3D Beginners Class
Hello everyone!
I am leading a beginners class in 3D Graphics and Animation. We are now done with the first part of the course, which has been pretty much learning how to do basic modeling, uv-mapping and texturing. My students first assignment will be to model and texture a spaceship or a vehicle of choice, which we will later on use for animations. I would like to involve polycount officially in this course so that my students learn the importance of getting feedback.
Updates in this thread will be WIPs posted by my students and I hope you guys can help out with feedback on their creations!
I am leading a beginners class in 3D Graphics and Animation. We are now done with the first part of the course, which has been pretty much learning how to do basic modeling, uv-mapping and texturing. My students first assignment will be to model and texture a spaceship or a vehicle of choice, which we will later on use for animations. I would like to involve polycount officially in this course so that my students learn the importance of getting feedback.
Updates in this thread will be WIPs posted by my students and I hope you guys can help out with feedback on their creations!
Replies
I'm currently a student myself, attaining the first semester of modelling at my university.
Could you outline what you teach in your course, and how many hours you've planned for this education plan
I'm a bit disappointed of the course i'm attending, and been thinking if our teacher's just bad or I'm too advanced for my class. We're using Softimage (which i personally find terrible to use and not a good choice jobwise, am i right on this ?) and we have covered very basic polygon modelling, subd modelling and some uv mapping on one simple object. But the Semester is almost over again and we will only have three lessons about animation to come and then its done.
Most of my fellow students dont even know what a normal map is or how to make them. Most of them still have problems figuring out uvmapping, and i dont feel like these lessons really did help a lot. I think a few hours of 3d motive tutorials would have been more beneficial ^^ .
Anyways i'm eager to see some of your students results !
Before you adding more details, I'd like you to think a little bit about the 'story' behind it.
Who make this ship ? (Human, Alien, Predator, Space Pirates, Military, Space Merchant, etc. If so, what kind of material or design should it have). What is the creator's technology level, what's culture background, and such. And what for ? Is it for Recon mission ? Is it a unmanned drone that attack in large group, or is it a 2-man fighter for escort ? Is it capable of long range mission ? Can it open a Wormhole or engage FTL on its own ? or does it have to dock back to mothership for that ? What kind of weaponry does it have ?
I think I will bookmark this thread xD
I will be adding a lot of damage and markings later on to make up for the relative lack of details in the basic shape.
When you got that down start focus on details.
You can never save a model with a poor basic shape with details.
Don't forget about the background story of the ship itself, and then show that in the model.
If a ship is capable of FTL or Wormhole Drive on its own, then it gonna need big power reactor, and some of its part gonna be visible from the outside. Smuggler or Pirate ships gonna be old and outdated, and might look like a flying junk (read: Millennium Falcon xD) Military ships might focus more on firepower and attack in big numbers, so big guns and loads of guns and missile launchers. Escort fighters might focus more on agile design instead of big and slow style. Long range exploration ships gonna need more than just cockpit; think of the Enterprise now.
Eve Online is a very good reference. There are 4 races in that game, each has loads of Ship Classes/Tiers, and multiple ships per tier.
I would encourage your students to find a cool design that they like and work from that. Do something like go to cghub.com and search for "space ship".
http://cghub.com/searches/result/query:space+ship/
a small update. This time i'm going to describe the aircraft more.
the aliens who build this aircraft have a policy to kill ther enemis in close combat (even in space)
this spaceship is a small figher. they attack in a large groups of around 20 ships. in every ship is 1-3 people (aliens). they kill their enemies by flying towards them and cut their ship with their plasma blades. they enter the ship by a short ranged portal in their dockning station. the suport pillars around the cockpit work like a sheild and protect the cockpit from bigger objects like comets. the pillars also help the ship to hold balance.
do you have any idee how to inprove the MODELL? ooo i also need a nice name in the ship
Its not like its going to tip over due to gravity
Design is pretty nice,simple,efective.Though i'm not sure why do 98% of spacecrafts go with aerodynamic style when there is no air in space,so there is no need for air resistance friendly design.
One thing im noticing is that gap between blades.
Ur idea is that ship just slips by enemy ship,closely enought so that they can rip it?Thats what design is saying.
If u though about a ship going directly through another ship,than u need to connect the blades together,and make a whole tip of a blade at a bigger angle,like a bullet.
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Johandin, good job coming out with more ideas, now let's improve the design of the ship, shall we ?
Firstly, how does it land on a mothership/carrier ?
