My 3D Model Truck

I began my truck model off with placing reference images on planes, containing the front, back and side view of the truck. I began the truck with a plane and slowly worked my way up to a full model. After this step, I began to use my cut tool to cut out the placement of the doors and windows.

I first finished the body structure of my truck, then I moved onto the wheels. The wheels were not too hard to model, but they did take time. What took up most of the time was the tiling pattern on the tires, than having to copy and attach it to each and every other piece.

After I finished with modeling I moved onto unwrapping. Unwrapping is something I underestimated. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of effort. What unwrapping is, is taking the 3 dimensional object you have created and pretty much unfold it so that it becomes a 2 dimensional image. What unwrapping is used for is texturing, which is also hard.

Texturing is adding a texture layer to our 3D model. For example, in animated movies you would look at cloth, this cloth is in fact a polygon model that has probably been textured, colored, to look like it has been made of material.

After texturing was finally over, then came the lighting, the turn-table, the camera angle, and the rendering. The lighting we were assigned to use for this project was three-point lighting. Meaning there are three lights, two in front of the model and one coming from the back. These lights have different intensities. The reason behind this being is the key light (main source of light) would have the strongest intensity and is placed in front of the model, then the second light is at a slightly lower intensity to that of the key light, and is also placed in front, then finally comes the back light which is also a lower intensity than the key light, and as you guessed the back light is placed in the back. Now, the key light being the main source of light, the second light in front is so that there are no black shadows covering up or hiding the model, and the backlight is so the model does not blend in with the background. Camera angles, I will not be going into much detail about the camera angels seeing as in we only had one camera showing the entire model. Now, the turn-table. The turn-table is what the model is placed on, if you get an action figure it is what the main object lies on, a flat surface that may include environment textures. This was pretty easy to make, it only required a flattened box and some props. Finally comes the rendering, probably the easiest of steps. But just because it is easy doesn’t mean it may take more than a few days to be complete. Thankfully mine only took 17 minutes to render but other models with more polygons take up days, maybe even weeks to render. Rendering is the final component to modelling. It is when you are done with editing the polygon model you have created and now what to clean it up, adding whatever animations you would like to add to the model. 

Production Pipeline of My Bouncing Ball

Model:

The object I decided to model and use for this production is a ball. I decided on a ball that resembles a small bouncing ball,since my animation would consist of the ball bouncing several times. I chose a ball because a ball was a simple model to begin animating in terms of my first animation.

Texture:

I chose a red colored dodge-ball texture for the ball, a marble floor, and a wooden wall. For the ball, I chose a dodge-ball surface because I felt it would appropriate for a ball that bounced. For the floor, I chose marble because of how solid a marble floor is, if it were to be a wooden floor, it may have some shifting weight. I chose the wooden wall because I felt it was both appealing to the eyes and because I felt it was appropriate.

 

Lighting:

For my lighting I used an Omni light. I chose the Omni light because I felt it would illuminate the entire area that I wanted to focus on without the complications of a spotlight where I would have to adjust the focus and the source.
 

Animation:

For the animation I made the ball bounce twice, roll on the floor to hit the wooden wall and roll back to a complete stop. I chose this motion because this is my first animation on 3DS Max and I thought that it would be the easiest to animate.
 

Rendering:

Rendering took 15 minutes for me. Rendering the image changed the view. I found that my background was set to white, and that the model was much smoother that before rendering. I also found rendering extremely frightening in the case that I set up the camera in the wrong angle or any flaws like my computer crashing or 3DS Max crashing.

Is Social Media That Important In The Industry?

What I find interesting in the creative industry is how social media can have a huge affect. What I gathered from the blog and lecture about social media in the industry is how it expands your horizons; meaning, that it helps you grow and branch out, as well as you can gain a lot out of social media as an artist. What we discussed in class about the blog was how setting goals can help you narrow down what platform you use. It is also determined by what you do for a living, for example, a filmmaker would probably go towards YouTube and Vimeo whereas an animator would use YouTube and Deviant Art. Narrowing down what platform you use is also based on your target audience.
For me as an animator, I would drift towards Deviant Art, Instagram, Blogspot, Twitter, Vimeo, and YouTube. In class we discussed whether we would be making these accounts to get recognized as freelancers or individuals, or making the accounts to benefit the project that we're trying to promote. Social media has a large influence within every industry.
I now understand why so many television series and feature films have twitter and YouTube accounts. They use them to gain a larger audience, to promote.
I can definitely say that this lecture has benefited me a lot and will definitely benefit me in the near future. I would make several social media accounts and I would promote myself as a freelancer till I find a well and steady job that I enjoy.

Data...?

This week we were given a link discussing data. Whether the data was helpful or not is what we discussed in class, as well as what we would do when shown the data. This data that was discussed was the feedback of our viewers. I think reading and talking about data helped me as an artist. I now understand how data works and how I should go about dealing with it. 

