Evaluation

I have always thoroughly enjoyed using 3d programs, I find them interesting and I find them a lot easier to get my ideas across modelling free hand in comparison to free hand drawing with pen and paper which I do have issues with, drawing is not my strong point. At first using 3dS Max, I found it a bit strange, because I first started learning 3d on Maya. But after a few weeks of practice and also getting practice from learning how to over come obstacles through modelling, texturing lighting and camera work I found that to a degree I am reasonably competent at modelling, in the respect that I modelled everything free hand, only using the images as visual reference, I didn't at any point use any templates on planes. Although that method of modelling with templates projected on planes I wish to learn aswell, as it will come in handy for modelling vehicles or any object which requires a completely symmetrical shape.

Through this assignment, I have found my strengths in using 3DS MAX which is superb, but what I value more is I have also taken note of my weaknesses. I don't personally think my weaknesses are through using the program, but they lie in using other programs around it. For example with the slug texturing, if I had a better understanding of how to shape the textures according to the mesh which I unwrapped in MAX, i wouldn't have any overlaps or mistakes and the textures would fit smoothly to the final model, so from this assignment, as well as practicing more on MAX I really need to practice more on photoshop to ensure these mistakes do not happen again in the second semester's assignment and in turn, I will create better textures to compliment my future models.
Another weakness I have found in myself and is truly a bane of my life! Is time keeping! I must, must, must ensure that my timekeeping is improved to create a better quality of work over a evenly spread work flow timeline for the second semester. I believe that if I managed my time better for this assignment I would have been capable of creating a higher level of realism and quality on my stamps, so from these errors I will learn to ensure I create a higher quality of work which I am capable of doing for the second semester and my goal for the second semester's work is to practice heavily on using 3DS MAX and photoshop (look into how to animate in MAX, I understand how to animate in MAYA and looking at MAX it is reasonably similar, so this will be advantageous) take on board my weaknesses, make them no longer my weaknesses and exceed whatever grade I will get for this assignment.

I think I have said it in previous posts and perhaps this one aswell, but I have really enjoyed this assignment, more than I think I would when I first got the brief and it has been one hell of a learning curve from start to finish and I do not think I will forget any of the techniques I have used for this assignment, I will take them on board for the creation of my personal projects also.


This is a bit of an after thought and I should have really put it earlier on in my blog, I found this link really useful for beoming more efficient in using the hot keys. I think originally, I searched for it because I couln't understand for a while, why I couldn't move around in my perspective view and I found out that reason why was comewhere down the line I hit CTRL+C (create camera)

http://www.3dvalley.com/tutorials/3d-studio-max-hotkeys-and-mouse-essentials

Final Stamp: The Beginning!

Here is my final stamp! I was happy with how it came out, seen as I made it in about 3 hours in total, I was expecting it to look a lot worse!! Well what a journey through 3d these past weeks have been. Next and final post, evaluation.

Texturing and final touches

Once I was happy with the amount of models I had on set, i then created two planes. I browsed the internet and found the textures I was looking for, i think in search I typed either veiny or blood textures (to be like an inside of a female creature of course!) I followed the same methods as I have done by assigning materials to the planes, I think for the planes I used box mapping. For texturing the sperm I didn't use cylindrical mapping (I can't quite remember, but I think I used box also, it seemed to look better) and made a texture in photoshop and stuck it straight on the sperm. I did try as an experiment the unwrapping method, but it came out looking worse than sticking the material straight on and doing it that way. I originally had two planes , but I found that it looked better with just the one in the end. For some reason aswell, MAX was playing up with the lighting, so unfortunately I couldn't play around with the lighting as much as I wanted to. Originally I wanted to try and look at how to illuminate slightly the egg, to make it look a bit more like you see in the scientific photographs, but i had to make do with what I could be allowed to do because MAX was being stubborn!! I textured the sphere using photoshop to create the texture. I found a gravelly sort of texture on the internet for the sperm and the egg and used a layer on top again with a fill and opacity of my choice.

Next stage in the final stamp!

With the sperm model created, I then created the egg. I just made a sphere and placed it where I wanted it. I then set a camera up for where i wanted the render to be from.

The next stage was cloning the sperm model so I could make several, looking like they are all going for the egg. For some reason in this stage MAX just did not want to work like it has for my past projects!! It wouldn't let me use the move tool on certain axis's at certain times, so to overcome this, I had to be a little bit crafty! You see, in this render not all the sperm are the same size, I had to clone a sperm, then move it on whichever axis it would allow then use the scale and rotate tools to give the illusion of distance, so the ones which look nearer to the camera are huge sperms, while the others are minute in comparison. Below is the low poly render.