Landing Gears ? Will you model that in there ? Are they visible all the time, or can they be closed inside a landing bay.
Where's exactly the cockpit entrance ? You will want to model it too. Can it be open from the outside ? Is it a hatch ? Is it an airlock ?
Better yet, is the whole thing in the middle the cockpit ? Do each crew sit next to each other ? Or do they face off in different direction. You should design roughly the inside of a cockpit too, even if it's not visible from the outside.
What kind of engine does it use ?
Combustion ? Plasma Coil ? Ion Drive ? What does it look like exactly ? Blue flame for engine trail ?
Johandin, next thing you might want to do, is to scrap the whole thing and remake it but with different design, while still using the same concept. Repeat this a few times and if you're honest with yourself, you will end up with a few different designs, then you can make the decision on which one is the best.
About the name, I'm thinking 'Cutter' or 'Razor' xD
about all the details, i got almost everything in my head i just havent whriten it down. So dont kill me if i don't whrite down every one of them
To counter the above advice. Yes design is critical but I find it's probably better to get your feet wet doing modeling (learning program interface etc.), then doing the next assignment with your own design in mind. It's hard to design for a 3D model if you never worked with a 3D space before. These are highschool students after all. Though the advice is solid in that modeling and designing at the same time leads to bad results.
(I had already started maping the main hull when I saw the comments so just ignore the bad paint job for now, ok?
The ship is human in design and is in use with the military as a kind of scout ship. It´s usually not used on the front lines though but is instead used to scout for nearby mineral, water or food sources when a fleet is far away from any colonized planet. I have more back story in my head but I´ll put that up later on together with a schematics/ floor plan of the ship to better describe the different parts and the inside.
here comes a new update. I worked on the "version 2" and this is how far I have come. it got the same stuff and backstory as the last one. The plasma blade expandes from the ship so they can cut deeper.
1: top
2: bottom
3: side
4: top/side
yellow: plasma blades (Similar to a Lightsaber)
orange: ventilation for the plasma generator
red: the engine
light blue: window to cockpit
blue: spprings/pillars that control the expanded plasma blades
here is a pic in the front
The advice you received from Visceral was the opposite of what you're doing now. You're doing details, just with models instead of textures. The point was that no matter how many details you put onto your ship, it won't be interesting if the basic shape is not interesting which yours is not at the moment.
Lets talk specifics:
Your ship is a scouting vessel, that means speed is desirable so a more aerodynamic/sleek shape might be in order (of course aerodynamics is rendered useless in space but it might have to dive into the atmosphere of a planet to take samples, plus our brains are much more likely to associate something sleek with being fast even in space). If it's a scout far away from the fleet, it might only have 2-3 crew members so no need for that many windows. Also, the main window in the front is rendered pretty useless in space because direct human eye vision is useless. There should be some weaponry, because, hey, you never know just what you might find. It definitely needs a lot of equipment such as mining, scanning, etc. devices. Right now you have some of them, but you made the common mistake of just slapping them on the outside where it looks like they're just ducktaped on. Instead, integrate it into the design - remember: this ship was built for a purpose, namely scanning and exploring worlds and the design should reflect that. That's why right now it looks more like a transporter ship, the design doesnt match the function.
Again, the most important thing is that you don't do details until you have the base shape down. If necessary, post here every day. I hope that's enough to get you started.
@Johandin
Very nice progress, looking good! The only things that I would change is maybe make the engines movable or something similar. If they wanna get close enough to the enemy to cut them, maneuverability is key! I love that concept by the way, really nice and different
I would also make the part that you colored blue in your paintover something more solid, less flimsy that matches the curved design of the rest of your ship which makes the right angles in that part stand out negatively. Something like this
new SMALL update. fixt the engines, do you think its better now? the red poly's symbolizes where the plasma blades/ventilations will glow.
@Spudnik which blue area do you mean, the darker or lighter
Yea, I realize now that in my rush to keep adding stuff to the ship i failed big time in actually reading what the comments said, I read them all but somehow my brain when´t: Dude, you should totally read those comments as "add more stuff" instead of what they actually say. My apologies for that.
With that said I have to say that I disagree with your thoughts about its form not following its function. The windows are used to look for planets, asteroids or any other stuff they might be looking for (duh) and also keeps the crew moral up since it would otherwise feel like a bit like a submarine on the inside, if they would happen to come across hostiles or a area with a lot of small asteroids the armored panels above the windows slide down and seal shut to prevent the risk of a hull breach. the main cockpit window in the front is protected by a force field projected out of the small prongs around the window.
