Model, UV unwrap, texture and real-time render one of the following:

• Windmill
• Mantel Clock
• Treasure chest & treasure
• Sword & shield
• Sci-Fi door
• Old Well
• Magic Witch / Wizard Staff

This assignment will encourage you to design and practice the following skills:

1. Using referencing images or creating your own concept from references
2. 3D Modelling Techniques
3. UV unwrapping
4. Basic materials & textures
5. Real-time rendering in Sketchfab

1.  References and Concept Art

• Chest

I’d decided to go for the chest design as I thought overall it would be the easiest, and it had definitely been the only idea that stuck out and interested me most.  However, at this point, I hadn’t really thought about any themes and I was just planning on creating a standard, stereotypical treasure chest. so I gathered some reference images and began planning.

Initially, I thought I should go with a flat topped chest as it would be much easier for me when it came to modelling and texturing it.

But after some thought and research I though Id be better off doing a different shape as it would be more challenging for me and it would look more aesthetically pleasing for me to take on a more complicated shape.  So, after some searching, I’d found a shape I liked

I then began to create some concept art of my own that I could use and refer to when modelling rather than basing all of my model off of the images, but half way through, when deciding on what colour I wanted it, I had an idea on what theme I wanted to do. Firstly, I’d decided that I wanted to make my chest pink, however, this colour wouldn’t make sense for if this was a chest for your typical pirate, so I thought it’d be a really good idea to base my chest off of a mermaid/under the sea theme.

I’d found some images of pink mermaid chests and used them for ideas to add to my concept art. This is the final sketch of what I want to achieve in my model.

• Extra details

As if have chosen to design a treasure chest and treasure, I had to plan what kind of treasure I wanted to fill my chest with, so I made a list with some ideas;

• Coins.
• Lock.
• Key.
• Hairbrush.*
• Hand mirror.*
• Jewels and Jewellery.

*(I had to discard these ideas due to time restrictions/the difficulty of them)

 

When designing the coins I realized that I was going to be making it difficult for myself if I have to fill the entire chest with coins and other small objects, so I was planning on just creating a false bottom in the chest.

After my 1 to 1 tutorial with Michael on the 3rd of March, he was able to provide lots of tips and tricks, but he had a great suggestion that was much better than doing a false bottom. He suggested that I made what he referred to as a “blob” for the bottom of the chest that would later be textured and painted to look like a big pile of coins. I really liked this idea and it meant that now I wouldn’t have to duplicate and place hundreds of little coins.

 

2. Modelling

• Chest

Before I started modelling, I made sure I had the recording of my tutorial with Michael handy so I could follow along with his advice while model my chest.

I started off my model with a basic cube and scaled it to the size I wanted the whole chest to be, top and bottom.

After I finished modelling, my lecturer helped me out with getting it ready for uv mapping etc.

• Chest “loop” 

For the loop on the front of the chest I used the doughnut shape in Maya, scaled it down in size and then cut the shape in half. I then placed this on the front of the bottom part of the chest model.

• Chest “latch”

For this, I used two separate shapes. I started with a cylinder and a cube and scaled them down to fit nicely.

After I’d achieved the shape and size I wanted, I created a hole in the latch for the loop of the chest to fit into, in order to lock the chest.

Here is the finished latch model.

• Lock

When modelling the lock I also used two separate shapes. I started with the same shape as I did for the chest loop and used the same method to achieve the shape, only this time i use the extrude tool to pull down either end of the loop to make it look more the the top of a padlock.

Then, for the bottom part of the lock, I used some more of Micheal’s advice from our 1 to 1 advice talk. He suggested for any complicated shapes, like the shell shape I’m using for my lock, that I started off with a large block and then use the multi-cut too cut out the shape I wanted. For this, I decided to use a reference image of a shell behind my model and follow the shape of  that.

Before I got to cutting the shape, I decided to scale out the vertices on the top to create a trapezium-like shape. The I used the multi-cut tool to create lines where the bumps on the shell were going to be.

This is how it looked when I finished cutting it.

As I was only working off of one side on the model, I had to ensure that the other side looked the same, so I used the multi-cut tool again to cut the model in half. After this, I deleted the other side of the model and simply mirrored what I was left with.

I think I found the lock the hardest to model overall.

• Key

For the key I used two different cube shapes, cut into shape,  and a cylinder shape.  This model was also quite difficult but I  really enjoyed the challenge.

• Sand “blob”

• Coins

For the coins, I only had to model one, then I cloned it lots of times and placed them all around the sand blob, and some in front of the chest on the ground.

3. UV mapping

• Chest

• Loop, latch and lock

• Key

• Sand

• Coins

4. Basic materials & textures

• Chest

• Loop, Latch and Lock

• Key

• Sand

• Coins

5. Real-time rendering in Sketchfab

I used this YouTube tutorial for uploading my model to Sketchfab:

 

 Reflection

I really enjoyed this assignment, it was really challenging but I learned so much from it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to achieve what I wanted overall in the final outcome but that was due to me underestimating the amount of time it would take. The biggest lesson I learned from this was the amount of time and commitment that goes into modelling/animation and I am definitely going to dedicate more of my time into working on my other assignments.

I’m still not 100% confident with UV mapping but I’m happy that I can now at least say I know what I’m doing! It was very helpful and reassuring that I was able to ask Alec for assistance with my mapping. I had also received some advice from a few classmates to help better my model.