CAGD 330

Door Progress - High Poly

For this assignment, as talked about in the last blog post, our job was to make a stylized door, starting in Zbrush, and working from high poly to low poly. 

In the last post, I talked about how I wanted to do an Animal Crossing themed door, but this didn't work out for me too much. In class, one of the students talked about how he wanted to do something that was based on this senior portfolio project and there was a caution to that. I decided it would probably be better to do something totally different. I knew that I still wanted to do something that I was passionate about, so I chose to do something Disney themed.

When I thought of Disney, I was having trouble with the concept of a door....then it hit me all at once! There was a very famous door that I knew of in Disney. Can you guess what it is? I will give you a hint....do you want to build a snowman? In the event that you do, it's time to build Elsa's door!

Everything started with a concept. Finding concept art was both easy and hard at the same time. It was easy because, well, there is an entire scene of the movie in front of the door. However, it is also kind of difficult because it never really shows the full door. On top of that, it was a task to figure out how to make the door, which is deceptively difficult, in Zbrush.

After finding a good sum of concept art, I was able to begin. Another thing that I took advantage of was the ability to make alpha stamps into geometry quite easily in Zbrush. I am a fan of making alpha stamps in Photoshop for Painter, so this process was quite simple. After making that, I knew that I could easily start in Zbrush.

I took this image into Photoshop to make an alpha

My Alpha

One attempt later, things looked a little bit off. Because Elsa's door is your basic everyday door, it is easy to see when things aren't lining up. Below, you can see my first attempt at the base door. It looks alright, but it really isn't (or at least it was not for me).

Two attempts later, I got something that I was happy with. I ended up doing a lot of fine-tuning, but I realized that there was still something missing. It looked like a door, which was great, but it didn't seem like enough to fill in the requirements of the project. Then I remembered something....do you want to build a snowman? That was the lightbulb moment. I figured that Olaf would be the perfect addition and the perfect challenge.

Base Door (attempt 2)

Door with more detail

A challenge he was...the head was honestly the hardest part. It's easy to make the front look alright, but this is 3D modeling, not 2D artwork. After a couple of hours of sculpting the head, and multiple attempts of trying, I was able to get something that looked pretty alright. Then things just started falling into place.

With one more pass of approval from Dan, I was able to make my final door! 

It is going to be an adventure to retopologize. Not the door, because that's a rectangle, but the Olaf. Being the character that he is, I am not sure if I should provide proper edge flow for rigging purposes, but the thing is that I don't know the proper edge flow for rigging purposes. Whatever the case may be, that will be my biggest challenge.

That is all for now, hope that you have enjoyed my door. Cannot wait to texture and show the final product!

Stylized Mug and Door Concept

For this assignment, the task was to make a stylized mug based off of a tutorial that was provided by the instructor. The point of this assignment was to "get our feet wet" in Zbrush by starting in Maya and adding additional detail to the mesh in Zbrush. After that, we took the mug into Substance Painter and added some more detail and a "stylized" look to the mug.

In this assignment, I did not really run into a ton of problems, but the biggest thing was navigating the UI in Zbrush. When working in things that have different sets of hotkeys every day, it is super tricky to navigate Zbrush's interface. I know with a little bit more practice, I will be able to lock it down, but it was still fairly new. Getting used to it in this project came a lot with pausing the tutorials and doing what I could by myself instead of just trying to copy the man in the video. With this practice, I was able to not only get a look that I wanted, but I didn't have to make it so "perfect".

Here is the final product of this assignment (rendered in Marmoset):

The next assignment that we have in this class is to make a stylized door, keeping on theme with the "stylized assets". I am super excited about this project because I love stylized assets and the look that they provide. When going after this assignment, I want to go for something a little more...well..Animal Crossing-esc. I know that I am also doing that for another class, but I think that it is going to be really fun! The only concern that I have for it is getting the textures just right, but I think that that will pose a unique challenge for me.

Here there are a few doors that I might be into going after. There are a ton of different doors in Animal Crossing, so I might just create one of my own! It will be fun to try to mix all of these different styles together. :)

Game Controller - Final

Story/Inspiration

I can honestly say that before I came into college, I was never much of a gamer. I was when I was a small child, but when I got into school and such, things started picking up and my free time was devoted to sleeping or watching Disney movies. When I entered this major, gaming started slowly getting its way back into my life. I am thankful for that very thing because it had me buy a controller of my own! The inspiration from this controller came from my very own controller (which is an Xbox Controller) and my love for the game of Minecraft.

