Slowly learning

[doos]

These is just a compilation of the things i've been trying.. I'm kinda interested in 3d art, but I've got no real grounding in an editor.. I used to be fairly good with the CVG in the Worldcraft / Hammer editor, and then I did some cool things with nurbs in early Rhino.. Since then, I've not really learnt another editor sufficiently except sketchup, which is great for quickly fleshing out something in 3d.. I like the simplicity of extruding surfaces, or putting a hole in something quickly.

Editors I've had partial success with (attached):
Head:
This was modified from the default head in the trial version of zbrush.. It's pretty cool, but I don't really understand how this relates to a game resource.
Sword:
This was my object I textured, done in wings 3d after a tutorial.
Speaker:
Done in sketchup for the speed modelling.. Took two hours.

Plan:
1) Try and learn XSI mod tool.. I think it has everything I need, I just need to focus on the tutorials, which is a bit tricky.
2) Use sketchup on the speed modelling to get used to quickly building the right kind of primitive objects, and ignoring the correct amount of detail..
3) Find out how other people do things, and relate this to the software I'm using. Find out what makes the difference between a good model and a great one..
4) Create more than one model a month..

[Chipmunk]

Hey I'll go through your plan with you now to try and improve it:

Firstly, XSI Mod Tool is a good one to use. There's not loads of tutorials for it but tutorials are overated.

Next I'd advise against using Sketchup, you'll get used to it's friendly interface and quick modelling but I think it would be counterproductive to do so.

Third, yeah this is a good idea. You'll just learn this automatically as you go along. I find this is the only thing that takes the most time. As I can use the tools but knowing how to apply them in different situations is what matters.

Lastly you're going to have to commit alot more than a model a month to get anywhere at a decent speed. Things like the speed modeling challenges can get down to like 20 Minutes so it's not a huge amount of time.

I'd advise picking up Mod Tool with a tutorial on its interface and basic poly modelling but very little other tutorial help as I found as I was learning tutorials didn't particulally help me learn just how to make that certain object.

[Acid]

Not bad, Everyone's used wings once before..
Sword model is not bad, wings works way different because everything is freehand movement when moving edges and verts. Good work on that. Definently XSI Mod Tool is probably the best free 3d package out there apart from blender, so it will be a good use learning to use that. Once you learn that program it should set you down with knowledge of 3D, and it will be good to take into use for when you move onto other programs.

Secondly, like Chipmunk said, sketchup is pretty much a no-no imo, you don't model the same way with other programs like XSI, it would be a good idea to stay to relevant resources.

Thirdly, I guess that's why you joined this site. Make sure you ask questions and if you see something interesting, see how they produced it, methods of modeling, texturing. Tips and Tricks. Look at the way they constructed the model. The Work in progress board has most people starting projects from scratch to finish. So have a look at their progress and see what they have changed or incorporated.

Last, I would say model out basic objects first. What I did was start modeling crates and barrels, even though so simple it helps to let you improve scaling and ideas. Then work your way to a little more stuff for example like: desks, lights, bins, seats etc. Get to work on your hard surfaced objects, then when you think your ready, challenge your self with organic meshes such as a human body or hands.

Remember to make sure you have plenty, plenty of refs, search on google, flickr and make sure that it looks accurate or near enough accurate to real life.

[doos]

Ok, so I decided I'd give the gas mask speed modelling a go.. I was 20 minutes over.

Design:

I thought that it would be cool to have a nice big transparent visor, so you can have a diseased head or skull inside it.. I also wanted something like a cowl, so it would go over the shoulders, and act as a seal, a bit like the biohazard suits. I thought I'd put some nice big vents on a panel on the front and a darth vader style control panel.

Modelling:
I couldn't figure what the name of the backgrounds with picture guides were called, so after wasting some time hunting, I went straight into modelling with.. A cube.
I pulled the corners of my cube into the center a bit to create a more rounded cube.
I extruded the bottom surface of the cube to make the cowl.
I inset the front of the cube to form the visor.
I managed to delete the surface for the "transparent" visor and the bottom of the cowl. I had problems doing this, as going into modify mode, selecting the vertex and pressing delete kept deleting my model..
I moved the sides of the mask around to the sides.
I then created a subdivision mesh following a subdivision swan tutorial.. It was a bit more rounded than I really wanted, but I moved the neck in a bit and added some edges to define the shoulders.
I inset some panels on the front of the cowl to form a panel, but instead decided to have create a symettrical vent.
I selected the outer loop of the cowl and extruded, moved and scaled it to create some thickness.
I wanted an inside panel of the mask with some more venting detail (to be textured), so I extruded and then used snap to remove polygons. This went wrong, and I took another 10 minutes getting it right.

Improvements over previous model:
Used subdivision, inset, and XSI:mod tool!

Lessons learned:
Use a stopwatch to time.
Keep to time, don't assume 1 hour when the time was 50 minutes.
Basic model first, then the subdivision works nicely. It was nice to have alterations to the simpler mesh effect the other.

Improvements:
Model could use some more detail around the vent, and perhaps some tubing..
I should have really used a reference human model to get the proportions right.
Shoulder edge could use more polys.

