Maya 2017: Electric Guitar modeling [wip]

Nyawning

Been working on this model following a digital tutors course, it's a very detailed guitar model, after the modeling process i'm planing to render it using the new arnold in maya 2017 < ( exciting stuff ).
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here are the pictures of what i have so far ...
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the guitar body: used the holes so i don't have to re route so many edges, they will be covered anyways.

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The course tutor made a simple bone nut but i decided to go crazy a bit and make an LSR one XD

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This is the the top part of the tuner that holds the stings.

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This is the tuner and the tuner lock with the logo made from a curve then bevel plus, i made the screw using a smoothed cube instead of a sphere.

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i'll try to keep this updated until i finish it  

Daf57

Great start! Will be watching. Interesting tip about the cube screw, I can see how that might be better - I will have to try that. Thanks! 

Nyawning

I finished the bridge part, woho !
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this piece was't that hard, some booleans and some bevels, had to be creative with some edges tho.


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This is the bridge saddle, a little bit challenging, instead of using bevels i used fencing, i found it to be easier in this object but i made sure to go around the model and fix the bevels that i didn't want because as we all know when you use fencing the edge loops go all around the place ...


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This is made out of a Helix primitive, the challenging part was the bevels and blending the bevels with the cylinder which you need to do manually.


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Now the next object is simple ... But not if you are like me ....

as you can see building it as in the previous picture causes a pinch to exist, i tried and tried to get rid of it but i couldn't .... so i had to be creative ...

and i made something similar but different ... WITHOUT THE PINCH  



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Then some extra screws ...

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I am building this object while watching a course on how to build it on Digital tutors ( every now and then i improvise to add my own touch ) and i thought i would share my experience ... one of the best websites out there if you are starting out ( been a member for more than 8 months now ) the fees are cheap for what u get ... recommended.

Daf57 said:

Great start! Will be watching. Interesting tip about the cube screw, I can see how that might be better - I will have to try that. Thanks! 

Hi def57, thanks and glad that you are interested and found something useful ^.*

jose.fuentes

man, such detail!  Keep it up I love how you're actually modeling all the small details.  Cant wait to see where you go with this!

Nyawning

to make the picker cover i made the inside part ( to have the right edge amount i need)  then the border ( to get the right curve ) then i spent hours moving edges and vertices around ....

jose.fuentes said:

man, such detail!  Keep it up I love how you're actually modeling all the small details.  Cant wait to see where you go with this!

thanks man, such a motivating comment ^..^

Nyawning

Output jack done .. reused some of the pieces i already had, and built the primary shape with curves.

Nyawning

so while doing the springs on the back of the guitar i discovered a little trick that i would like to share :
to make a tube with a 90 degree bend all u need to do is to start with a pipe/torus ( here i did it with a pipe ).

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added edges to make an 8 sided cylinder ...

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edit edge flow will average the edges to make the cylinder ...

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deleted unneeded faces ...

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extrude ...

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scale the whole object ...

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then use the transform tool ...

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to scale the faces and by that you control the bend ^..^

cgBrad

I've look at doing this tutorial but the 18 hours of length make you go OH WHAH!?! 

Paul Conner, the guy who does this set of tutorials, also has another set of Maya tutorials called: Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes. It is really good for people starting out modeling, or just wanting to know how to model  more complex shapes no matter what your 3d modeling package is.

Nyawning

cgBrad said:

I've look at doing this tutorial but the 18 hours of length make you go OH WHAH!?! 

Paul Conner, the guy who does this set of tutorials, also has another set of Maya tutorials called: Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes. It is really good for people starting out modeling, or just wanting to know how to model  more complex shapes no matter what your 3d modeling package is.

the reason i felt the need to start this tutorial is because i finish all the "Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes" and i must say despite it's length of 18 hours it's actually very enjoyable and filled with information, and the excitement you get from seeing your complex model come together is just wonderful and it keeps you going, if you need the advance practice just go for it ^..*

pablohotsauce

Solid progress!

One comment, if you don't mind: some of your object edges are super sharp (the edge of the thumb-tuner, the nut around the base of the tuner bolt, etc). When modeling, the edge thickness you aim for can vary depending on what you want your final output to be (a normal map for a game mesh? Realistic model that's going to be used for beauty renders?), but in general, you'll want some of your edges to be thick enough to catch some light. Right now, a lot of your edges are very sharp, and on top of that they're on very small objects. Even in close-up renders of the head of the guitar or of the bridge or whatever, these edges won't show up very well or at all.

Modeling high-poly things for games generally involves making edges thicker than they would be in real life, so that the normal map bake can pick them up (if this sounds like gibberish to you right now, don't worry, you'll learn it later ), but even for realistic models that won't be used for games, pay close attention to how thick the various object edges are. Hilariously, I have a Stratocaster a few feet away from me right now, and I gotta tell ya, the edges of the various components aren't that thin, haha.

Otherwise, it's looking great. You've already got great subD skills. Looking forward to seeing this develop.

Nyawning

pableaux said:

Solid progress!

One comment, if you don't mind: some of your object edges are super sharp (the edge of the thumb-tuner, the nut around the base of the tuner bolt, etc). When modeling, the edge thickness you aim for can vary depending on what you want your final output to be (a normal map for a game mesh? Realistic model that's going to be used for beauty renders?), but in general, you'll want some of your edges to be thick enough to catch some light. Right now, a lot of your edges are very sharp, and on top of that they're on very small objects. Even in close-up renders of the head of the guitar or of the bridge or whatever, these edges won't show up very well or at all.

Modeling high-poly things for games generally involves making edges thicker than they would be in real life, so that the normal map bake can pick them up (if this sounds like gibberish to you right now, don't worry, you'll learn it later ), but even for realistic models that won't be used for games, pay close attention to how thick the various object edges are. Hilariously, I have a Stratocaster a few feet away from me right now, and I gotta tell ya, the edges of the various components aren't that thin, haha.

Otherwise, it's looking great. You've already got great subD skills. Looking forward to seeing this develop.

not gibberish at all, i actually heard something similar before, right now i spend 99% of my time in the view port and it's my only reference ( i can see the highlight when i'm a bit far away )


i know that what u see in the view port is not necessarily what you get when you render or make normal maps but i don't have much experience rendering beauty images nor making game assets, i'll keep your advice in mind when i get to that point ....

now some of the bevels are easy to adjust by adding edge loops around the bevel and deleting the extras ..

but i can see how it would be a problem for more complicated bevels.

thanks for passing by ^..*

these are some picture of my progress on the back side :

Nyawning

while doing the strap bolts ... the tutor just placed the plastic piece between the bolt and the Stratocaster's body into place but i decided to take it a bit further by projecting a curve into the surface of the body then lofting it out !

here it doesn't fit right ...
 
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the lofted geometry after some clean up

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inside view ...

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nice fit ^..^

Nyawning

i finished the strings which was a monotonous procedure at times, yet satisfying to finish.

Made each string with a cylinder and many extrudes and edge loop adjustments.

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Now i finished every piece of this electric guitar ... i need to tweak it a bit here and there; and add more randomness to it, then the base high poly model will be done