Sketchbook: aryarie

aryarie

I'm learning to model from scratch and thought that keeping a sketchbook would be a nice way to document progression and maybe get some advice along the way

So just a disclaimer in that I am a total beginner so don't expect anything amazing...

Currently I'm working my way through some of the Maya videos on Pluralsight (the quick start to modelling series) so some of the things in here will be from following tutorials (I'll specify when this is the case)... if anyone has any better suggestions for learning modelling that would be great. My goal is to eventually be able to model things for games. I'm thinking of working my way towards environment art but we'll see how it goes.

Here's some work I have done so far:

Quick start to modelling volume 1 (followed the tutorial)







My assignment completed after this tutorial, modelling a satellite (no tutorial)







Second tutorial in the series, modelling a case:





For the second assignment I modeled a Pelican rifle case which was particularly tricky to do due to the weird latches, but I think I sort of got there in the end





That's all for now... will post some more a bit later on.

aryarie

Here's the completed tutorial, volume 3, modeling this gun:




After I finished this I worked on an attempt of modeling one of Tracer's pulse pistols from Overwatch

aryarie

Completed volume 4 tutorial

aryarie

For my assignment I tried designing and modeling this weird steam punky spider thing... kinda based it on a jumping spider. The head was a pain but other than that it was pretty close to the sketches to did

aryarie

Completed another tutorial, Introduction to Modeling in Maya



Had to watch some extra tutorials to understand UVs which weren't really explained very well in this tutorial, especially when texturing the main body of the car. Eventually got everything to match up in the end though after a bit of tinkering.

aryarie

Finished the last tutorial in the quick start to maya series, character modeling. Although I want to eventually focus on environment art I figured I'd complete the whole series.

aryarie

Here is my assignment, based on one of the reference sketches provided for this volume... it's not really 100% accurate as I drew up my own orthographic views to work from in Maya and my drawings were a bit different.

aryarie

Been a bit slower posting here than I wanted as I've been trying to plot out a small project so I can practice what I've learned so far. Decided to try and model my living room since all the objects are things I can see in front of me, as opposed to using 2D references. Figured it should pose enough of a challenge as there are lots of different shapes for me to tackle without (hopefully) being too overwhelming as there are a lot of boxy shapes too. Going to start small with the things on my desk then work my way up to some of the larger things.

Here's a desk lamp

almighty_gir

cool!

now start UV mapping and texturing these.

aryarie

almighty_gir said:

cool!

now start UV mapping and texturing these.

Yeah I realised I got so absorbed in the modeling tutorials that I'm probably ready to start learning texturing now so I've abandoned my idea of modeling the things in my room for now and I'm currently working through a tutorial on Pluralsight that goes into a lot more detail of the whole process of modeling -> texturing and so on (hence why I haven't posted anything for a while). This tutorial is also more aimed at making art for games and more focused to what I actually want to do so I think this is a better step forward.

Once I'm a bit more confident with that I'll go back and texture the things I've made.

aryarie

Thought I would do an update as I'm having a few issues with things and progress has been slower than I wanted due to being ill/having to find a new job which is super frustrating.

Anyways, I've been working my way through a tutorial where I'm creating a stylized game asset. So far I've creating the low poly:

And the high poly details:

I'm part way through baking the normal maps (I think that's the correct terminology?). So far the well and the floor seem OK:

Now I'm working on the trees and I'm having some problems when doing the transfer maps. The tutorial is using the envelope display option but mine is behaving very strangely and I'm not entirely sure why (I've checked that the normals are OK):

I don't know enough about this right now, and I'm not 100% sure I did the UVs correctly either. I think I need to go back and complete the tutorial series that is entirely focused on UVing until I understand this process a bit better to continue.

aryarie

Still working away, I haven't updated this because I just feel like I don't have anything to show right now but I think I should try and get into the habit of updating this once a week, even if I don't have anything finished. This will be a long post since I'm going to try and cover what I've been up to since last time...

So I went back and worked through a tutorial on UVing so I could get a better understanding of how it works and so I can figure out where I'm going wrong. It's definitely helped and I learned a lot from it (especially after getting some help on here with some issues I was having ). This tutorial works you through UVing an ogre character.





Even though it turned out that my problem from the last tutorial had absolutely nothing to do with UVs and all I had to do to get the envelopes working correctly was to reset the transformations on those objects. :P

I've hit several other walls during working on that well though and I'm getting to the point now where I feel like I simply don't have enough of an understanding of texture baking to continue with that project... even though it is labeled as a "Beginner" tutorial on Pluralsight, I think I need to find something even simpler until I really understand what I'm doing.

Since my last post, I've updated the high poly roof of the well so that it looks a bit more natural:



I've also switched from working with Maya's transfer maps to using xNormal for rendering normal/AO since a lot of people seem to prefer using that and I figured I'd give that a go instead. I have a number of problems that I'm unsure how to resolve since this very new to me.

