Box Modeling Recap
In order to develop my skills in 3D and in box modeling, I recreated the same saber as last time, trying to be faster and more efficient this time around.
Overall, I used the same techniques and skills as last time, so I won’t be going over every detail in the process, like in my last post, but I will mention some of the differences I noted with the process in this attempt.
The other parts of the lightsaber went about as smoothly as before, but I actually found that I was faster in this area since it was a very repetitive cycle, and I was a little more confident with which keys to press this time. Perhaps at times, I went too fast because I sometimes grabbed the wrong arrows and moved the entire section to the left or right, instead of up. This was easily fixed though and wasn’t much of a problem. I have to remember to be careful and not rush when following a template.
I finished the saber fairly quickly, although there wasn’t a great difference in speed, I did feel that I was more confident with the process overall. Moving on to the details, the ridges on the bottom of the handle were no problem, but once again, I had trouble with the switch. This was an issue for me last time, and I wanted things to be better, but it seems as though they got worse! This time, I had a couple of faces in the centre of the extruded parts of the switch, and I had no idea how they go there. I tried to delete them, but I was left with a gaping hole that wouldn’t go away unless I expanded the switch, which I didn’t want to do since it looked incorrect. I just went with the flow and decided to keep the little jutting out section there since it looked quite cool albeit messing up the thumb grooves a bit. My lightsaber is simply more unique in this attempt, that’s how I decided to view the situation.
Once I had completed it, I looked at the entire saber, and I felt that it was still a little boring, so I decided to add some decorations of my own and deviate from the template a bit. I chose a large-ish plain section towards the top, where I felt that some extra ridges wouldn’t hurt, and extruded outwards, but this time I kept going and created spikes! I’m really happy with how they look and what they added to the model.
As a whole, I think that I haven’t improved much technically, but my feelings about box modeling have changed slightly because I am now a little more comfortable with the process and it doesn’t seem so complicated in my eyes. Rather, it is simple to understand, but takes a while and is easy to mess up with. Like all creative things, box modeling takes time and patience.
We were shown how to add colour using a different material that would be more suited to the lightsaber, but I didn’t find the time for that, unfortunately. I am going to add my notes here despite that, for future reference:
In ‘assign new material’, click ‘Blinn’. Go to the right panel and scroll until you find Blinn1, where you can begin to edit the material. You can change the colour, specular roll-off (how shiny/matte it is), the specular colour (highlights) and reflectivity. This is good because it allows for variety in the different parts of the saber – some are more metallic than others.
– Final Renders –
Extruding Along A Curve
It isn’t always convenient to extrude when 3D modeling, especially not when there is a faster, more convenient method, which we were shown how to do. The first thing I did was set up the perspective, by going fullscreen into top view. Next, I zoomed in so that the centre of the grid was extremely visible and clear. Then, in ‘create’ in the top bar, I found ‘curve tools’ and selected ‘CV curve‘ before then clicking once on the centre point in the grid. Nothing happened yet, but a small point was created. I zoomed out, clicked again some space above the centre of the grid, then some space to the right and finally, zooming out, above that last point once more. Each time I clicked, a line was created, connecting the last point to the new one, until I had a crooked looking curve, which looked like this:
In vertex mode, I was able to move the purple points along the curve around, and position it how I liked. I extended it a little further past the grid, making it bigger. I could not exit the top view. So far, I had no clue what we were doing whilst following the demo, but I could guess that we would be making a shape do something along the curve, either moving or extruding. I was quite curious to see what would be the next step and if it was as hard as it looked.
Back in perspective mode, I created a cylinder and, keeping it on the axis, moved it back slightly and rotated it 90 degrees. Then, in edit pivot mode, I moved the pivot point to the centre of the pivot point. This then allows me to use ‘X’ to snap the entire cylinder to the curve, directly from the centre.
After this, it was time to extrude! So I had guessed correctly, although it would have been exciting to see the cylinder move, that is for another lesson. Holding shift, I clicked on the curve, and then on the front face of the cylinder, the one at the side of the curve, in order to select it, but I found that it didn’t work. The issue was that I was using the tool kit, so I quickly deselected, reselected the cylinder in object mode, and then using the quick options panel, selected the face. Once I hit extrude, the magic happened.
It was surprising to see how the cylinder has deformed, following the invisible straight line in the centre of all of the points I had created. But why wasn’t it straight? We pondered as a class for a few minutes and discovered that it was because of the low poly count, which as mentioned before, results in blocker shapes. The solution was to add more divisions.
Using the mouse as an arrow key, I scaled the divisions from 1 to 25, which was the maximum that is allowed. I was amazed as I watched the extruded section became curvier and smoother until it followed the drawn line even better than the line itself.
This technique is called extruding along a curve/path and helps speed up the workflow of a 3D artist. This is because, instead of extruding for every single curved line needed, especially when there is a lot, you can simply draw a line, and extrude along it straight away, saving a lot of time and energy. I found it really fun to watch the block become smooth and curved (it’s quite satisfying) and I look forward to refining this skill and using it in models.