[doos]

Ok, I decided to give the speed modelling a go again.. I like the direction, rather than just sitting at my mouse wondering if I should model or not.

I tried to model a pine-cone mace I saw at the British Museum, but once I start I tend to embellish as I go thinking "actually, I prefer it like so".

Method:
Made a cylinder.
Scaled the circles to form an onion.
Used the rotation tool to mimic the spiral of a pine cone.
Subdivided the mesh which gave me the points at the tip of the spikes.. Luckily all of these new points were selected, which meant I could scale and move them upwards.
Triangulate defined the spike edges.

Things Learnt:
Easier to select an area of points than select an edge, right click, edge loop, select edge.
Used rotate!
Used subdivide and triangulate.

[doos]

I got inspired by a high poly blade on the melee weapon challenge and decided to make a random chinese martial arts weapon from my favorite retailer.

Plan:
Outline in illustrator, save as .eps, open in softimage xsi, move a few vertices and voila..

Actual method:
Save components individually as .eps files.
Extrude to form 3d geometry.
Inset polygon to finish geometry and tie up loose ends.
Tilt polygon to improve looks.
Used sketch to form the handle, then extruded and scaled until it was the right shape..

Things learnt:
Even xsi crashes or forgets your data occassionally.. SAVE!
How to use weld points after insetting a complex geometry.
How to assign a material.

The blade:


The blade with a handle (not the one it should have, more of a falchion-look than a tassled chinese broadsword)



Things happy about:
I like the way the rotated inset makes the cutting edge stand out and extends the teeth.
I love the end on view of this sword.. it's like a boat!

Improvements:
Texture, remove unneccessary polys along face.
Low poly version!
Find the hard-edge option in XSI to define the blade edge. Will improve the AO map.. I think.

Things to do:
Practice the XSI shortcuts from a recent post. I'm inbelievalby grateful for the weld key! (L?)
Apply tutorial video of texturing I watched recently.
Stick to the plan while modelling instead of deciding something else would look cooler!
Start using the reference material I collect a lot more.. Maybe side-by-side.. Also get more angles of the reference material.. When you watch martial arts with a chinese broadsword, they're extremely thin... Not as beefy as a warhammer orc cleaver!

[mik]

if you mind saying, but you should keep the meshflow a bit more clean (the blade)
you should start with a really simplified geometry to get to the blade shape, and then slowly adding details, as with so many polys you never (or with lots of work) will get the lines straight, things planar or the smoothing right. hope that helps you a bit, keep on going

cheers

[doos]

Thanks for the tip.. I tried to make my hull out of a single cube for this SMC, my loops started skewing and doing silly things when i was scaling in the YZ direction.. I keep selecting my object and clicking freeze geometry every once in a while, but XSI still does it. I think I might be in global transformation mode, maybe.. I'm sure it used to be a lot easier to transform surfaces and things!

Things learnt:
How to use a curve to extrude geometry. I could have used this for the entire ship..
How to use a nurbs surface to create a billowing sail.
How to find 5 sided polys.

Things to learn:
How to unlink geometry when copying cylinders.. Having to translate and scale multiple times is.. Wrong.
How to get rid of the curve I used to create the spiral without deleting the spiral. (I wonder if I can alter the geometry by moving the curve.. That would be interesting.)
How to make the spiral a proper spiral, instead of twisting through itself.. I think this might require not changing the radius of the spiral, but not exactly sure.



I think the info geometry button in XSI might give me the facility to export my geometry to an .obj, which would be fairly useful since I can't yet use the models in my engine of choice. (Plus I still havent grasped XSI texturing totally yet.. So may resort to wings.)

[Gephoria]

I used XSI for a little while after first learning 3ds max, really transitioning between 3d apps it's just locating the tools you need or re-learning the tools (because they are named differently). Example being extrude in XSI is similar to bevel in 3ds max. looks like your models are getting progressively better though from this thread keep up the practice.

I know XSI provides video tutorials somewhere online not sure if you have seen them, the only place i can track them down at tthe moment is the pirate bay google: XSI Video Tutorial 3d buzz

hope it helps

[doos]

Yeah, I get annoyed when something like "fix my normals plz" isnt as easy to find as you'd hope! I do end up learning some cool things by clicking random things though.. Like cage deform.. I found a ton of tutorials on edharriss.com, and theres some noesis vids on youtube.. I'm not so great at following what a video is doing for 2 hours though..


I decided to do another boat, but a better one this time.. I created a slice of hull and created the entire boat by extruding to a curve both ways.. And then I found the deform by mesh button which made it a lot less curved than I had planned for. The sails are all deformed copies of three different sails.. I kind of copied a lot of the rigging from a picture of the bounty, but it felt better with a larger sail at the back since this ship has a higher stern.





This model took ages to do, mostly because I had to read up on sails and find some that would work with my invented hull.. I've given up for now, but if it was five hours ago, i'd have used rotoscope to build a rudder that looked like a fish tail instead of what it is.. I was going to turn the sails slightly to the side but thought I'd leave it as is.

Things learnt:
freezing the geometry (yess!!)
how to turn on centre of geometry for transformations
cage deformations
copying geometry and cutting the links to the other geometry