First thing I've noticed is that as I'm putting a master file together with my UVs, normals, AOs and so on is that the rendered normal/AO maps seem to bleed over the where the UVs are, but in the tutorial's master file everything matches up to the UVs with no bleeding:



Secondly, in the tutorial they are baking each element of the object separately and then blending them into one in Photoshop (so to start with there is a separate normal/AO for the roof, the first tree, the second tree, the well and the floor). In order to see the layers below they are setting them to overlay, which has the issue of removing some of the colour information:

(Note: at this point I'm still not sure what the colours mean and I need to go read more about this)

In the tutorial they say that the solution to this is to change the Levels for the layer so that the Blue channel is restricted to 128. This works - but it only affects the bottom layer of the normal maps (and this also happens in the video and I've watched it several times to make sure - the colour information is lost on all of the layers except for one). So I feel like this isn't the correct approach...

This is the tutorial's full normal map, the only element that has retained all of its colours is the roof (top right) which is the bottom layer in their Photoshop document:

Lastly, there's something very wrong with my AO for the well. Looking at the tutorial files, for the UVs on the well they have overlapped the two areas (inside/outside) which I hadn't done beforehand (I had stitched everything together and laid them out all as one object since that is what the author said they were going to do, but turns out that wasn't the case). After matching what they had done, I end up with this:



This is the tutorial UV/AO:



I'm going to leave this to one side for now and work through some of the other tutorials until I have a better understanding of this process since I don't feel like I really understand what is going on.

I started on the next tutorial which was done by a different author (in the hope maybe this would be explained in a different way) but it turns out this tutorial is for something very low poly and is hand painted with none of this process involved. It's super easy to work through (far more than this tutorial) so I'm puzzled as to why it's listed after the well project as it just seems so much harder. :P



I'll finish this off and then try and find a good tutorial that more thoroughly explains the baking process so I can finish the well.

aryarie

Another long gap without an update, largely because I ditched Pluralsight as I'm not confident that it's really the best place to go to learn what I want, and also because I've spent some time figuring out exactly what direction I want to go in so I can focus on something a bit more specific than just "learn all the things" :P

Anyway, I've decided what I really want to do is learn hand painted texturing. I've never been a fan of more realistic stuff and pretty much all the games I like are all stylized. I think I'll learn better if I'm working on something that I'm really interested in so I've decided to focus on that for now. I have literally no painting experience at all so there's quite a lot to learn but I've been enjoying it so far. I've started off by following along with the Tyson Murphy tutorial on 3dmotive and I've learned a huge amount from it. Here's the result of what I've bee working on the past couple of weeks:





I did struggle quite a bit as I don't have the best control over my graphics tablet. Especially doing detailing, I just can't seem to make the more subtle strokes. Not sure if it's the tablet or me. Occasionally my tablet acts up and will just ignore pressure sensitivity all together and it's very frustrating.

So I'm going to work on modeling and painting the shield next and then I'll try my hand at working from some of the extra concept art that's included in the tutorial files.

aryarie

Taking the training wheels off slightly as I'm modeling the shield from scratch rather than painting the already existing shield from the tutorial files. Not sure that I went about it in the best way as I ended up modeling some pieces separately and I ran into some trouble when I started to bring them all together.



Need to fill in the back part now but I'm trying to get the shape at the bottom to poke out from the rest of the model and I'm not sure the best way to go about it right now.

aryarie

Finished modeling the shield and doing the UVs so I'm finally ready to do the best bit, which is the painting.







Here is the original concept art from the tutorial:



There are a few issues on the sword texture I'd like to fix after I've painted the shield as some of the colours aren't right in the gold parts. The pieces on the lower part of the handle look too different from the main part of the hilt. Also want to add some bounce light from the blue part into the blade as well.

aryarie

Started to block out some of the shield today. Still have issues with my tablet deciding not to acknowledge pressure sensitivity... unplugging it and plugging it back in seems to resolve it though.

aryarie

Continued with painting the top area of the shield and adding a bit of wood grain. Reinstalled my drivers for my tablet and it seems to work a bit better though I do still occasionally get problems with pressure sensitivity disappearing altogether. It's not happening as much as it was though.

aryarie

Some more progress on the shield, still got a bit more work to do though. One thing I noticed I have trouble with is that I can be too timid with my darker values so I am trying to make more of a conscious effort to push them a bit more. There are still a few areas where I haven't pushed the darker values enough. I'm not too happy with the bottom area of the shield, for example.

aryarie

Think I'm going to call this done for now. I feel like this turned out better than the sword so I'm pretty happy







Next, to practice what I've learned, I'm going to start working on these weapons (minus the second one as I did that already):



I think I might post a thread on the 3D showcase so I can get some proper feedback as I work though.