Object List

Base Controller

2 Analog Sticks

Start/Menu Buttons

D-Pad

X, Y, A, B Buttons

Right/Left Bumpers and Triggers

Textures

Problems and Solutions

Right off the bat, going into this project, I knew that I was going to have some issues. Dan said, "I think that people think this will be easy." NO DAN. I did not think that this was going to be easy!! The main issue that I started off with was the main controller base. I figured that I would "eat that frog" and start with the part that I would see the most difficulty with: the grip. After numerous tries (and fails), the luck that I found was by using a curve and extruding a cube along the curve. Once I had that in place, everything came together with some bridging, extruding, love, and care. The other major problem that I came across was just making it look good. It took a lot of tweaking to make it not only look like a controller but also to make sure that all the buttons and things were in place. UVing and texturing is like second nature to me, but the model had to look good coming out of Maya for me to be successful. After a lot of time, I was finally able to get a controller I could be proud of. :)

Time Frame List

Planning: 1 hour

Modeling: 6 hours

Texturing: 2 hours

Lighting/Rendering: 2 hours

References

The Walmart website actually helped me a lot, too, when I was texturing to help me get the little details on the back and such. :)

Final Renders

   

Game Controller - Week 2

Oh my...what an adventure this week has been. I have sort of taken a minor step back from the Elite Controller and may have just gone for the Regular Controller. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why.

First of all, I know that I told you that I have a regular Xbox Controller and that be the truest thing ever. When I was looking for something real to reference, that is where I turned to. Here's the problem: the geometry on that controller and the Elite controller are minutely different. It's not a huge deal, if anything it makes my life a little easier because I have a real reference to work off of.

When initially starting the controller, I thought everything was fine and dandy...then disaster hit. Disaster's new name is the grip. Everything seemed to be going wrong when the grip was involved.

I had gotten that base shape down, but nothing seemed good. Therefore, I do what all good people do: I deleted it and started again.

In my brain, the best way to do something is to "eat the frog". What does this mean? Well, it basically, in a very watered down way of saying it, means that you start with the hardest part/part you don't want to do of whatever it is you are doing and do that first. 

I have always done well when it came to curves so I started with that. My next step was to extrude along a curve....and here is where I got creative. I had that base shape down, but now I needed to turn it into something that was not just a curve.

A little bit of extruding, deleting faces, and bridging later, I made the shape I needed...

Once I got that in place, everything started to get a little bit easier. I figured that starting with half of the controller and mirroring over would be the best approach to everything, so that was what I did! I ended up doing a lot of extruding and bridging. The biggest issue I have run into so far is that it all is very hard-edged. This isn't the worst thing in the world because that is what the "3" key fixes. I was able, though, to make a good first half.

The next struggle that I have run into at this point was making the places for the analog sticks and the buttons to go. I still have avoided the buttons just a little bit, but with the help of my friend, Shawn, I was able to discover and utilize the "Circularize Component" Tool. I have still been manually editing and extruding those areas, but so far, I am pretty happy with the progress point I have reached.

My biggest challenge is then making the buttons that go into those places...but I will worry about that on a later date. I cannot wait to get into UVing and texturing because that is where I thrive...but until then, that's it!

Until next time! 🤗

Game Controller - Week 1

Greetings from CAGD 330!

So far, we have done a few tutorials, but nothing too large (we have done a faucet and a screw (to be seen below). This first project, however, we will be doing some modeling, some texturing, and some UVing...all from scratch!

For this project, I will be modeling an Xbox Elite (or Pro) Controller. I wanted to try to do something different than everyone else in the class...then nobody can be compared to me...heh. Just kidding. In all fairness, I did want to do something different and I thought that I would try to do something a little more complex than the standard controller.

Xbox Elite Controller

How am I going to do it? Honestly, no clue. I was once told that everything can be made from a cube so that is where I plan on starting with all of this.

Considering that I have not begun modeling yet, I have not run into any issues besides figuring out what controller I wanted to do. A friend of mine suggested that I do the Elite Controller and I said, "Challenge Accepted."

Thus, here we go! I have some concept images and I really like the colonization on my controller, so that might be what I go after! The other idea with texturing, though, is that I found some custom controllers on Etsy that looked very aesthetically pleasing. I might do a little more research there to find some cool textures I can play with (because I love texturing).

This is my controller

More to come! Next week I will have some more progress. :)