Darn 42's Modeling Stuff

[darn42 1,268]

Here I'm going to be posting my little projects that aren't part of the CBT. I will include my mini-projects that I complete just as modeling practice to get better at modeling and texturing etc.

If anyone wants to know how I did one of those mini-project things I'll point them in the right direction of tutorials and walk through how I did it.

This is a little something I did to learn some new edge and polygon modeling techniques and a little bit on some arch and design stuff. It is the coolest wheel I could find on google

Enjoy. Comments and criticism welcome.

  Edited August 5, 2012 by darn42  

[IDS2 3,436]

It's crazy how quickly you've become a master of this stuff, I'm totally jealous! I wish I had that kind of dedication. Is this one done in max?

I know you mentioned that you've been working in zbrush, just out of curiosity what's zbrush like/what is it best used for? I have a friend who has it but it confused the crap out of me when I tried it. I should probably get a grip on max before I try something like zbrush

  Edited August 5, 2012 by IDS2  

[darn42 1,268]

This was done 100% in max. Zbrush is best sculpting and stuff like that. There aren't as many tools in zbrush that let you get precise extrusions and such, so I think that 3ds max is better for hard surface modeling when there's a lot of similar things going on in the model. Zbrush is by far the best character modeling software there is though, and the tools it has for creating organic assymetrical shapes are unmatched by anything else. If you ever see some sort of character or something like that that completely blows your mind, chances are it's from zbrush. There's this one guy, Mike Nash, I hope he never has to struggle to find a job with his talent.

http://www.mikeanash.com/p/hard-surface-bust.html

I literally can not get over how realistic this thing is... My jaw drops to the floor whenever I see it.

I believe that that piece was done in zbrush btw.

The reason that you were probably so confused with zbrush at the beginning (literally every single person is) is because it is not 3d software. It is 2.5d software. From what I understand of it, when you have a 3d model, the only parts that are actually acknowledged by zbrush are those facing the "canvas" and instead of being points in a 3d space, it's controlled by "pixols" (pixologic pixels , they came up with it, not me) which are rgb pixels that also control depth on the z axis, hence the name zbrush. The z axis isn't up and down, it's how far from the canvas it is. And so because of how this works, that's why the level of detail is able to be achieved and also how the ridiculous tools can be used as well. But it also adds sooo much more complexity when coming from another 3d application and takes a while to figure out. (Took me like 3 hours to be able to do anything in zbrush...) but once you figure it out, it's a lot more straightforward to learn how to work it better and improve. Just a really steep learning curve at the beginning.

If you are wondering, the tutorials I used to learn the techniques for wheel modeling are

http://eat3d.com/free/rim_modeling

and

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/model-a-high-poly-car-wheel-in-3ds-max-day-2/

Both are great tutorials and are only like 30 minutes each but teach some neat new modeling methods.

[darn42 1,268]

Here's something else I've done recently. This was a workshop from eat3d, there were 5 shapes they showed and the challenge was to recreate them as accurately as possible using only quads. Unfortunately, I couldn't do 2 of the shapes, they were over my head, but I got 3 of them down.

They were a nice challenge to do cleanly and I think it really helped me in modeling something more tangible that used these basic ideas.

Just a simple knife, The main thing was to model circular geometry on it while keeping the mesh clean which is why I chose to do it.

  Edited August 5, 2012 by darn42  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

You're dedication is admirable, I think you should make a future career into this, if you hadn't all ready.

[harishna 847]

Really nice stuff, I second Stg. Pepper, would you mind giving more details on how to create those 3 pink shapes?

Cheers!

[darn42 1,268]

Thanks guys!

Sgt: My goal is to definitely make this my career. My ideal path would be a high poly modeler for movie fx and such. That or some sort of video game modeler like ill tonkso. Either way I'm going to attempt to get some sort of internship next summer, hopefully someone will accept a 17 yr old, but I have to get my portfolio diversified and better in the meantime anyways.

Harishna: I can definitely show you how to make them, though I'm going to be very busy the next few weeks and so I doubt I'll get to it for a while. I might be able to do it tomorrow morning if anything though. I have soccer from 7-12 in the morning and band from 12-9 this coming week. (I think and hope soccer is not til the 8th rather than tomorrow)

[harishna 847]

Soccer, what is that? I only know of football and some other stuff that some people also call football which have very little to do with kicking a ball called American football, Australian football and Rugby.

Don't worry do it whenever you got the time, life, specially if football is involved, is more important than showing a tutorial.

[darn42 1,268]

lol

I've decided I'm not going to do a full tutorial anyways. The point of the challenge on eat3d was to pose a challenge, though that doesn't really help if one doesn't know the methods used to make those shapes, so I'm going to give you some tips and techniques for making the shapes.

