In our continuation of 3D modeling, we next learned to box model and extrude. Before that, however, for a quick recap and a way to get into the modeling mindset, we were given the task of creating a character in Maya.
Voxel Task
Our reference was the voxel versions of the characters Tin Tin and his dog, Snowy. It was exciting to finally be able to model a character or creature, even if it is the pixel/block version. The task came with a requirement, however, which was to only use snapping to create the character, meaning no scaling or stretching of primitives. This meant that we had to be precise with how many blocks we used and follow the reference as accurately as possible, which at times was a challenge since the reference image only showed the characters from one perspective.
To begin, I counted the number of blocks for the legs and body, to determine roughly how far they need to be spaced apart, and so I know the measurements of the dog. When I snapped the first three blocks together, I duplicated the set three times and voila, I had the legs ready. The shortcuts for snapping were very useful throughout the process and much easier to use than having to click the icon again and again. In the beginning, I used ‘X to snap the legs to the grid, and afterwards, I used only ‘V’ for the rest of the model.
I had some trouble with how wide the body needed to be, but that was easy to fix. Once I had lined the legs with blocks in the middle on one side, all I had to do was duplicate them twice and snap them to each other, and the space was quickly filled up. Then, to bulk up the height of the body, I selected all of the blocks I had made for the base, duplicated that twice, and snapped the sections to each other. The duplicate tool was a lifesaver; I used it for almost every group of blocks I created to move them across or upwards and it made the process a lot faster.
Another great aspect that I discovered is that I can shift select multiple blocks, move the pivot point once and then the whole thing snaps perfectly. I was worried at first, that I’d have to move the pivot point for an individual block, and then duplicate that to create a new group, so that their pivot points would also be in the same spot, but after realising that I only needed to do it for one block in a snapped group, I sped ahead and completed the model in no time.
The final touches were to add colour. Snowy is a nice white, so I knew it wouldn’t feel complete unless I changed the grey. Like I learned in the previous two lessons, I selected the whole model, right clicked and held until the panel of quick options showed up, and selected ‘add new material’. This time I didn’t choose Phong E because it had a shine to it, and that would look unnatural considering Snowy has fur. I chose the matte material and changed the colour to white. I then tried to change the eyes and nose to black, but I had selected the entire blocks, so it didn’t look like the reference. Thankfully, a friend reminded me I would have to go into the quick panel, choose the ‘face mode’ and change the colour of the individual faces I wanted, of the blocks. This worked, and vortex Snowy was finally complete! I’m really happy with the result. I made the artistic choice to shorten the snout (since the reference’s snout was one line longer) and I think it looks much cuter. I enjoyed the process so much, that I actually gathered some more voxel characters from the internet so that I may model them when I have time, for fun and practice.
Box Modeling
Next came the main part of the lesson, where we learned how to box model and extrude. Box modeling is a 3D technique where the artist begins with a low-res primitive and modifies it into a desired shape by extruding, scaling and rotating the faces and edges. Detail can be added manually or by adding edge loops. You can also subdivide the entire surface uniformly to increase polygonal resolution by an order of magnitude.
Before we could move on to any proper modelling, we first had to get familiar with the basics and some key tools and hacks to make the process faster. We generated a cylinder and went to the modeling toolkit, where the different components allow you to move and change the shape.
However, moving the edges or faces outwards, stretching vertices and rotating the shape in different ways is not the same as extruding. Extrusion pushes out the shape, expanding it and creating entirely new sections which weren’t previously there. This is why one simple primitive can grow into something as large as a 3D elephant. We were also taught some quick tips that help save time when modelling. The first involved selecting all of the individual faces of a cylinder one side (such as the top, where the face is split into about 15 pizza sliced segments). You select one face, hover over one next to it and double click, which then selects all of the faces on that side. I could instantly see how useful that would be because I was familiar with extrusion to an extent, and I knew that it often involves having an entire side selected. There is also another way if this method doesn’t work, which was demonstrated, again, using the faces on top of the cylinder. You select one face, hold the tab key and then click and paint in as many other faces as desired (select them). Do this again for deselecting one or multiple. This method is good when you do not aim to extrude an entire side, but only a proportion, or various parts, and it can also be done in combination with the previous one (select, hover, double click), which is what I did with the cylinder so that not all faces were selected, but every other one was. I then clicked the ‘extrude’ button to the right, in the modeling toolkit, and used the arrows that appeared to move the faces up/down.
