I’ve begun concepting for my first assignment in 3D Digital Literacy. I want to do a Faerie inspired sword, as Irish folklore inspires me a lot. There’s a couple of specific inspirations like oak trees and a book called The Cruel Prince, they have an aesthetic that I wanted to capture or at least emulate. Oak trees are strong and imposing, especially old overgrown ones. I collected some references of fantasy swords, and began picking out details that I liked about the different weapons. To pull more from specific Celtic designs I also analysed a few pieces of art.

The ravens were a spur of the moment exploration. I’m writing a novel that deals with the Fae and I thought having a specific character to base my concept off of might generate more ideas and make the process more engaging for me.

Next was concepting through sketching. I came up with a few designs for each. I was more thorough with the sword, mostly because I had the most inspiration for that one. I played around with more designs, and evaluated them too.

 

I designed the shields after the swords so I could create a cohesive appearance between the two models. I really liked the third shield, which was influenced by the very last sword in the line up below. I had a hard time choosing a design because I liked different aspects of each, but after discussing it with my lecturers, I went with the third shield and fourth sword, but drew new iterations for both.

I was really set on doing the first sword, I liked the aesthetic and general appearance of it, but after thinking about it in a 3D space I realised I was overestimating my ability. I don’t think it is difficult necessarily, but I tend to model quite slowly and go through many iterations because I’m inexperienced. I usually have to retry a model two or three times before I’m satisfied and there’s just too many details in the first sword that could lead to problems. I would like to attempt to model it in the future on my own just to push myself, but for this assignment, and keeping in mind that I have to model a shield as well, I shelved that concept.

The last sword has some cool elements, but needs refined down, which is what I did when I moved onto creating plans for the model.

I drew this out to help plan the model’s construction, which is what the annotations are. I think this has enough detail to demonstrate my skills and also test what I’ve learned so far. Upon reflection, I’d maybe like to add a few more details to the handle, like a charm or something of that sort. I also think the general shape of the sword doesn’t really connote the elegance usually associated with the Fae. I wanted to create a sword that was visually interesting and also different from usual interpretations of faerie weaponry. In future, I’ll explore more iterations before committing to a design.

 

Today in class we learnt about UV mapping and texturing. We were given these three objects to unwrap, and then had to import the UV snapshots into Photoshop to texture them. It was quite a confusing process at first, but I figured it out as I went along, following the videos Mike put up on Blackboard.

Dice

This is the dice UV snapshot and finished texture. This was a pretty simple process. I used the camera projection option in the UV menu, despite Maya already automatically creating a simplified UV map. This was for practice with more complex models where Maya can’t simplify them. This was a very straightforward object to texture as it was a simple cube primitive.

Coke Can

Next was the coke can. While doing the texturing, I had to double-check which end was which just to ensure I had the label the right way round. I repeated the same process as the dice, using the camera projection to make sense of the object.

Hammer

Lastly, I unfolded the hammer, which did give me a few issues. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong the first couple of tries, but the hammer head wouldn’t unfold correctly. Eventually, I managed to get it done and it worked. Again, it was the same process as before, except I used two different textures, which were provided by Mike. This helped me understand how creating whole textures for an object with multiple materials works.

Spaceship Homework

After class, we were given the task of modelling and texturing a spaceship. I chose this one from the list Mike provided. 

This was actually quite a challenge. The modelling was straightforward enough, especially because he stipulated that the task was primarily on texturing so the model could be very simple. I had it done quite quickly, but found there were issues when it came to UV mapping.

The camera based projection wouldn’t work correctly, I’m still not sure why. I’ve included an image to show what happened, I tried to find solutions online but found none. I’m aware other people had similar issues, however I don’t know if they discovered the reason it was happening.

I found a work around and unwrapped each section of the model. At some point, parts of my model had been cut, but I don’t remember making them. Thus, parts like the ship’s ‘arms’ were separate faces and made unwrapping a struggle. I’m sure I made a mistake somewhere along the line, likely accidentally highlighting the object and pressing cut instead of unfold or something like that. It’s the only reasonable explanation I have.

As can be observed, I also made various mistakes while cutting the UVs, which led to issues with texturing. It was definitely a learning experience, and I now know to be more careful when going through the unwrapping process. I used UV layout to automatically make the most of the space within the grid. I found that it wasn’t perfect, but it was better than previous attempts I’d made to fix it, which resulted in very stretched out textures.

This is the texture I used for the ship. I didn’t want to make anything too complicated as I’m still very inexperienced and I was aware of my mistakes that I’d made while cutting my map at this point.

This is the finished texture.

The result when imported back into Maya.

I’ve also included the wireframe, structurally speaking I still need a lot of practice I think, but in general this model turned out quite well in my opinion.

I realised that the wings were too big, so I went back and adjusted their size.

The arms could be longer after reviewing the reference, but I think this is closer than my previous screenshots.

Upon reflection, I could’ve done the wings differently, I think the shape isn’t quite right for them, and the way I extruded the bottom wings doesn’t look quite right. The texturing also isn’t great, I will need to practice UV unwrapping more to get the hang of it fully, but on the positive side, I understand the relationship between the UV maps and the model now. The ship’s proportions aren’t that accurate either. Looking at the reference, the window needs to be bigger, and the middle panel of the wings where the arms connects needs to be shorter. I may go back and adjust this if I have time to, but it is something I’m aware of.

In general, it was definitely a learning experience. I had quite a few mishaps and didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself, which I think is evident in the final product, however I also understand that I’m a beginner to the 3D pipeline and making mistakes is part of the process. I’ve learnt a lot from this experience and will be carrying that on to my next project.

I started to practice models beyond the ones set by Mike. I found a tutorial online to follow, but it went into things like soft surface sculpting, so I did some of the poly modelling and then toyed about with the model after creating a basic shape. Mike looked over the topology and told me to avoid triangles, and will definitely keep that in mind for future projects.

Cyberpunk Sword // 3D Modeling in Maya – YouTube

In class, Mike demonstrated how to create a milkshake cup, which was quite easy to follow. I enjoyed making it, but I struggle when it comes to following along in class, so I watch the videos he posts on Blackboard after he’s finished the demo. It helps me absorb the information and focus on the task rather than worry about getting the task done as quickly as possible so I don’t fall behind. We were introduced to the concept of using curves to create meshes, and I put that to use in other projects as well.

 

My final model for this week was a snake. I used the curves and ‘sweep’ button to create the snake. At first I wasn’t sure how would be best to do the branch, but I found extruding after adding more loops was the most efficient.

Here are some final renders, just to show the snake. If I had to do this again, I’d try to create a more accurate head shape, and make the snake a little shorter and thicker, it’s a bit too thin. Otherwise, I think this was quite successful, and I learnt a lot when completing this.