Ok so I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to use to make these shapes, it'll be more beneficial if you find a way to use the tools I give you to make the shapes rather than me showing how to use the shapes.

This square extrusion with those loops around it makes this when NURMS is turned on at 2 iterations:

To create vertical extrusions on angled surfaces, one can delete the polygon and do a border selection and hold shift while dragging down on the z axis.

When smoothed with no support edges, it looks like this:

to add support edges easily, use the swift loop tool. Hover over an edge and it will create a loop around that edge's ring.

Another way to create a hole, is to select a point and chamfer it out

Then, using cut, create edges all around that chamfer

Once that is done, create an 8 sided cylinder, make it see through (alt+x), make sure the cylinders left and right edges are lined up with the shapes left and right vertices, and move the vertices to the cylinder's points. You can use scale if it is a perfectly square area.

Delete the cylinder select your faces and extrude how you want.

Those are pretty much all the tools you need to figure out those shapes. If you have any more questions I'll be happy to help, but try and figure it out as best you can first. It takes a bit of experimentation to get the stuff right.

[darn42 1,268]

I did a fun little zbrush sculpt today.

I'm getting better at it

Edit: I have more pics

  Edited August 22, 2012 by darn42  

[weixc812 509]

Wow, this skeleton looks so real

[Ceafus 88 1,926]

Looks amazing, but why does it have 3 rows of teeth

[Gn_leugim 858]

creepy XD I feel that wheel can cut you in half no? those look like blades

[darn42 1,268]

Do the root things look less like teeth now?

[Gn_leugim 858]

hmm ya, I would say so

[JayStimson 212]

Is that a self-portrait ? lol

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Whoa!

[Ceafus 88 1,926]

Looks amazing, you are a true talent at this!

[darn42 1,268]

I made a new thing in zbrush (jeez this program is amazing)

I still have to learn how to paint well in zbrush and I will post the final painted pic eventually.

[Ceafus 88 1,926]

O

My

Gosh

:bunny:

Deserves 3 bunny's! Amazing work here!

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Merciful BAT..err MAX...errm Zbrush tool deities...

Now...seeing all this makes me wonder what more you can do for BATing.

  Edited September 5, 2012 by Sgt Pepper  

[Gn_leugim 858]

so nice

[lycans 7]

How did you make that!!? that's totally awesome.. :O

[darn42 1,268]

Made a trumpet in 3ds max for a thing (going to make a trumpet section shirt eventually using it)

  Edited September 9, 2012 by darn42  

[Susaji 523]

Beautiful,I Love it :wub: :wub:

[Cockatoo 2,262]

Lighting setup and materials could definitely use some work, but the model itself looks flawless. Curious to know how you modelled the funnel... I know I'd use lathe or perhaps some sort of soft selection drag and pull setup if the dimentions weren't too important but I'm sure you used a different method.

[darn42 1,268]

I used the scale curve editor in loft and lofted the enter thing along a spline (at least that section of it).

Also, I agree the materials and lighting could use work but I'm not sure why they do. First, can you explain to me what's wrong with them? I know they are wrong but I need a reason why for future projects and then after I try and fix those things, would you mind helping me figure out what to do for them if I can't fix them on my own?

[Jasoncw 12,021]

The material might be ok but it might look off because it's in a grey box. If the trumpet is given a different environment the metal might look more natural.

[darn42 1,268]

Ok, I'll keep that in mind when I do the final render jason. Btw, the tshirt logo thing turned out like this:

[Cockatoo 2,262]

Jason makes a good point. At first they (the materials) didn't seem as metallic as I thought they should, but it could just be the environment they're reflecting.

To try and bring out the beauty of your rendering a little more, I would've used a single light source (probably a photometric light) for an interior rendering like this, or for an exterior scene I would've gone with a a sun/sky setup and an HDRI background so as to generate those kickass reflections really needed to make metallic surfaces believable. I try to avoid using lights where I don't have to, if one + GI will do the trick then that's probably all you need. The reason I say this is because the shadows your setup is creating are sharp and scrambled which suggests multiple light sources close to the object pointing at arbitrary angles. This results in a type of lighting that you'd probably never see in the real world, but it also creates those ugly scrambled shadows which really have no reason to be there.

But as I said earlier, polished metallic surfaces really need reflections to bring them to life. Quite often when you see these sorts of renderings, people will model/ texture simple backgrounds (maybe a wood floor and painted walls ect.) to generate those reflections, but if that background isn't important to the image, they might just blur it out with z-depth in Photoshop. The overall effect is usually really nice.