Every Sperm is sacred!

Ok, so I made the sperm out of a cylinder, with both caps emoved, i then used the extrude method, with hoding down the shift key. I then shaped the sperm as how I wanted it then I started adding in more vertiexes to the tail using the ring, followed by connect tools. I then smoothed it out.

Final Stamp Idea: The beginning

Ok, time is running pretty short and I have one more stamp to do. So I have changed from my original idea of doing some form of mammal (still didn't really decide on what!) to doing something more significant to all areas of life.

Why choose this?

Well for one reason being, that it would be a quick fire stamp to do in the small amount of time I have left and for the second reason, I think the simplicity of the final image and what it stands for will visually make a great stamp. Simple and effective!

Cecil's been stamped!!!!

Here he is as a stamp! Right final one on it's way :)

Cecil's final images

Following are the final images of Cecil. I am pleased i chose to do a creature like this, because if I didn't I probably wouldn't have learned to understand how to use the unwrapping to a reasonably effective degree. I know that this image has it's flaws, but I think that's more from my weakness in fully knowing how to use photoshop, but after learning this method in how to texture objects I am definitely going to up my game in using and utilising photoshop and incorporating it with MAX. For the final images, if I remember rightly I used 3 or 4 omni lights with varying intensities. In the material attributes, I changed all textures of Cecil's to phong rather than Blinn and adjusted and tweaked around with the specular and glossiness (I think roughly Specular = 54 Glossiness = 24)

Texturing Stage4: Adding bump map effect

Right, so once I completed the last stage of the map painting, I then wanted to incorporate the textures I found online for the lower body and upper body. I placed these images into the map I was painting in Photoshop in separate layers. This took a lot of fiddling about with layers, plus admittedly I am pretty much still a padawan with photoshop so I did the best I could, I couldn't figure out how to shape the placed JPEGS in the desired area and shape I wanted, so I sort of bodge jobbed the textures. So after a lot of tweaking with the placed JPEGS and getting them where I wanted them in photoshop I then added the paint layers other the top of them again and adjusted the opacity on the individual layers, to get just enough of the textures showing through. In the following images I have Cecil almost completed and I have an image showing how the map looked in photoshop (it does look scruffy in photoshop I apologise!) I also adjusted Cecil's colours in photoshop using the fill bucket tool on the map.

Texturing Stage3: Photoshop Stage, finalising painting map and eye stalks

By this stage, I pretty much finished off painting the basic texture onto Cecil and I started work on the eyes. I followed the same methods as previously explained with the mapping, but instead of painting the texture I used the same method as I did with blinky's texturing to an extent. I used the gravel texture which I will be using for the upper body texture and then I created a layer with a complete colour fill over the top and adjusted the opacity, on top of that I created another layer where i could stick a black spot on for Cecil's eyeball (if slugs have them!) and adjusted according to how it looked in MAX by saving the texture each time I changed it in photoshop.

The following images show Cecil's paint job close to completion and Cecil's eye stalks and feelers with textures. I admit, he does look like a bit of a bog eyed slug, but nevermind. Everybody still loves Cecil!


The last image also slightly gives away a hint of what will be shown in the next chapter.

Texturing Stage 2:Photoshop Stage, Painting the map!

I then opened up my map in photoshop. Firstly I just painted little streaks here and there just to understand where it will appear on Cecil's body, once I put down my dots/paint scribbles I saved the image as a JPEG then went into MAX and opened up the materials and followed the process to texture Cecil with the map I was working on in Photoshop. This I found was a great way of doing it as when you were unsure of where the paint job was going you could just save the JPEG and in MAX the texture would automatically upload. It was a slow process but I truly enjoyed it, the pictures below show how Cecil looked with the texture on with various stages of painting in photoshop. I have also included an image of how the map looked in photoshop while I was painting on it.

Texturing Stage1: Unwrap UVW

I found the textures I wanted, I then needed to go into MAX and sort out Cecil! I firstly applied the UVW mapping modifier to him, I used the cylindrical mapping and scaled the cylinder so it slightly oversized Cecil, just to make sure I had him nicely covered. I then selected all the polygons on the body and selected the Unwrap UVW modifier and clicked on the edit box. In the editor, I tweaked about with the mesh map's vertices until I got them how I liked them, I then chose to render the UVW template and saved it as a JPEG. The image beneath is Cecil's map for his body:

Although, with the eyes, I didn't really have to but I felt like doing the same process, just to get a bit more practice doing this, don't know why, but for some reason one of the eyes mesh's came out really strange in the render, but yet didn't really affect the end result (as you will see). Beneath is one of the eyes renders:

next stage is photoshop stage.

