Total newbie with dumb questions
I hope this isn't a faux-pas to make a thread here with such elementary questions, I'm new to polycount and frankly I don't even understand what most of the thread titles in this subforum mean.
I'm trying to teach myself low poly 3D modeling for fun and have been learning 3Ds Max for a few days via youtube. My main background is with painting and digital illustration, but I've always had an interest in game art and thought it would be a useful thing to have some first hand understanding of 3D modeling if I were to pursue work as a concept artist (couldn't look bad on a resume either). Truth be told the recent implementation of the Steam Workshop for Dota 2 is what got me excited to try learning 3D again, so producing that level of game-quality 3D assets from start to finish is my current "big goal" and motivator.
I'm a complete novice though, and I'm starting with just about zero knowledge of 3D programs. I did a little bit of research and settled on Max as the program to learn and, as I said, have been familiarizing myself with basic operating of the program, but there's a lot to learn.
I got a small bit of confidence and decided to try my hand at grabbing a simple nearby object and trying to model it, same as I would suggest to a person wanting to learn how to draw, so I had a try at my Mag Lite
This is pretty much "baby's first model" here but I spent more time than I would care to admit figuring out how to make it, and even what seemed initially like a pretty simple object managed to stump me. Throughout the whole process I constantly wished I had someone to directly ask questions to, so I've finally manned up and made an account here.
I started with a cylinder of my roughly desired dimensions and converted it to an editable poly (I must admit I do not really understand the distinction between "editable poly" and "editable mesh"). I tried a technique I saw in a tutorial video, and deleted the face from the end of the cylinder, selected the newly exposed border and scaled/moved it while holding shift to continue the shape and create the appropriate notches and curves on the ends. I basically hit a brick wall when It came time to add the button for the light, which looks something like this. My initial brilliant idea was to "cut" the shape of the elliptical indent into the side of the cylinder itself, then add some more concentric loops inside of it and sink it to make the shape, but quickly realized I had no idea how to do so in a way that would produce a clean and symmetric ellipse (snapping in Max seems weird, I couldn't even figure out how to cut at an even horizontal). So my second brilliant idea was to start with an ellipse "shape", form it into the bowl shape I was after, and then somehow connect it to the side of the flashlight and remove the necessary face to reveal it. I was able to more or less make the shape I wanted, but then realized I had no clue how to cleanly "merge" it with the side of the cylinder. So now it sits hidden and sad inside the model, ashamed of itself.
The second big thing that I'm sure you noticed immediately and face-palmed was that obviously there is something very wonky going on with how some of the faces are shaded or whatever. It seems there is some property or setting that the cylinder primitive had which lets it "fake" smoothness despite the relatively small number of faces, and that property was obviously not extended to the additional geometry that I added in with my shift move/scale business. I'm sure there is a very specific name for the shader or process or whatever that's doing this. Please explain it to me like I'm a child.
I did manage to conquer the materials editor and produce something black and vaguely glossy though, so there's a small victory.
Again, sorry for the verbosity to relate such simplistic questions, but I figure that at this point I'm most likely doing everything wrong, or at the very least inefficiently, so I might as well detail every step I took. Any comments specific to this model are very welcome, as are any resource suggestions, general advice and tips. I have all the time in the world to work on learning this stuff in the immediate future, so I plan to update this thread with new and terrible creations if it's merited.
Thanks for looking
I'm trying to teach myself low poly 3D modeling for fun and have been learning 3Ds Max for a few days via youtube. My main background is with painting and digital illustration, but I've always had an interest in game art and thought it would be a useful thing to have some first hand understanding of 3D modeling if I were to pursue work as a concept artist (couldn't look bad on a resume either). Truth be told the recent implementation of the Steam Workshop for Dota 2 is what got me excited to try learning 3D again, so producing that level of game-quality 3D assets from start to finish is my current "big goal" and motivator.
I'm a complete novice though, and I'm starting with just about zero knowledge of 3D programs. I did a little bit of research and settled on Max as the program to learn and, as I said, have been familiarizing myself with basic operating of the program, but there's a lot to learn.
I got a small bit of confidence and decided to try my hand at grabbing a simple nearby object and trying to model it, same as I would suggest to a person wanting to learn how to draw, so I had a try at my Mag Lite
This is pretty much "baby's first model" here but I spent more time than I would care to admit figuring out how to make it, and even what seemed initially like a pretty simple object managed to stump me. Throughout the whole process I constantly wished I had someone to directly ask questions to, so I've finally manned up and made an account here.
I started with a cylinder of my roughly desired dimensions and converted it to an editable poly (I must admit I do not really understand the distinction between "editable poly" and "editable mesh"). I tried a technique I saw in a tutorial video, and deleted the face from the end of the cylinder, selected the newly exposed border and scaled/moved it while holding shift to continue the shape and create the appropriate notches and curves on the ends. I basically hit a brick wall when It came time to add the button for the light, which looks something like this. My initial brilliant idea was to "cut" the shape of the elliptical indent into the side of the cylinder itself, then add some more concentric loops inside of it and sink it to make the shape, but quickly realized I had no idea how to do so in a way that would produce a clean and symmetric ellipse (snapping in Max seems weird, I couldn't even figure out how to cut at an even horizontal). So my second brilliant idea was to start with an ellipse "shape", form it into the bowl shape I was after, and then somehow connect it to the side of the flashlight and remove the necessary face to reveal it. I was able to more or less make the shape I wanted, but then realized I had no clue how to cleanly "merge" it with the side of the cylinder. So now it sits hidden and sad inside the model, ashamed of itself.
