Another Week — Weekly Update June 14, 2016

Posted on June 14, 2016 by SusanG

I don’t have a snappy title for this week. I didn’t have that snappy a week. It wasn’t bad. Just not snappy. I got zapped by allergies of some sort pretty good and spent most of the week feeling less than stellar. I did not let that get in the way of receiving my red belt at Tae Kwon Do. It’s easy to kick things and yell, it’s a little harder to concentrate on making things when you feel like you’re drowning and your head is pounding. Fortunately, all that started to let up at the end of the week and I was finally able to get some work done. Oh, and see a couple of movies.

This summer/year has a lot of, what look like, good movies coming out and some that have already opened. I’ve seen a few of those that are already out, Zootopia, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, that I can remember. This weekend I saw Warcraft and
Now You See Me 2.

I did like Warcraft. I can’t really rave about it. I enjoyed it. I might see it again just not in the theater. What I found most interesting were the Orcs and some of the rest of the cool art stuff. I have seen a couple of things on Twitter about some of the art and props and such for Warcraft. I think it would be interesting to read about. I know some of the crowd work must have been computer generated, I’m just not sure about the Orcs. I’m not sure if they were prosthetics or mo-cap. Maybe some of both. I liked the look of the Orcs. I thought they did a nice job. I really liked the tusks and the bands and rings in them. That was great.

Now You See Me 2 is the follow up to Now You See Me. It’s always a challenge to follow up such a well done movie with a sequel. I loved Now You See Me. I thought the ending was excellent. Very mind blowing. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like Now You See Me 2. I did. Very much. In fact, as much as I liked the first one and think it so well done, it is possible that this one has out done it. For me there weren’t any of those mind blowing moments, like in the first one, with an ending you just didn’t see coming. However, in the second one, the ending wasn’t predictable, and even adds a new twist to the first movie. I think the fact that I’m still puzzling over bits of it says a lot.

In between movies, and once I was finally feeling better, I worked on the worm guy again this week. I have something in mind for him and want to get it done so right now I’m focusing on getting him done.

I was ready to delete the half that I hadn’t put much work into and then mirror the other half over. I looked at him and thought about, if there was anything missing that I was going to need to add for both sides, or adjust for both sides, because if there was then I should do that before I do the mirror. I had a couple of things that needed taking care of.

First, I added an antenna. Ultimately, I’m going to want the antenna sort of bent over a bit and maybe at an odd angle, but I created it rod straight. I’m going to rig it when I rig the rest of the worm guy. If I do that, then like with posing the rest of the worm, I should be able to keep the pinching and stretching when I pose the antenna to a minimum.WormGuy_v2_06122016a_c_sm_wm

To make the antenna I used a cone with really small radii and made sure to have lots of segments for the length so that there will be more to work with for posing. I also made sure to have several cap segments so that there would be plenty to work with for the
top bud part. For that top bud part, I selected polygons and scaled them out and added and edge loop or two for a bit more control and shape. Connecting it to the head was a little tricky since I had 16 segments around and it was going into a quad. To get a nice flow I used the cut tool and created a few triangles to add a few more points so that many sides didn’t have to be condensed down to just 4 sides. I wanted to maintain some of the smoother look. It worked out.

WormGuy_v2_06122016b_c_sm_wmThe other modeling bit that I did was to clean up the bottom or end part of the ridge for the underbelly. When I created the ridge separation I did it along polygons so that very end bit was just a straight squared off segment. I manipulated points to make it a bit more rounded looking.

With those things done it was time to delete the other half. Because the worm guy is so tall I did this in segments so I could zoom in and not get more polygons than I wanted. This wasn’t too bad. I just did a window select of an area and then a delete, after I made sure I didn’t have extra polygons selected. The catch to this was the edge of polygons that were created when I did the extrude on the body to create the difference between the under belly and the rest of the body. I wanted to keep part of the loop of polygons so using a loop selection wasn’t going to be ideal. Since I knew what I wanted, I just selected them click by click and then deleted them. Here’s some of the edge selected before I deleted it.

WormGuy_v2_06122016c_c_sm_wm

WormGuy_v2_06122016d_c_sm_wmWith that, I now have half a worm guy. I saved it and then saved it to a different file before I do the mirroring and put it back together. The reason for this has to do with adding arms. Since I haven’t decided if I want to give him arms yet, this way I have the base. I can work on him without arms and see how I like him and then, if I want to go in and give him an arm or two on each side I don’t have to start over. I just add to the one side and then do the mirroring. Then I do all the other stuff I will now have to do for this guy.

