Beginner Questions on Initial Approach to Multi-Curved Topology
Hello All, this is my first post!
It's a bit verbose and possibly something better suited for the 'How do you model dem shapes' thread, but I think there are too many things, and a few unique factors for this situation that warranted making a new thread.
First of all, I am primarily a VFX and animation guy, but A. I love 3d and have wanted for a long to to dive into the skills needed to flesh out my 2d designs, and B. as far as technique and information for modeling in general goes, this seems to be *the* place. I've learend a lot digging through the forums.
Despite a different focus, a great deal of the skills here are hugely useful for film, obviously. (I haven't gotten a feel yet for what sort of presence non-game dev folks have around here)
With that bit of exposition I'd also like to mention that I have not gone through the proper rigors of developing modeling skills. I feel that should be upfront. In the infant stage that me and my collaborators are in our freelancing, and with our true skill strengths not being modeling, sometimes we just have to do what we can to make it work. I am very aware of not building bad habits, so now that this project is finished I will be doing my best to sort out a better approach to properly learning the craft.
I was doing the modeling in c4d (i plan to migrate to 3ds for modeling now), but most of what I'm curious about is, I believe, ubiquitous modeling guidelines (however HyperNURBS cage stuff that I attempted was just... argh.)
So, here's the situation.
I needed to model this:
Its a bit of a funky project, and I did not need to get things *exactly* like the picture, or the slightly-different 'blueprints' they provided. As a note, the back of the vehicle is flattened, and allows for a giant jet engine to come out.
Also, not shown in the design, I wanted an alcove for the side window, a concave area in the 'hull' that the window then protrudes a bit from.
Elements of the below design are things I wanted to incorporate, in order to have nice lighting elements (bevels and surface changes). So if you can imagine cues from this incorporated:
I could handle all the additions (the wheel are rather wheel wells that have hover-stabilizers in them) just fine. But the main shape of thing, and when it came to the windows or stylizing that shape, is what eluded and greatly frustrated me. Its an odd, fish like shape, with asymmetrical curves in every direction. Thus, I had a difficult time doing the basic block to allow for cutting out the side window, and cutting out the top window. Getting vertices available to do the cuts while keeping the overall flow of the shape was very tough. And as for the top window, it has a curved line that counters the curve of the model (which you can see in the sketch as the vertical loops across the body. Thats how I naturally built the model). I went through a lot of ideas on how to approach this properly, and I can expound upon them, but nothing worked, and unfortunately I have now saved over the original model (becuase of sub-d for the lame method we ended up going with). However it would not take long to redo my main approach, if an image is wanted.
I am just intensely curious to have some input on how you guys would have solved this. I hope that doesn't seem like a selfish request, considering its not a concise question. I
I am not happy with the final result, in which (thanks to the camera angle, from the back) we were able to skip the top window and just do a bool for the side.
The engines are different pieces my collaborator detached from another model (which I am okay with considering this a non-comercial project. Its a visualization thing). If you wanna see what it looked like: here it is, though we are still finalizing things.
It's a bit verbose and possibly something better suited for the 'How do you model dem shapes' thread, but I think there are too many things, and a few unique factors for this situation that warranted making a new thread.
First of all, I am primarily a VFX and animation guy, but A. I love 3d and have wanted for a long to to dive into the skills needed to flesh out my 2d designs, and B. as far as technique and information for modeling in general goes, this seems to be *the* place. I've learend a lot digging through the forums.
Despite a different focus, a great deal of the skills here are hugely useful for film, obviously. (I haven't gotten a feel yet for what sort of presence non-game dev folks have around here)
With that bit of exposition I'd also like to mention that I have not gone through the proper rigors of developing modeling skills. I feel that should be upfront. In the infant stage that me and my collaborators are in our freelancing, and with our true skill strengths not being modeling, sometimes we just have to do what we can to make it work. I am very aware of not building bad habits, so now that this project is finished I will be doing my best to sort out a better approach to properly learning the craft.
I was doing the modeling in c4d (i plan to migrate to 3ds for modeling now), but most of what I'm curious about is, I believe, ubiquitous modeling guidelines (however HyperNURBS cage stuff that I attempted was just... argh.)
So, here's the situation.
I needed to model this:
Its a bit of a funky project, and I did not need to get things *exactly* like the picture, or the slightly-different 'blueprints' they provided. As a note, the back of the vehicle is flattened, and allows for a giant jet engine to come out.
Also, not shown in the design, I wanted an alcove for the side window, a concave area in the 'hull' that the window then protrudes a bit from.
Elements of the below design are things I wanted to incorporate, in order to have nice lighting elements (bevels and surface changes). So if you can imagine cues from this incorporated:
I could handle all the additions (the wheel are rather wheel wells that have hover-stabilizers in them) just fine. But the main shape of thing, and when it came to the windows or stylizing that shape, is what eluded and greatly frustrated me. Its an odd, fish like shape, with asymmetrical curves in every direction. Thus, I had a difficult time doing the basic block to allow for cutting out the side window, and cutting out the top window. Getting vertices available to do the cuts while keeping the overall flow of the shape was very tough. And as for the top window, it has a curved line that counters the curve of the model (which you can see in the sketch as the vertical loops across the body. Thats how I naturally built the model). I went through a lot of ideas on how to approach this properly, and I can expound upon them, but nothing worked, and unfortunately I have now saved over the original model (becuase of sub-d for the lame method we ended up going with). However it would not take long to redo my main approach, if an image is wanted.
I am just intensely curious to have some input on how you guys would have solved this. I hope that doesn't seem like a selfish request, considering its not a concise question. I
I am not happy with the final result, in which (thanks to the camera angle, from the back) we were able to skip the top window and just do a bool for the side.
The engines are different pieces my collaborator detached from another model (which I am okay with considering this a non-comercial project. Its a visualization thing). If you wanna see what it looked like: here it is, though we are still finalizing things.
Replies
Are you still going sub-d with it?
-The less geometry you work with, the better. Less geo = easier to work with, easier to make changes to. Look up subdivision modelling and proxy modelling (aka smooth preview modelling).
-Deformers. I don't know what options C4D have for deforming meshes but in Maya you have a big set of various deformers (twists, bends, etc) under the "Animation" -shelf.
-Don't try and make the entire thing from one mesh: work with multiple meshes.
-NURBS: Easy to learn, hard to master. They are really useful from time to time though, so imo it's good as a 3D artist to know at least the basics. I've used them for everything from airplane bodies to car chassi. NURBS need to be converted to polygons before you can run them in a game engine though.
-Retopology. There are several tools for doing retopology - both 3rd party and internal (downloadable scripts and tools for Maya, for instance).
-Viewplanes. It helps if you have front, back, side and top view pictures of the thing you are trying to create.