CalebByrd

From one novice to another, I think you've made some awesome progress, and you did an excellent job with the sword and shield. I like to offer a critique with praise so, you should put your finished shield and sword together into one picture to compare with the concept. The back of your shield looks flat and too dark, and both sides could use another pass of highlighting. Obviously wood doesn't have a natural sheen to it, and the back wouldn't normally be as completely lit as the front, but it's stylized, right? If your front can match the back, it will look just as good lying in the dirt as it would hanging on a wall, and it gives flexibility. If you were putting that into a scene right now, you would probably unconsciously want to hide the back of that shield against walls or the floor. 

Just my two cents, awesome job again. 

aryarie

CalebByrd said:

From one novice to another, I think you've made some awesome progress, and you did an excellent job with the sword and shield. I like to offer a critique with praise so, you should put your finished shield and sword together into one picture to compare with the concept. The back of your shield looks flat and too dark, and both sides could use another pass of highlighting. Obviously wood doesn't have a natural sheen to it, and the back wouldn't normally be as completely lit as the front, but it's stylized, right? If your front can match the back, it will look just as good lying in the dirt as it would hanging on a wall, and it gives flexibility. If you were putting that into a scene right now, you would probably unconsciously want to hide the back of that shield against walls or the floor. 

Just my two cents, awesome job again. 

Thanks so much for the nice feedback I hadn't though about that regarding the back of the shield but that's a really good point! At the time I was just trying to follow the tutorial exactly and in this instance, the idea was that the shield would always be on a character's back or being held by a character in third person so it would be more occluded. But yeah, it'd probably be better in some cases to have both sides lit up, especially if it's something that needs to be placed in an environment like you say.

With highlighting I think I have the same problems that I was having with the darker areas in that I'm a little timid when it comes to pushing them further so I'll make a more conscious effort in my next project to pay more attention to those.

aryarie

Haven't posted on here so much as I've primarily been working on the weapons that I mentioned and I've been keeping progress to this thread and didn't want to just duplicate posts.

However, starting to paint the first sword has made me realise how hard this stuff is and I've been having a lot of trouble with painting. I've spent a number of hours with just trying to block stuff out and the slow progress has been incredibly frustrating. I've been feeling pretty awful about the lack of progress and I think it is due to lack of painting experience.

So in order to try and fix this I've started to follow along with some of the Ctrl+Paint videos and some of the basic painting exercises. I'm hoping what I learn here will translate to painting textures for my models. I'll try and do this alongside the project that I've already begun, but obviously this will slow me down a bit.

I spent a few hours today on just practicing with the brush with some brush control and blending exercises. I figured I might as well post these on here since I am documenting pretty much everything I learn, even if it's not specifically 3D.

The objective of these two exercises is to copy the transitions and minimise the appearance of brush strokes. Copying the shapes exactly is not as important. (My attempts are on the right)





This is also another brush control exercise, though I don't think I found it as helpful as the above.



Here is the results of practicing blending. The apple on the left is what is provided as part of the exercise, the right apple is my attempt at blending.



I really want to get better at this stuff but I'm just feeling very lost at the moment Hoping this will help.

aryarie

My first hand painted weapon, using what I learned from the tutorial.

Not sure if it's really finished or not, but I think I've kinda reached the limit of what I can do with what I know at the moment. I'll likely come back to this as I learn more about painting.

model

aryarie

It's the weekend so it's time to just practice painting. I've bought the digital painting starter kit as I think learning to paint will help me make better textures and the videos I've watched so far on Ctrl+Paint have been great but I'd like to get a bit more in-depth with this.

So I've spent a bit of time painting a vase from this reference:



Here's the result:



I didn't sketch out the vase (lineart was already provided with the tutorial), just did the painting. I feel a bit more confident with it now but still got a lot of practicing to do.

aryarie

Here's sword no. 2!

model

Oliver Hopley

Nice Textures! Having Symetrical textures on the handle looks a bit odd at the seems as the grip makes a sharp change in direction. I suppose if there is going to be a hand on it then no-one will notice. Also if it's a conscious optimization choice then please ignore me

aryarie

Oliver Hopley said:

Nice Textures! Having Symetrical textures on the handle looks a bit odd at the seems as the grip makes a sharp change in direction. I suppose if there is going to be a hand on it then no-one will notice. Also if it's a conscious optimization choice then please ignore me

Thanks And yeah, I agree with that. I've been making my handles this way because the tutorial that I followed previously did them like this, but I'm not really a fan of it to be honest for the reasons you just said. I think for my next sword I'm going to try and do something different.

aryarie

Here's sword number 3

model



I've been experimenting more with how I blend, trying out some smudge brushes that I got from CtrlPaint. I think I prefer doing it this way rather than using just the brush and picking colours, it feels more natural and for me it seems easier.