Satellite
polycounter lvl 9
Taking a break from my "Home Tree" project I discovered the Hard Ops blender plugin and then through that I found the Blending Away the Pain tutorial by MasterXeon1001 on Gumroad. All I can say is I have learned so much in the last two months and its been a crazy exhilarating ride. I can not emphasis enough how useful it is to learn an artists personal workflow. Most tutorials are all dumbed down to introduce you to things, but you never learn a good workflow in them. Anyway as a way to learn and practice all that I was getting form the tutorial I set out to build a 3D satellite.
Also of great benefit to me is learning of and implementing the Pomodoro Technique using Trello (for my tasks) and pomello to select tasks and run the timer. As well as using SelfControl (the app) to block all distracting web sites for my entire work period. If your struggling with progressing on your art I suggest looking into all these things.
I started with this general 3D rough-in, and then went back and rebuilt each piece.
I like to keep a Mischief (I use the free one for now) document open that I can sketch out ideas when I'm stuck or need to figure something out in 2D before modeling it. I like mischief because i can just have one document with all my sketches in it and not ever have to worry about document size or anything.
The first thing I rebuilt was the solar panel, I wanted something unique and different but that still felt recognizable.
I then built the arms the held the panels to match the style of the new panel. This was probably the slowest part for me, and I learned new tools and techniques but was a blast.
I decided to make the top portion into a large disk antenna. And went all out on details on the lower hull section.
Now I'm cleaning up portions of the mesh and retopologizing in hopes I can get a nice clean bake. I haven't done much baking so I'm sure there will be some trial and error involved.
Any constructive crits or suggestions are appreciated.
Also of great benefit to me is learning of and implementing the Pomodoro Technique using Trello (for my tasks) and pomello to select tasks and run the timer. As well as using SelfControl (the app) to block all distracting web sites for my entire work period. If your struggling with progressing on your art I suggest looking into all these things.
I started with this general 3D rough-in, and then went back and rebuilt each piece.
I like to keep a Mischief (I use the free one for now) document open that I can sketch out ideas when I'm stuck or need to figure something out in 2D before modeling it. I like mischief because i can just have one document with all my sketches in it and not ever have to worry about document size or anything.
The first thing I rebuilt was the solar panel, I wanted something unique and different but that still felt recognizable.
I then built the arms the held the panels to match the style of the new panel. This was probably the slowest part for me, and I learned new tools and techniques but was a blast.
I decided to make the top portion into a large disk antenna. And went all out on details on the lower hull section.
Now I'm cleaning up portions of the mesh and retopologizing in hopes I can get a nice clean bake. I haven't done much baking so I'm sure there will be some trial and error involved.
Any constructive crits or suggestions are appreciated.
Replies
So I have been spending time reading the polycount wiki, and found the Normal Map Tips and Tricks video course over at 3D Motive quite enlightening. Have yet to test what I learned from it, as I'm in the process of implementing everything mentioned in it. Like today I went bak and reworked my smoothing groups, UVs and triangulated the solar panel.
I really like your high poly model, that's some great hard surface work!
Were you able to get your Normal map issues figured out?