3D Modeling
Micro Scene
For my final project I decided to make a tea party in a mushroom forest. To create this project I began by finding references I could use as inspiration for props and pieces I would use to construct the project. Once I decided on the imagery I was going to use in the project I began creating the project in Maya. The objects were created using a variety of primitives with multiple subdivisions and revolved curves. I used the charcuterie board from a previous project to help fill some of the scene. The scene was designed to be a micro environment so I created a base on which the scene would sit on top of. To the base I used a cylindrical primitive and beveled the sides to make it look more organic. The scene is supposed to be set in a mushroom forest to give it some fantasy element. I created two variations of mushrooms that were sprinkled around the scene. The mushrooms were varied in size to give height and variations to the backdrop. Once the background was created I began the process of creating the tea party. I created a three tiered serving tray to contain all the snacks for the tea party. The snacks made up the bulk of the props used in the scene. I created macaroons, cookies and muffins. Once all the objects were created started the process of creating UV’s so I could bring them into substance painter to be textured.
VW Bus Micro Scene
To create the VW Bus scene I began by UVing the VW Bus model that was provided to us. Creating the UV’s for this project took up the bulk of the work. The model that was provided to us was filled with very intricate pieces and parts to make up the model. Breaking down the model into smaller pieces to UV took thought and planning on how objects would eventually be grouped together so they can be textured. From the beginning I considered what pieces needed to have certain textures and kept them together. Once I completed UVing the model I began adding lamberts to the various parts that were grouped together. Preplanning how I wanted to texture the model as I UV’d turned out to make the project very easy to work with when I brought it into Substance Painter. Once the model was in substance painter I began dragging the various textures I wanted onto the appropriate ID colors. I’d grouped together the project into four main components. All pieces that I wanted to be textured in silver metal were grouped together, all glass was grouped, rubber pieces were grouped and finally the painted chassis of the VW bus. The textured model was brought back into Maya to be triangulated and brought into Unity. I added various post processing effects in Unity to give the model appropriate lighting and to make the scene more realistic. I was very pleased with the end result of the project. I was able to find an HDRI of a parking lot and put the VW Bus into the scene to make it look like it was parked.
Sci-Fi Scene
For this particular project I decided to work with a Tie Fighter and crate that was provided to us to work on. I began the process by UVing the model. To make sure I was grouping everything correctly I put the objects together that I wanted to have a specific ID color for substance painter. UVing this project was fairly difficult, cutting the various parts would create stress on the UV meshes. I had to re-planar some pieces so I could create better UV’s. With everything grouped together I began creating my ID map and coloring everything that would use the same texture. The models were brought into Substance Painter to begin the process of texturing the object. This object was unique because I planned to use emissive to give the model parts that would glow in the final scene. The models were then brought back into Maya to triangulate so it could be brought into Unity. Once in Unity I began constructing my game scene. For the scene I imagined a squadron of Tie Fighter flying in formation while shooting as they dropped crate bombs form the sky. I used a sky HDRI and added fog to make it look like they were flying on a gaseous planet. I added point lights to the engines to help the glow from the emissive and then created laser beams in unity that the Tie Fighters were firing. I was very pleased with the final look of this project using a gaseous planet as a backdrop really helped to give the scene ambiance.
Week 5 Progress Post
The end goal of this project was to create a game scene replicating the style of Warcraft 3 Reforged. One the models were created they were imported into Unity and set in a scene. I tried to convey with my game scene a hidden castle high in the mountains that would be difficult to travel to. I had similar issues throughout the design of this project. There were multiple times when I would create an object and attempt to UV it and discover there is some bad geometry in the construction of the object. I was able to fix and recover some of the models by removing ngons and extra edge loops. But there were a few times where I was unable to fix the geometry of the object and was forced to start from the beginning on the model. This project took me 100+ hours to complete. Many of the extra hours were due to issues with UV’s or bad geometry. This project did face me with multiple challenges that would take me hours to diagnose and resolve. But now if I run into similar issues going forward I should be able to quickly diagnose and fix the project. Overall I feel the scene adequately conveys what I originally set out to do with the design of the project. I was able to replicate the style of my reference successfully, UV my models, texture the objects, construct a mountainous terrain and add foliage in Unity to set a scene.
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Week 4 Progress Post
Initially I thought these last few objects would be relatively easy to make. The remaining objects I had to make were the gate for the entrance to the castle, a wall, a tower, bell tower and central building. The wall seemed like a very straightforward object using simple shapes. But it turned out to be far more tedious than I thought it would be. While making it I repeatedly created ngons. I finally broke it into many different parts and put them together rather than making a section of it into one part. The tower and bell tower were relatively easy to create. Once the tower was completed I used the structure to create the bell tower. The central building didn’t take very long at all to create but all the while I was creating these objects I was making sure to UV them. When I was finally finished modeling everything I went back to create my UV sheet and lay out all the objects onto one sheet. This is where I ran into serious issues with the project. When I pulled my objects into a uv sheet and tried to lay them out I began to run into manifold issues. Tracking down where the issues with my UV’s were took an immense amount of time. Once I was able to finish my UV’s and started to texture my object I realized I was going to run into another issue with my project. I created the castle's exterior modularly with the intention of creating duplicates and moving them around the central buildings to make the walls. But when adding textures to the wall segments and sliding bits of them around I realized that it would cause issues with the textures. I instead textures parts of the wall so they weren’t connected and could be added where I needed them.
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Week 3 Progress Post
(Reference)During week three I began working on the water fountain I planned to use for this scene. This was both an easy and difficult piece to create. I began creating the object by using the curve tool. I traced out the shape I wanted from the reference art. Once I had the shape I needed for the object I revolved the curve to make the object and reversed the mesh to have the faces in the correct direction. After creating the object I was trying to decide how I would fill the basin of the fountain. I decided on selecting all the inner faces of the basin and extracting them. Once I had inner basin faces extracted I duplicated them and used a fill hole/poke face to make the top of what would be the water. This worked out and I continued this process for the remaining basins for the water fountain. This was also the point in the project where I started working on the turret for the castle. I took the turret I’d already created and removed the stairs and door leading into the object. I then removed the top of the turret as the design was different from the design on the castle turrets. I extracted from the existing center column to make the inner shape of the castle turret. Once I’d felt I’d make some progress with the castle turret I tried to UV the object but very quickly discord many extra edge loops were created from the extruding process. I spent quite a bit of time removing the extra edge loops and double faces. I also decided to break some of the structure into modular pieces. I duplicated over some of the modular pieces and reused them on the castle turrets. Getting the castle turret modeled correctly and UV’d took up the majority of my allotted time for this week of progress and set me back quite a bit going into the next week of work.
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Week 2 Progress Post
In the second week I began working on the turret model. I began by trying to make the turret as one piece for a majority of the structure. I started from a square, added subdivisions and extruded out to form the design of the turret. After making it half way through this object I discovered this wasn’t the best approach to making the bulk of the turret. As I began to bevel the turret and add more curves to the singular peace I started to develop many ngons. After running into issues I started to make the turret in a more modular style breaking down the overall structure into smaller pieces than I originally intended. Once I had the main section of the turret completed I began working on the small embellishments like windows, the door and the flag pool at the top. I made sure to create this as individual objects because I planned to use them as parts of the other objects. With slight modifications I felt I could use the door as the entrance for the castle as well. At this point in the project I also began UV’ing. I began by breaking up the flagpole into parts that would use different textures and extracted the faces. Overall working on the turret and getting the geometry correct without any ngons took around 8 hours to complete. The next piece I planned to work on for the following week would be a water fountain and would be the last prop piece I would need for my scene.
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