230 Midterm: Tables, Props, and Barrels, oh my!

     Throughout the year, my modeling skills have been steadily improving. Things started out simple with the Primitives project. Using only basic geometric shapes, we were tasked with making a small structure. When I heard “basic primitive shapes”, I was immediately reminded of the Precursor structures from the game Subnautica. These were all very cube-like in design, and I managed to find some unused concept art for a reactor. This would be my primary reference for the build.

Reference:

Completed Reactor Model

I was quite excited with the final outcome, and was impressed by the progress I was able to make in such a short amount of time. Sadly that streak would not continue. I was tasked next with building a barrel. It sounded simple in theory, but significantly more work would have to be poured in compared to my earlier project. We also had to export it from Maya, which is where we had been doing our modeling, to Substance Painter for texturing. Modeling and UVing went very well. But once it came time to texturing, I was unable to figure out how to export the model correctly into Painter. I underestimated the time and difficulty required for this last part, so I did not have any spare time to attend an office or class to solve this.

Completed Barrel with crazy lighting to simulate color:

Luckily for me though, I was able to configure the lighting to the point where it made a completely gray background and barrel reflect color. This was of course nowhere near as nice compared to if I actually figured out how to texture it properly, but for a last minute solution, I was pretty happy with myself.

This would be followed up with the Props Assignment. Here I had to make a potion bottle, a lantern, a bucket, and a flour bag, alongside importing my barrel from the past project. This was the most amount of modeling yet for a single project, And I was proud of my work. Though again, I was unable to figure out how to accurately texture the models. Luckily I was able to at least give the basic color and reflective properties, so things turned out far nicer than the original barrel assignment.

I actually used a lantern I drew myself on photoshop a year prior as a reference. And for the bucket, I simply resized my original barrel model and added a handle. 

Lantern Reference:

All the props together:

The next project was to create a chess board. I told myself that I would finally figure out how to texture, but again, I procrastinated to the point where that was no longer plausible. At the same time, I was very happy with how all the individual pieces came out, and thought it was some of my best work so far.

Chess Board with wireframe on:

Chess Board rendered:

Finally, we have the midterm. This time I had learned from my mistakes, and greatly improved my work ethic, not only starting the project on day 1, but also finally learning how to properly texture using Substance Painter; I was not cutting any corners this time. I had to make a cut out of a room for this project. I found a simplistic render of what looked to be a gaming room, and instantly fell in love with layout. For the most part, I used about 80% of it for my reference, taking more drastic creative liberties in areas that I thought could be improved upon.

Room Reference:

Room AO Render:

This was the first time I had textured, and I was pretty happy with how things were turning out. The biggest hit seemed to be my wall texture, which multiple classmates asked me how I did. I enlarged a Carbon Fiber texture to the point where individual threads were so big they looked like paneling, giving the walls a sort of layered checkered like pattern.

Main Render:

The only part where I felt like I fell short was the displays on the TV and Monitors. I originally was planning on keeping them all a blank white color, but way too close to the submission date, I thought they would look nicer with textures. I struggled for a while attempting to add visuals that weren't too pixelated, to the point where I realized I would not have the time to do this for all four screens. After submission, It also randomly came to be that I forgot to texture and color the corner bevels of the room as well. Luckily, the grey looked perfectly in place alongside the primarily navy blue ceiling and walls.

Monitors and TV:

My primary take away from these projects was how I needed to change how I worked. I’m quite capable of writing a high quality 10 page essay in a day, but nowhere near capable of doing a modeling assignment of similar scope in the same timeframe. The Room assignment took me roughly 40 hours, and I still had plenty of room for significant improvement. At the end of the day though, I was proud with how the room turned out, definitely considering it the best work I had made so far. I got to the point where I no longer had to constantly google common tools, and had started to memorize many of the highly used keybinds. I’m far more prepared for any future projects, now that I no longer procrastinate, and have a significantly improved skillset.