Speed Extrusion Challenge
Before the next part of the lesson, we did a quick challenge to see who would be able to recreate the models on the board and using what methods. I am quite proud of myself because even though not all of my models were 100% accurate, I created them correctly and quickly. If I didn’t know how to do something, such as with the sphere, I tried different things until I figured it out. I also got the opportunity to experiment a little here and go further than the given models.
All of these required pretty simple extrusions but I found it enjoyable to play around with different primitives, and see what extrusion could do with each. For example, the prism really took me by surprise, because the extruded base looked like some sort of awesome sci-fi object! There were so many possibilities, and I couldn’t resist playing around a bit to see if I could make some sort of ship, or at least, an object resembling one. I’m very pleased with these quick models.
Smooth Mesh Preview
Smooth Mesh Preview, or as I’ll be referring to it, SMP, allows you to preview how an object would look when the smoothing algorithm is applied. This is a key part of modeling, as most of the detailed models built in a 3D program have smooth shapes, often with organic forms, such as characters, creatures or nature.
Another technique we learned of is called fencing which is used in conjunction with SMP and enables the 3D modeler to use SMP to smooth objects, but also kept some of the sharp edges. I learned that the name fencing is not a professional term, but most 3D generalists and artists use it and know what it refers to.
This tool is very handy, as you can choose how curved you would like a shape to be, as well as which specific parts it should be applied to. For example, adding edge loops to one side of a cube and clicking ‘3’ applies SMP to only that part of the cube, making an interesting curved corner. Furthermore, the further the edge loops are from the edge, the more rounded that edge will be. I tried this out on a cube to see the difference for myself:
The next primitive we applied this to was a cylinder. I created one and using ‘mesh tools’, inserted edge loops alongside the top edges. I couldn’t add an edge loop along the top, however, so I had to extrude the face inwards in order to create an edge loop on the top. Once I hit ‘3’, I could see how it looked smooth. We were purposefully told to leave the bottom without edge loops to see what would happen.
The bottom had a strange bumpy texture, and although they were subtle, you could see ridges. In order to fix this, the solution, as predicted, would be to extrude on both sides. We were shown so we would know what to do in the future, and as a reminder to not forget when using SMP.
It was great to be able to apply a smooth mesh to the cylinder primitive, since that is what we’ve been using most so far apart from perhaps, the cube. I feel that it is one of the most versatile shapes in modelling and I hope we are able to model a face in the future, in which case SMP would be crucial.
Our final task of the lesson was to use SMP with an actual model. This time, the template was that of a chess piece, and we were also shown another potential technique to speed up the box modeling process. Previously, we have modelled using two view-ports so that there is a 2D perspective, with which you can see the template clearly, and a 3D perspective, with which you can see the whole model. I found this method very useful and I planned to use it in the future as well, but we were shown another possible way of doing it which I decided to try out. This was another way to select the faces, since the main reason we have the 3D perspective, is to be able to tumble to the top of the model and select all of the faces for extruding. However, in settings & preferences, if you click ‘selection’, a window will pop up, with the option to select faces using either the who face or the centre of the face. I chose ‘centre’ and in face mode, there were now nodes on all of the faces. So from any angle, it would be easier to select just the top ones, for example, thus saving time.
The node selection method, however, proved to be not for me. There were two reasons for this, the first of which is that I eventually switched back to using two views anyway because I needed to see the faces I was extruding inwards clearly, which I couldn’t do from just front view. This defeated the purpose of the nodes to an extent, but I would have stuck with them because the drag select method was admittedly faster and easier, if not for what I discovered when I tumbled around my model.
The nodes, due to their size and sensitivity, turned out to be incredibly finicky. When in front view, I had apparently accidentally selected faces in other areas that I never meant to select and extruded them unknowingly. So with nodes, not only is there no point in staying in just front view, but the little amount of time that they saved is cancelled out with the necessary continuous check-up one would have to do in order to ensure no extra nodes are selected, which is also done in a different perspective! I was frustrated that both of the perks of using nodes didn’t in fact work, and I decided to stick with the classic way to select faces, using ‘paint in’. I had to start again with my chess piece, but I didn’t mind much since the extruded parts in the back looked quite funny and I enjoy modelling anyway. It was a shame for the lost time though, so I am all the more decided on avoiding nodes in face selection.
Eventually, I completed the base of the piece, and extruded inwards to create an edge loop on the top, and outwards for the crown of the rook. I also inserted edge loops next to the edges that I wanted to keep sharp, but I didn’t have enough time to add all of the necessary ones, so it looked very strange with SMP applied. I decided to leave the model without a smooth mesh, as I thought it looked better. But, I know that if I had some more time, I would add in more edge loops and it would look much more refined.
I learned so many new Maya skills in this lesson and had a lot of fun building another model (something different from the lightsaber!). I believe the most useful tool was the smooth mesh preview, as I can see how it would be used for hundreds of models, but my favourite part of the lesson was probably learning how to extrude along a curve, because it was fascinating controlling the number of poly primitives in the model, and seeing how that changed its form for myself.