Texturing Cecil, finding the right textures!

To texture Cecil, was a slightly different process to Blinky. The advantage of Blinky was the fact that he was built up of individual sections, so I could adjust each individual part of him. The problem with Cecil is that in effect, he's a big cylinder, so I had to learn how to use UVW map modifier effectively and also applying the unwrap UVW modifier to the model so that I could render the mesh as a flat image out to photoshop, which is how I did it :)

Below shows the image I took for reference to texture my slug from:

As you can see, the slug primarily has two different textures. On it's upper body section, it has an almost gravelly, gritty texture. On the part of it's body where it leads towards it's tail has like a sand/wave sort of ripple texture.

From studying this image I went on a google quest to find these two textures and i found them!!


I was pretty much happy with these textures, so I stored them away in a file for safe keeping so that I can work on the first stage of Cecil.

Finished modelling Cecil

Ok, I finished modelling Cecil, now I'm just gonna work on the background and his texturing. I will need to look at how to create a texture from scratch in photoshop, perhaps using some of the textures from blinky's materials for bump mapping.

The following show how Cecil looks now, I adjusted the size of his head slightly and stumped his body a bit (if the keenest of viewers can notice this!)



To create the eyes and little feelers, I made a cylinder, applied the editable poly modifier then removed both caps and used the shift and move tool method for extruding, the eyes are all one piece, I used the same method for the feeler bits at the bottom aswell.

Blinky: Final Stamp!

Finally! Here's the stamp! I wish had more time to spare so I could've made my own stamp template, but luckily (thanks Rich) there was the stamp and queens head template at hand. I liked this image as the final one, because I like the way the mantis has been illuminated and also how the lighting almost looks as though it's coming through leaves above the mantis, placing shadows on the mantis. Also, bonus is is that is subtly hides the excessive noise that was on the side of blinky's wingcasing which I just couldn't shrug off and keep the desired look of the leafy texture.

This stamp has been a great learning curve for me in MAX on how to free hand model, using and applying the nodes, which is a slightly different set up to MAYA in the terms of modelling texturing is pretty much the same, so that wasn't too much of a shock to the system, overall enjoyed modelling this one!! Just wished I organised my time more efficiently, because although it's finished I can't help but keep looking at the model in MAX and the final pic above and just pick out every flaw that's great or small about this piece of work and how I could have improved it! But as mentioned, it was a great learning curve modelling Blinky and where I stumbled on Blinky I can remember and correct to ensure I finish Cecil to the same or higher standard.

What I found I need to work on more so from this stamp for Cecil will be texturing, also Cecil is being made from one polygon cylinder, so the texturing method is gonna be a little bit different in comparison as blinky was made from several shapes. Right, now it's time to make a brew and get my arse in gear to finish the other two now!

Chapter5: Nearly there!!

Next stage, I created 2 planes, originally I had 3 but found the third unnecessary. I then found some imagery of soil for the floor plane and i found something for the backdrop of the rainforest. With the floor plane, I made a bump map using the soil, so it looks a little bit more realistic (as realistic as I could doing this method anyway!!).

For the lighting I used the 3 point lighting method, but I did then put in one more light to illuminate the scenery a bit more.

Following images show the various shots I did while i was deciding on the best shot, it took me ages to decide on how I wanted Blinky posed!!!

Chapter4:Main body and legs

Well, this chapter won't be very interesting really, seen as the underbelly and legs weren't the main focal point for how I wanted Blinky for the final render pose, so I just made a texture in photoshop, using the eye bump map texture, added a colour fill layer, tweaked to be the colour I wanted it to be, that nice rich green. I then made the material in MAX and used the same JPEG as the bump map. I then applied it to the under body and legs, the following underneath is blinky complete



Next post will be with full background and final stamp.

Chapter3: Claws

Using the same mantis image as a reference:

I noticed that it's front claws are also leafy looking. So for the claws I just used the same texture as what i used for the wing and thorax casing.

I applied the texture and at first wasn't really happy after I attached the UVW map node. I then went into the parameters of UVW map and started experimenting, I found that what worked best was the box mapping and then I just tweaked it until I was satisfied with the outcome. For the bump map, I found using the eye bump map texture to be the most successful and just whacked it up a bit more than I did on the eye. For the feet part of the claws, I textured a brownish material which i also used and applied to Blinky's antennae, I didn't worry too much about detail as this wouldn't be much of a focal point of the mantis. Spikes similar, only I applied a brighter colouring to make the spikes stand out more from the claws.


Next chapter will be pretty short, just a final chapter covering main body.