Week 2 - Blocking Out

After a week of work, here is what I have so far. While I'm not exactly where I want to be with the model, I feel that I made some good progress given all of the problems I was having with it. At this point in time, I am breaking the car into parts and editing the edge flow throughout the model. Hopefully after this weekend I'll be done with the overall shape of the car and I can start modeling the extras, like the tubes, wires, and engines. I would like to be done with all modeling by next Friday, but I probably won't be done until the end of next weekend.

Week 1 - I'm Back!

After a long leave of absence, I'm back with some new ideas (the projects I had up before are being put on hold for now). For the next several weeks I'll be working on the Delorean DMC-12 from the movie Back to the Future.

My plan is to make a high-res model, bake normal maps onto a low-res model, texture it, and make a turntable animation in 5 weeks. Each week I will update my progress on the Delorean and show you how far I got. With any luck I will have this done by the time I go to GDC.

Coming Soon...

Here's two projects I am currently working on. Check back soon to see the final product!

Stylized Character v2.0

• Modeling:                       ~7 hours
• UV/Texturing:                 ~12 hours
• Rigging:                           ~3 hours
• Camera/Lighting              ~1 hour
• Rendering:
• "Beauty Pass"        ~4 hours
• Wireframe             ~1.5 hours
• Total:                               ~28.5 hours

My second pass at modeling my stylized character. The idea of this project was to polish up a previous project from earlier in the semester, while also modeling a scene to put it in. Seeing how I thought I couldn't do much more with my Deathclaw, I decided to go back and polish up my stylized character. Things I changed were the size of the feet and arms, the head, and the textures. I also tried to add a skeleton rig to my model, however I ran into some problems and had to scrap it.

Fallout 3 - Deathclaw

Here is the Youtube link for the turntable: Deathclaw Turntable

• Modeling:                   ~30 hours
• Sculpting:                     ~3 hours
• UV/Texturing:            ~10 hours
• Hypershade:                ~4 hours
• Lighting/Camera          ~1 hour
• Rendering:
• "Beauty Pass"    ~4 hours
• Wireframe:        ~2 hours
• Total:                         ~54 hours

My first project trying to make a highly detailed creature. The idea of the project was for us to either create a creature from scratch or take an already existing creature and model it. So, seeing how I love the Fallout universe, I decided to model the Deathclaw. For this project, I really wanted to see how much detail I could put into a model, and I thought I did fairly well depicting the Deathclaw. After finishing the project, I realized the face seemed a little off compared to the actual Deathclaw, so I went back in to fix it up a little. The textures also aren't as detailed as I wanted them to be, so I will also be going back in to add a little more detail to them.

Stylized Character - Executioner

• Modeling:             ~40 hours
• UV/Texturing:           6 hours
• Rendering:                5 hours
• Total:                   ~51 hours

My first project in trying to make a stylized human character. The idea of the project was to make a stylized character with proper edge flow and little to no N-gons or triangles. Like the project before, I mostly focused on the modeling instead of textures. By the time I finished this project, I thought I had a good grasp on what good edge flow looks like and how to eliminate as many N-gons and triangles in my mesh as possible. Of course, there are still quite a lot of N-gons in this mesh, and I eventually went back in to fix that issue in a later project.

Organic Modeling - Frog

• Modeling:           ~6 hours
• UV/Texturing:       5 hours
• Rendering:            1 hour
• Total:                ~12 hours

My first organic model. The idea of the project was to see how well we could follow a tutorial to make a frog. The importance of the project was to figure out proper edge flow and to eliminate as many N-gons and triangles from the model as possible. While I thought the model turned out fairly well, I realized there were several N-gons in the hands, feet, and mouth area. Since this was mostly an introduction to organic modeling, I probably won't be revisiting this project. However, I will take what I learned from this project and apply it to my future projects.