! However, I also like the theme of my staff, and I wanted to look at staying with that! I turned to the game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for inspiration on the style. After sketching, I realised that I was really focussing in on the chunky, attractive modelling I was talking about in spyro and therefore I decided to stick with this style but add in a skeleton looking to close the treasure chest shut, as if it died protecting it’s treasure, just to add that creepy element:

I decided to draw this up digitally as well:

I found concepting for this a lot more difficult, for some reason it just wasn’t clicking and I feel like the ideas are a lot simpler and bland. In saying that, I do like the style these have been drawn in, particularly the one on the top left. My favourite over all is the skeleton protecting the treasure with a lot of foliage overgrown around it, but I think that will possibly be out of my reach skill-wise at this point.

To conclude, I think I’m going to stick with my staff concept and see where it takes me and what my lecturers think about it! However, if everything I’ve come up with at is a bit out of my skill set and not recommended, I might revisit the treasure chest concept and attempt to develop it a bit more.

After getting home from class on Wednesday, I wanted to try the table and chair exercises on my own. There were a lot of things that I just forgot, unfortunately, but I tried my best and I’m pretty pleased with the results overall. These are screenshots of the scene all together, and then the assets individually:

This was my very feeble attempt at making the olive on a cocktail stick:

Believe it or not, I made it sort of lumpy on purpose? a perfectly smooth olive just looked odd to me? I tried…

Over the past week I have been working on a couple of iterations of the ‘comfy chair’. I’m still not confident enough to follow the provided reference exactly, so I followed a couple of tutorials:

This was my first attempt:

I thought it turned out pretty OK, however I modelled the chesterfield buttons separately and couldn’t really work out how to apply them to the model, so I tried again:

I’m more pleased with this one as I managed to model in the little buttons. I think this is probably as good as I can do for homework on my own, I’ll be really interested to get feedback on these and hopefully learn more about how to model an arm chair effectively!

The first class of the semester is 3D Literacy, from 10AM to 1PM on Wednesdays. This week was a general overview of the course and the module handbook, and then the second half of the class was allowing us to play around with different tools in Maya. Despite having already played around with Maya by completing Alec’s tutorial for the cute cactus, I still felt completely out of my comfort zone. It is one thing to follow a guide step by step, it is a completely different thing to try making models on your own. As a result, the first scene I created – which was a general cafe scene – was made primarily made from separate individual shapes, with limited extruding or any other modelling techniques. We were given some pointers by Henry during the lesson, but then we were left to our own devices for a while (and encouraged to ask lots of questions):

This model is OK, It’s not particularly attractive etc. but it worked for the assignment we were given and given my lack of experience, I’m not mad at it.

I then made sure to stay behind after lunch for the extra hours of tuition with Mike to get started on the homework. We were given a table, chairs, a martini glass and vase to model in preparation for next week’s class and I knew there was no hope of me managing it on my own. We were taught how to model each item and I made a sort-of bar fight scene for fun by adding extra toppled martini glasses and a knocked over chair. It’s not perfect, but this scene is much more competent than my first attempt.

It’s all very overwhelming, but I really do feel as though staying the extra hours after class today has taught me so much already and therefore I will continue to stay in class after lunch on a Wednesday as well as Thursday. I feel a lot more confident in modelling independently after going through these basics with Mike.

Overall, today was a HUGE learning curve for me – It’s actually exhausted me, to be honest – but I feel like I’ve come out knowing more and that’s been truly gratifying.