It´s manned by a crew of four and is therefore equipped with four bunk beds and a small table set with the appropriate equipment to warm/cook a meal for four. There is also a latrine and a small "lab area" where they can study samples. So the ship needs to be this big to house all the equipment and the crew, it is built for long range recon and therefore prioritizes its jump drive over maneuverability. The front dome window has advanced holographic displays all over the inside of it so that they can see the things that the human eye can´t see.
I understand that you find the basic shape uninteresting (It´s a bit boxy isn´t it?) so I´ll try to come up with something different, possibly something bigger, I might even scrap the long range recon concept altogether.
Sorry for the wall of text btw
@Twisty:
What you're describing sounds more like a science vessel rather than a scout which seems to be the direction you wanna take it in. Cool, now you have a definite function.
I gotta disagree with you on the 2nd paragraph though. #1 Planets and asteroids etc are not detected by eyesight, by the time you can see them with your own eyes, it's probably too late. All that stuff is automatic, keep the magnitude of your speeds and distances in mind here. Windows are the structurally weakest part of a ship which is usually kept to a minimum. Use windows at strategic places instead of evenly spaced all over. For the main capsule, force fields are difficult because we can't see them. In a movie, a character can yell "OUR SHIELDS CAN'T TAKE MUCH MORE" and you can see missiles impacting on air but in a static model, you can't do that which is why it's gonna be hard for the audience to understand it. Also, it doesn't change the fact that currently the main window serves no discernible purpose. Also, space itself is pretty boring, I'd probably be more depressing than morale lifting to look out of the window
Again, the ship's main function trumps all the other aspects. Check out some submarines to see how people sleep, eat and cook with limited space. If the main purpose is the research and explore and do science, then that has to occupy the most space. The important part is that this needs to be discernible from the OUTSIDE.
Yes, it is really boxy. Somebody posted a piece of advice earlier this here that I think is invaluable: Build your design using simple shapes but don't make it look like simple shapes. Right now your shapes still look like the primitives straight out of Max's 'create' menu. That's the biggest problem right now. I'd suggest making a quick moodbord of what direction you wanna go in with this design. Head over to http://conceptships.blogspot.com and find some designs that inspire you, google some mechanical devices that you wanna incorporate, etc.
Reference is key! When you work from reference you immediately get better results because your brain can't trick you.
Hope that helps.
It´s still a fairly "boxy" design but I´m going for a kind of industrial transport ship look with this one so speed and maneuverability isn't a priority. It is supposed to be manned by a crew of about five to ten people and is favored by smaller freight companies and smugglers and will therefore be fairly dirty and gritty.
This is the basic shape that I´ve got so far:
update: i have pianted it in plain color.
Simply a space ship. One man crew, designed for personal transport. No interesting backstory or innovative features on this one, sorry.
Bring your utmost hard hitting and brutally honest feedback.
Transport ship looks interesting Twisty, reminds me of Star Wars
Party Priest: I find the front slightly confusing, could be the light but I don't understand what you're getting at here, also the pod looks really out of place. In an otherwise slick and clean design with very few hard edges it really breaks out in a bad way in my opinion. The wings looks great though!
Yeah the front is very confusing. Generally you don't want to light something that is in such an early stage, just take a screencap, preferably with wireframes.
@Johandin:
Coming along nicely, I'd add a splash of color to the cockpit (maybe doused in red 'blood' paint?) to make it the visual focal point.
@Twisty
Great improvement! I really like the idea of a space freighter, and personally I'd like to see one about ten times as big as what you have right now with the scale model
Thanks
I thought about making a much larger freighter at first but I eventually settled on this scale because I wanted it to fell a bit more personal, like it´s a ship that has been piloted by the same captain and crew for several years and that they´ve made it their home and their own by customizing it after their own needs and preferences. So what I´m going for is pretty much a Fire fly sort of feel with a bit of Star Wars ship design mixed in there.
Example: The hull isn't flat and smooth. It's made of loads of scraps and pieces glued together with duct tape or something xD That's fine details.
Twisty, if that's the form you're looking for, then add more details. Both Large and small details. Oh, and maybe, landing gears O o?
Party Priest, more pictures from different angles ? I can't tell what exactly I'm looking at....
okey, my ship is done and I just wanna check with you guys if I can do any last minute improvement?
I thank averyone who helped me in this prosses especially PyrZern and Spudnik