I could see that extrusion was quite different to simply stretching the components, but it was hard to try and explain how. We were then asked to play around with the rotate and scale tools for a second, and I realised that you could manipulate the extruded areas just like you would with a primitive, and this opened up a lot of possibilities, making modeling in Maya that much more exciting and limitless.
This was the cylinder after I had simply scaled down and rotated the extruded faces – it already looked so much more interesting! But this wasn’t all there was to extrusion. We deleted the faces, returning back to the normal cylinder, and were shown how to scale it down entirely, without it being shrunken from both sides, which I had noticed when building the castle, and I found quite annoying. Thankfully, I now know that you need to select all of the vertices on the top (or alternatively the bottom of the shape if you want to shrink upwards) and then scale up or down. This allows the shape to stay in position, like if it was snapped to the grid for example, and you didn’t want to snap again after it was scaled. The next aspect of extrusion that we looked at was the little cubes on top of each of the arrows.
Once again, we selected all of the faces and hit extrude, but this time, we selected the little blue cube on top of the blue arrow. A light blue cube then appeared in the centre, and if this was selected, it could be used to scale the entire face inwards or outwards! I was pretty amazed, because I guessed that the next step would be to extrude upwards or downwards again, and the new shape would be a different size. This was right:
Now, to do this again in a faster manner, we learned an important shortcut that skips all of the steps and allows you to expand and extrude immediately. The shortcut is G.
‘G’ = Repeats the last action taken
After scaling the first extruded face inwards, I simply pressed ‘G’ to pull it up, then ‘G’ again to scale the new face out and finally, ‘G’ once more to pull it up. This can be repeated as many times as necessary. After making the desired amount of cycles, I created a new final face section, but this time didn’t press ‘G’, and simply scaled inwards. After this, I used the ‘G’ tool to scale the face in and down, instead of up, to make a hole at the top. There we have a simple way to create a basic lightsaber.
To decorate the model and make it more interesting, we were shown how to insert edge loops. I went into mesh tools and clicked ‘insert edge loops’. Then, if I clicked a vertical line on the model, a horizontal edge loop would appear, and I could move and place it wherever I like, and vice versa for vertical edge loops. I could add as many as I wanted, and I imagine that you can create incredibly complex models like this. To exit this mode and stop inserting edge loops, you press ‘Q. This is the more accurate method, but there is another way that edge loops can be inserted. You can also add them using the multi-cut tool in the modeling tool kit by hovering over the shape and holding control and just clicking, but you have to be careful with this method as it is easy to mess up.
Orthographics – 2D images used as a reference to model from. They are also known as reference images and can be put in Maya as templates.
I was finally ready to start modeling the main object of the lesson and applying everything I had learned so far. We were given a lightsaber orthographic to be used as a template to model from. To insert it, I entered front view in Maya and went to the top left where I clicked ‘view’, ‘image plane’ and finally ‘import image’. The template came horizontally, so I rotated it 90 degrees and scaled it up slightly. Now it was time to prepare for modeling. I clicked the 2-view option so that I could work from the direct front of the template, and at an angle in 3D. Switching back and forth between these would be most comfortable since I wouldn’t be working from other directions much, but upwards and downwards, taking into consideration that I might be spinning the model slightly in the second viewport, to see the back or top momentarily.
I made sure that the template was flat on the grid and I began by generating a cylinder and levelling it to the bottom of the hilt. Using two new functions – ‘x-ray’ and ‘wireframe on shaded’ – I could see the template through the primitive at all times. Using vertex mode and the scale tool, I could then enlargen the cylinder so that it matched perfectly with the first part of the saber. Initially, I made the mistake of using the side arrows to scale up the cylinder, but after realising that it would make the entire model oval instead of round, I quickly amended my mistake with a new primitive. Using the extruding skills I had learned, I then started building upwards from the cylinder, using ‘G’ to scale outwards/inwards and upwards, depending on how big the following ridge was.