The second big thing that I'm sure you noticed immediately and face-palmed was that obviously there is something very wonky going on with how some of the faces are shaded or whatever. It seems there is some property or setting that the cylinder primitive had which lets it "fake" smoothness despite the relatively small number of faces, and that property was obviously not extended to the additional geometry that I added in with my shift move/scale business. I'm sure there is a very specific name for the shader or process or whatever that's doing this. Please explain it to me like I'm a child.
I did manage to conquer the materials editor and produce something black and vaguely glossy though, so there's a small victory.
Again, sorry for the verbosity to relate such simplistic questions, but I figure that at this point I'm most likely doing everything wrong, or at the very least inefficiently, so I might as well detail every step I took. Any comments specific to this model are very welcome, as are any resource suggestions, general advice and tips. I have all the time in the world to work on learning this stuff in the immediate future, so I plan to update this thread with new and terrible creations if it's merited.
Thanks for looking
Replies
I think its a great decision to branch out and learn some 3D. Its always good to have multiple disciplines under your belt, especially so when you crossing the bridge between 2D and 3D that many 2D artists dont take the time to learn.
There are several ways to create the concave shape where the button rests. If you want the fast and messy way, you could create a separate oval object in the shape/size of that concave piece, place it where you want it to go, and then do a Boolean Subtract under Compound Objects. BUT, your shape will be all wonky, and your polygon flow will look like crap and not subdivide well. That should be avoided.
The better way to do it would be to create an oval shape out of a flat plane, and to the extrude the edges out to conform to the shape and then transition into the curvature of the flashlights cylindrical body. Or, if that plane is already flush with the curvature of the flashlight, you can bevel/extrude it in to achieve the desired shape. Its hard to explain, but this is the method I learned from Spark. I dont have Max or Photoshop with me at work, so I cant throw a photo up. Im pretty sure that technique is illustrated in the popular thread FAQ How u model dem shapes?" at http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014&highlight=holes&page=1 but you may have to dig as its gotten pretty large. Ill try to find it and post it up.
The smoothing issue is caused by your Smoothing Groups. If you make changes to the geometry after a smoothing group is already applied, then the newly changed polygons will often revert back to a different smoothing group or no smoothing at all. I wont go into how smoothing groups work, but the easiest fix would be to select your object, go to Polygon mode, select all of your polys (Ctrl+A, or drag a box around all of the polys, however you want to do it)and then hit the AutoSmooth button. I'm drawing a blank, and without Max in front of me but I believe the rollout called Smoothing Groups or Smoothing Options. That will smoothing everything in a more uniform manner.
After some googling of esoteric phrases like "3ds max primitive smooth" I was able to figure out it was the smoothing groups at work, like you mentioned. I think I did give a whirl to simply selecting the whole flashlight and putting it in a smoothing group but the result was pretty ugly looking. I'll have to do some more research on how to get a clean result with that mechanic.
Are smoothing groups relevant to low poly game asset creation? Do game engines know what to "do" with that information?
I put the flashlight on hold and started working through some surprisingly okay step-by-step Max modeling tutorials from the autodesk website (http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Tutorials/index.html). I made the viking helmet and am currently working on the P-47 airplane, but I won't post those as they're pretty "paint by numbers". Hopefully these things are teaching practical techniques that aren't going to result in bad habits later.
I am having one issue with the program though that's been persistent the whole time, and has now become especially apparent as the tutorial had me try using x-ray mode.
I'm getting this odd "speckle" artifacting on certain areas of any model in my viewports when I orbit, zoom, pan, or do just about anything to the camera view, but then it fades away about a third of a second after I let go of the mouse button. Sometimes it will persist in only a particular viewport, and especially in this screenshot the thing went batshit crazy when I turned on x-ray view on the lower left viewport there. I have no idea what's going on here, maybe someone has encountered this. I'm running the 2013 Win7 64 version if that helps.
the speckling is nitrous viewport ambient occlusion, the batshit part is that combined with transparency
So, you'll take your concave button shape, and place it in front of the body where you want it. I made mine out of a deformed sphere, and then deleted the front half. I then used the Flip Normals button to invert the direction the polygons were facing, allowing the polys to stay in place but become concave based on the direction they're not facing. I also flattened it a bit with the Scale tool, to make it less bulbous like its original sphere.
Move the concave button shape into place, and look at where each of its vertices are located. You'll have to make cuts into your cylinder to line up where the button will connect to the base. We're making this all one piece of geometry, and so the verts needs to connect somewhere. Try to maintain all quad polygons (4 corners) instead of triangles. That way, if you decide to put a smoothing modifier on, it will look better than if you have some random triangles floating around.
Make your vertical and horizontal cuts into the cylinder (either with the CUT tool, OR to make it easier, use your Ring/Loop tools when selecting edges, and then the Connect tool; this will automatically put in an edge throughout your selection.
Once you have enough loops/rings, go into Vertices mode, and use your Target Weld tool. This will let you select a vertices, and then select the next vertices you want to weld it to.
Hope this helps, make sure to post your result up!