Data is the feedback but is also what allows you to know how many people of what age group are attracted by your work. In that sense it helps you narrow down who you're trying to attract. I think and feel that this was something worth learning, for young artists it is very important to learn that just because this data exists, it is only a support, does not mean that we must follow it. It is a guideline that we can choose to follow or not to follow. This was also the last website we were given to read and I wish there were more because I feel like I've learned so muh out of them and it would have been great to learn more.

Week 4 - Textures and Shaders, Simply.

Texture and shaders can be used in different combinations. Some will result in a flossy surface, shiny surface, matte surface, rough surface, and soft surface. Depending on the combination, you will end up with a different surface. In class we talked about these "different" combinations and went slightly in depth about how the combinations can go, and about what types of shading models there were. We only discussed a few. We also discussed how much the software has developed since the start of 3D modelling.

Shaders:

J., (2011). Components of a 3D Model, Retrieved from http://www.3dvia.com/blog/components-of-a-3d-model/

Textures:

J., (2011). Components of a 3D Model, Retrieved from http://www.3dvia.com/blog/components-of-a-3d-model/

Without textures and shaders, models would look dull. There would not be any substance to the polygon. It would be a plain surface with plane colors. There would not be depth, there would not be texturing, and there would not be lighting and shadows. Textures and shaders are what make 3D models so lifelike and fascinatingly realistic.

As said by Slick, J. 3D Modelling Terms - Vertices, Edges, Polygons & Shaders, Retrieved from http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/a/Anatomy-Of-A-3d-Model.htm, "A shader is a set of instructions applied to a 3D model that lets the computer know how it should be displayed" as well as "Textures also contribute greatly to a model's visual appearance." Summed up, this means that a shader is a kind of command, or set instructions, that the computer will understand to know how to apply and display a texture. As for a texture, a texture is the physical appearance of the model. Whether it is a rough surface, or a cracked surface, a sandy plane or a bed of water, the shader and texture go hand in hand. Without the shader, there is no texture; without a texture, the shader is useless.

Week 3 - The Gist of 3D Modelling

In class this week we discussed some pioneers of 3D modelling as well as different aspects. One of the pioneers that we learned about in class was Jim Blinn, and how he created the Blinn-Phong shader model which is a specular surface, it has a certain shine to it, and he also created the Bump Map, which was when you apply a 2D image of texture to a 3D object resulting in the object's texture appearing 3D. The second pioneer we learned and talked about was Lambert and his shading model which was a more matte surface. Another pioneer we spoke of was Phong and his flossy shading model which could be used for jewellery and cans, even.
Some of the highlights in 3D Modelling history were UVW Mapping, "U" stood for horizontal, "V" stood for vertical, and "W" stood for depth. So each shading model would have several mapping attributes, such as, color/diffuse, transparency/opacity, ambient color, incandesce, specularity, bump, and translucence. Here are some examples:

(2009). Методическое руководство по Maya, Retrieved from http://www.3dmir.ru/s_tutor/tutor/563.html

WebGL Materials, Retrieved from https://clara.io/learn/user-guide/lighting_shading/materials/material_types/webgl_materials

(2014). Phong Reflection Model, Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_reflection_model

Moving to a different topic, democratization in 3D graphics. The current generation is full of wonders now with talks of virtual reality, starting us off with the Oculus Rift. There are so many possibilities and doors to open. Technology is advancing for the better. Interface will soon be more user friendly and the possibilities are endless. This will help widely in the industry for entertainment, for designing houses, and furniture.

Ptex. As said by (http://ptex.us) "Ptex is a texture mapping system developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios for production-quality rendering. No UV assignment is required! Tex now applies a separate texture to each face of a subdivision or polygon mesh. The Ptex file format can efficiently store hundreds of thousands of texture images in a single file. The Ptex API provides cached file I/O and high-quality filtering everything that is needed to easily add Ptex support to a production-quality renderer or texture authoring application." quote on quote. I think in the long run this will help widely, making texture mapping easier, faster, and cleaner.

Is My Art Appealing?

It is week 4 of University and we currently discussed the similarities and differences between reviewers and critiques. Our entire class mostly consisted of us discussing the two. I honestly thought I knew the difference between them. The difference between them is that a critique of a film, art work, or song would be more in depth and would be from a much more professional perspective. As for a review, a review is a brief breakdown of the movie, song, or art work; in the sense that, it would not be in depth and it would not be from a professional point of view. It would simply be a few lines dictating whether or not the individual enjoyed the movie, song, or art work. It took a while of explaining this for me to understand, rather, for the whole class to understand. As always we, as a class, were put into groups for classwork. We were asked by our professors to pick a movie and search for essays, academic writing, and reviews on that movie and to differentiate between them. We were asked to tell the difference between essays, academic writing, and reviews. I understood the difference, quite hard to grasp at firs but I eventually understood.

The blog we were directed to read this time spoke about critics, reviewers, and journalists. It was mostly history facts but also very beneficial to me as an animation student. My work, later on in the industry, will be criticized, and I found it very informative. I feel like it was best that we, as students of art, learn about this now for future reference rather than not learn what it is and be stunned in the future. I learned that we shouldn't take criticism to heart, but rather take it as feedback to grow as an artist.