This part was quite simple to do since I was ignoring the details and working to make the base. The 2-view mode was indeed incredibly useful since I could refer to the front view to see exactly where I needed to stop extruding and make sure that all the lines matched up. It wasn’t until I reached the ridges that things got a little more complicated, but even then, it was simply a new pattern using the same basic skills, and I figure out how to do it after two or three ridges. I extruded till the first ridge, then hit ‘G’ and expanded the face until it was as big as the first half of the next ridge, then did the same for the second half, but instead of expanding when I clicked the little blue cube, I contracted, and hit ‘G’ again to extrude upwards. After a while, I got the hang of it, and a rhythm began that was one repetitive cycle. It didn’t take long to grasp and I actually found it enjoyable.
After repeating this until I reached the end of the bumpy section, I completed the hilt using the same basic technique, but with more variety in the scaling. The next step was to move on to decorating; I wanted to add the two details first, and if there was time later, perhaps colour. First, I tackled the ridges on the bottom. I went to mesh tools and inserted two horizontal edge loops on the base by clicking on the vertical lines. Then, after exiting using the ‘Q’ shortcut, I selected every other face in the middle of the edge loops and extruded outwards. I had some trouble with the tools for a few minutes (I think I was mixing them up) but eventually, I scaled them down and tilted them slightly so that they were at an angle outwards, instead of dead straight, and this was the main characteristic that was finally starting to make the saber take shape. I realised later on that the ridges should have been two faces wide instead of one, but I liked how it looked so I didn’t go back to waste time.
Subsequently, I moved on to creating the switch, which would be the final component of the saber. My first attempt didn’t go well, because I couldn’t figure out how to stop the sections from extruding at an angle. After a quick demo showing me how to do it, I decided to just start from scratch, and inserted some new edge loops. Then, I selected the parts that I want the switch to be comprised of and extruded them outwards. Once again, they were apart, so I used the side scaler and pulled them in slightly. Then, I selected the edge in the middle and also pushed it in, so that the switch was straight (it had a v shape previously). I then selected the middle face on the switch, and clicked the little cube on top of the arrow and scaled it in and from the side, so that I had a rectangle in the centre, which I then used to create a button by extruding outwards.
To create the thumb grooves, I inserted a lot of edge loops close together, as evenly as I could manage, and then selected every other one and extruded outwards. That was the final step to the construction of the model, and there wasn’t enough time to add colour, unfortunately, so we moved straight on to rendering. I took a second to admire the model from top to bottom. I was quite proud that I had managed to complete it and I had created an actual lightsaber in Maya. I clicked control + h to hide the template and created a floor using the flat poly plane primitive, in order to be ready to render it.
When rendering, it’s nice to have a background and some colour, so the first step was to go to ‘Arnold’, click ‘Lights’ and then ‘Physical Sky’, which puts a giant black globe around the grid. Again in Arnold, I chose ‘Render’ this time and a separate window popped up where I could see the rendered version of the model. The two were linked in real-time, so I could move the model on the grid and tumble around it, and it would also change accordingly in the render.
In the section named ‘Physical Sky Attributes’, I edited the position and intensity of the sun using turbidity, elevation and azimuth. I also used Sky and Sun Tint to change the colours of the scene, and I played around with this to get some interesting renders. We were running out of time and I didn’t manage to experiment with the other options, but there truly is a lot you can do with Arnold. Here are some of the renders that I got out of the process:
I really enjoyed this lesson, from start to finish. I feel that I now know all of the important basics and some intermediate skills required to model, and I can create more complex objects, with curves and details, not just simple block characters. We learned so many shortcuts and hacks that are going to help in the future and completing the lightsaber model using these, and in general, has inspired me greatly to create more in 3D. Some of the aspects of box modeling do require a lot of steps, and this brings up the concern that I might often forget how to do something, but I can always refer back to my notes and blog posts such as this one, so I think that I’ll be alright. I also plan to follow some tutorials from Youtube and practice in my own time, so I look forward to learning new skills and animating my models.