Cartoony Ice Cream Van

Paris Taylor-Jones

Hi Polycounters! I've started a new project for uni to create a 20k poly vehicle model in the style of the these vinyl figures from A Large Evil Corporation and to match the characters somewhat too:

This is the vehicle I designed - I'm mainly a 2D guy so converting my own designs into 3D is still a relatively new experience!

I've started blocking in the shapes in Maya - it's currently sitting at 8k:

The thing I'm most unsure of at the moment is the topology as well as if things like the headlights, bonnet and side-doors should be part of the 'main mesh' or the fuselage of the car (so to speak) or pieces of separate intersecting geometry? I'd really appreciate any help and advice  

Thanks for looking!

Paris Taylor-Jones

Worked into this a bit more  Widened the van a little as well as changed the profile from the top which I think makes the 3/4 view a little smoother. Added bumpers, headlights, more windows, numberplate's and rounded the corners of the windows off. Gonna try tackling the ice-cream cone tomorrow with the damage details and refine the seats. Currently sitting at just under 10k. Thanks for viewing!

mutatedjellyfish

So you have a LOT of polygons going on in here, and I think you're going to be fighting those as you move forward with the detailing.  I know you said your assignment is 20k polys, but as it stands, you have a lot of polys that aren't doing anything.  They're not adding to the model or enhancing the silhouette much at all.

Paris Taylor-Jones

@mutatedjellyfish: Thanks for your comment dude! As per your advice I tried to be a bit more brutal and critical of the edgeloops...I'm not sure if the result is pretty topology wise but it does look a lot cleaner. I couldn't find a sensible way to terminate the loops coming from the bars in the middle of the window so if anyone has any suggestions about that? 

A friend also explained smoothing groups to me too - I always saw that phrase chucked around here and had no idea what it meant...so watching a few videos and reading the Polycount Wiki article on it I've tried to apply it somewhat.
Added dents for the the bonnet and side doors as well as refined the ice-cream part a little bit more...need to make it a bit less dense and refine the shape a bit more.

AtticusMars

Is this intended to be a sub-d model? Or is this the game mesh?

Paris Taylor-Jones

@AtticusMars: It's not intended to be a sub-d model but rather this is for an assignment so I have a polycount and it has to remain unsmoothed for the assignment. 
Quick update:

AtticusMars

You should be using triangles where it's convenient then. No point in keeping everything quads.

Also I think you have way too much geometry in your ice cream, if you're looking for a place to spend your geometry budget my suggestion would be to bevel your hard corners.

mutatedjellyfish

That looks much more managable!  There's nothing inherently wrong with lots of loops, but they can quickly get out of hand.  As a general rule, it's wise to start really simple and low-res and gradually work your way up as you add details, adding edges as you need them for specific reasons.  Sometimes I smooth something to get a specific shape and then go through and down-res, you could stand to do that with the ice cream bit of the ice cream cone.  

As for the window frame, sometimes the most straightforward solution is the best solution. If it were my model, I wouldn't worry too much about the edge loops going over the roof of the car unless I was REALLY hurting resource-wise.  Good work on the down-res!

Paris Taylor-Jones

@AtticusMars: Thanks for your suggestions! I cut down the polycount in the icecream as you were right - it really was too dense! I did also bevel a few of the hard corners around the windows especially to keep the van looking curvy and friendly. I think for the sake of my assignment hand-in it has to be a mixture of quads/tris - my tutors wanted it as quaddy as possible. 
@mutatedjellyfish: Yeah, I started by using a rough orthographic I had done and just extruding a plane numerous times along the side view until I ended up with the 20 loops or so going down the side rather than working from extreme low-rez to higher. I'll make sure to try that next time as it sounds much more intuitive to get large forms down first and then work into details. Thanks so much for your help and comments  

My assignment is due in pretty soon now so I'm calling the modelling more or less done so I can move onto textures. If I have a bit of extra time I'm gonna try and work on a little diorama, I've just whacked a circle done for now but we'll see. So added a canopy to the side which I'm a little unsure about right now and also broke one of the doors off and resized it a little to try and make it more obvious that the door was replaced at some point like in my concept.

clinington

Nice progress on this! You've got some good shapes going on. What will you use for texturing? 

Paris Taylor-Jones

Thank you Clinington! I usually would use 3DCoat but I have no personal computer at the moment so I'm using what the uni has which is Photoshop for the main bulk of texturing and Mari for seam cleanup.
Playing around with some colour ideas...think I like the original best as well as the yellow and baby blue on the bottom.

JasonLavoie

Just wanted to pop in and say your illustration work is kickass Paris, and you're doing a solid job so far bringing your 2d work to 3d.

Looking forward to your updates!

*Edit - Oh and do you have twitter by any chance? I love following kick ass artists on there, inspiration overload  

clinington

The yellow one looks nice and it is quite a popular colour for ice cream vans  

Paris Taylor-Jones

@JasonLavoie: Thanks a lot dude! I don't use twitter but have a Facebook page for my art if that's your thing?
@Clinington: I think I agree! The red, white and blue looked good but too...flag like and not ice-creamy enough! Think yellow manages to communicate that pretty well!
Just laying down some base colours and working in the decals at the moment. 

Paris Taylor-Jones

Some further progress on my textures - trying out Marmoset too.

clinington

Looking good in Marmoset Toolbag. The depth of field is a bit too much though. Can we see your texture flats? 
Nice number plate  

Paris Taylor-Jones

@clinington: Thanks man! Haha I tend to go a bit crazy with effects like DoF and film grain as I never get the chance to use them otherwise! Mr.Whippy's are the quintessential ice cream van product!


Does anyone know how to get rid of banding from the Toolbag renders/captures? I read that banding like this occurs in Photoshop due to bit depth but I can't see an option to increase that anywhere in Toolbag. Below is what I mean...
Also here are my flat textures + gloss' that I used in Marmoset:

Gazu

Would love to see it with normalmap and soft edges.

clinington

I think people usually add noise to an image to remove banding like that. Have a google, there are loads of tutorials for this. You may want to render with transparency and then have another render for the background which you can add noise to. Textures are looking good!