[Desperado]

Howdy folks. Well as you may or may not know, I've been taking a Games Development course which involves a bit of 3D modelling and with the second year coming up I'm feeling I could do with some more practice.

So suggest something you'd like to see modelled in 3D and I'll give it a shot. Please keep in mind I'm an amateur modeller really, so nothing to complex (for instance trying to model a somewhat realistic human face has taken me at least a month now.. although some of that is due to laziness )

[Author]

Just remember, the trick is to do bare minimum on the polygons and just let the textures do most of the work.

[Silver Blaze]

Simple, you say? K, let's start with some basics... can you do a 5-dimensional tetragonal bipyramid cross-section in 3D?

[burgerbecky]

I'm a professional game developer. If you're on Yahoo Messenger, perhaps I can give you some pointers.

Becky : Last games (Halo ODST, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project XBLA). Current, Project Natal

[Author]

Silver Blaze, on 14 August 2009 - 02:44 PM, said:

Simple, you say? K, let's start with some basics... can you do a 5-dimensional tetragonal bipyramid cross-section in 3D?

Discounting the impossible parts of the request, it's just a liberal use of Copy, Paste, Create Polygon, and the Bevel tool. Then Split Polygon and Delete Faces for the cross-section.

One semester of CG may not have taught me much (more like one bad teacher) but I did pick up some tricks.

[Desperado]

Blaze, no idea what that is.

Becky, no Yahoo messenger, but feel free to PM or email me some pointers some time.

And Author... stop showing off

Oh and I did a very very quick modelling job to test out the UVW Unwrap modifier which is basically a way to texture complex 3D models easily using just one "map." And it was easier than I thought it would be...

[Egnaro]

burgerbecky, on 14 August 2009 - 03:50 PM, said:

I'm a professional game developer. If you're on Yahoo Messenger, perhaps I can give you some pointers.

Becky : Last games (Halo ODST, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project XBLA). Current, Project Natal

Yes there seem to be a number of us lurking around here. Its been awhile since I've modeled anything. My last model was probably a tree. Anyway I'm hungry try modeling a side of bacon! That sounds easy, but remember bacon is not flat. it's twisty and wavey. You have to balance model detail and texture detail

[Daracaex]

Author, on 14 August 2009 - 07:53 AM, said:

Just remember, the trick is to do bare minimum on the polygons and just let the textures do most of the work.

It takes a lot of skill in the texturing department not to have it end up looking flat, though. I think. Would be nice if I could figure out UV mapping…

Desperado, on 14 August 2009 - 04:40 PM, said:

Oh and I did a very very quick modelling job to test out the UVW Unwrap modifier which is basically a way to texture complex 3D models easily using just one "map." And it was easier than I thought it would be...

O.o How!? What program are you using? I just can't figure out how to pull it off in Blender…

[Author]

Daracaex, on 14 August 2009 - 09:00 PM, said:

It takes a lot of skill in the texturing department not to have it end up looking flat, though. I think. Would be nice if I could figure out UV mapping…

Try Maya. Bit tougher to use, but it's the industry standard so anything you see in a game, you can pull off with enough time and work.

Hmm, UV Mapping. Keep in mind it's been months since my course so this may not be right, but my method was to make only half of an object, though this relies on it being symmetrical. Then, Select Faces tool followed by clicking the UV Mapping somewhere in one of those dropdown boxes. Now make a Blinn and attach something like this before connecting it with the texture. This lets you see how a skin will look and allows touching up. Merge vertices until every polygon is connected, closed, and has ideally only three sides. When the map looks fairly smooth, you can do whatever texture you want in Photoshop, attach it to the Blinn instead of the previous image, and bang you've got UV texturing.

Take all that with a bit of caution though, like I said, it's been a while.

[Daracaex]

Author, on 14 August 2009 - 10:23 PM, said:

Try Maya. Bit tougher to use, but it's the industry standard so anything you see in a game, you can pull off with enough time and work.

That's gonna be tricky. I don't have access to Maya, though I'd use it if I could. I've got the Personal Learning Edition I can play around with, but you can't export that in any format but the Maya-exclusive one, I believe.

EDIT: I have tutorials for it in Blender, I think, but they are from past versions and not all the options in the program are the same. This makes progress in learning rather difficult and discouraging. If anyone knows any tutorials for recent versions, I'd love to see…

[Desperado]

Daracaex, on 15 August 2009 - 05:00 AM, said:

It takes a lot of skill in the texturing department not to have it end up looking flat, though. I think. Would be nice if I could figure out UV mapping…


O.o How!? What program are you using? I just can't figure out how to pull it off in Blender…

I'm using 3DS Max, so I can't help you with Blender. I tried using it once, never again. I just found the interface incredibly clunky and hard to navigate.

[Desperado]

Wakey wakey, eggs and bacey (how the hell are you supposed so spell that in that saying?)

[Egnaro]

Delicious!

[Elijah Sight]

Ooh! Ooh! Do a rubber chicken, do a rubber chicken!

[Daracaex]

Elijah Sight, on 16 August 2009 - 06:02 PM, said:

Ooh! Ooh! Do a rubber chicken, do a rubber chicken!

With a pulley in the middle of it!

[DaveK]

What possible use could that have?

[Desperado]

It would certainly make getting to Meathook's place easier... And I'll give it a shot!

Interesting note, I tried to model "Skull Island" from "Curse of" and failed miserably. Didn't look like a skull, a duck or a bunny. I'll try again at some point.

[Egnaro]

well modeling is much easier when you have orthographic drawings of the subject. Its rare that I model anything without a 2d orthographic picture.

I'll post an example later if you don't already know what this is

[Author]

Egnaro, on 17 August 2009 - 03:05 PM, said:

well modeling is much easier when you have orthographic drawings of the subject. Its rare that I model anything without a 2d orthographic picture.

I'll post an example later if you don't already know what this is

I tend to use those as well. Makes it much easier to model the tough stuff like skulls.

[Desperado]

Author, on 17 August 2009 - 11:14 PM, said:

I tend to use those as well. Makes it much easier to model the tough stuff like skulls.

I take it you haven't played Curse of Monkey Island?

This is "Skull Island"


And are orthographic pictures direct front and side on images? Cause I've been using those for my face modelling project.