Next up for the worm guy is to mirror the one half and then fuse him together. From there I have the rigging and texturing to do. I’m not sure if it will be easier to texture first or rig first. I’ll need to figure that out. And I’ll need to decide how I want to go about the texturing. I saw that Substance Painter 2.1 is out so maybe I’ll give that a try. I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell about that.

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Not My Best Week – Weekly Update June 7, 2016

Posted on June 7, 2016 by SusanG

I’ve had a couple of distractions this week that have made focusing on 3d model work a bit difficult. That means there isn’t a lot to share so this will be a shorter post than usual.

Distraction one is a wardrobe problem. This problem is made more difficult to solve due to a dislike of shopping, a clothing preference, and my short stature.  I’m about to give up on this particular problem and just go with my backup plan.

Distraction two was far more exciting. I got test for my red belt in Tae Kwon Do. For this test, I was particularly concerned about the board breaking. I had to break a board with a tornado kick (spinning, jump, roundhouse kick). I have struggled with my tornado kick and so I’ve been putting in extra practice. I have gotten better but I wasn’t sure I would be able to break the board. So I was really happy that I was able to break the board on the first try. And, I didn’t mess up anything else too bad so it looks like I have passed my test and earned my red belt. Yay!

WormGuy_v2_05312016b_c_sm_wm

Though I didn’t get near as much 3d model work done this week as I might have, I did get to work on the worm guy enough so that at least now he doesn’t look quite so obscene. He’s starting to look like a worm character. I got the eye socket created. For that I used the inset and the extrude tools. I also used the extrude with some additional edge loops to start on the teeth for a big toothy grin.

WormGuy_v2_06052016f_c_sm_wm

 

 

After I got the eye socket in and the teeth started I realized I needed the division between the under belly side and the back. I’m not sure how to better explain that. But looking at the original sketch, I have that delineated from the nose and face down the body and back up. I could have tried to do that with just a texture but I kind of want it to be more of a physical not just visual distinction. I created that by first selecting all the polygons that I wanted to sort of inflate and then using the extrude tool. I made sure to not select the polygons in the eye socket just the ones all around it. In addition to getting the look I wanted this also created some additional geometry for the eye socket area. I still had to do a lot of tweaking of the points around the nose to make that transition from the nose to the newly extruded part smooth.

WormGuy_v2_06052016a_c_sm_wm

 

WormGuy_v2_06052016b_c_sm_wmThere is still a fair bit to do. I need to add the antenna. And I want to delete the side that I haven’t worked on and then mirror the other side over. I may give him arms even though on the original sketch he doesn’t have arms. I have an idea that could really work well with them. With or without arms, I also have a scene to create for him. And that doesn’t include trying to figure out how to give him some fuzz not to mention creating a rig for him. Now that I’ve passed my belt test and nearly solved my wardrobe issue, all I need to do is get the clog in my brain cleared so I can get to creating fun stuff. Come back and find out how that works out.

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Bellows of Frustration – Weekly Update May 31, 2016

Posted on May 31, 2016 by SusanG

It is extremely difficult to make a work in progress picture of a worm or caterpillar type creature not look obscene. Especially in the early stages of the model.

For most of this week I didn’t work on anything. I came to realize that I had not really taken a breather between getting the Birthday Card out and starting on the Halloween Card. And while that is how most people have to work, and how I might work if I had
an idea that really excited me, it isn’t always the best way for me to work. And, it isn’t how I have to work. At least not right now. For now, it’s more about having fun, learning things, and creating quality work.

So I took a little time to think about things, and I decided not to work on the Halloween Card this week. Instead, I decided I would try modeling something that was fun to draw and I think would make a fun character to model, or at least to get to see modeled. Remember this little guy from the sketchbook last year? Well that’s who I decided I want to model. Yes, he’s a worm or caterpillar type thing.

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I didn’t get started on him nearly as soon as I had wanted. Several things got in the way. But as I finally got to sit down and start to think about how to model him I also started thinking about how to texture him. I don’t think that using one of the stock materials in 3DS Max is going to get the look I want. I’m really going to have to do some custom texturing or painting. This led me to looking into some of the texturing software out there. Particularly the stuff that lets you “paint on your model”. I’m looking into 3 packages, I think there is another but I don’t remember what it is. They range in price, and I suspect in capability. I’m looking at Mari, Quixel, and Substance Painter. I’ve looked at them all briefly and I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to need to test them to see which is going to do what I need and be the easiest to work with.

Being able to better customize the materials and textures on my models will be extremely helpful. I expect, provided I do a good job with them, that they have the potential to add considerably to the artwork. A custom material and texture that makes the pen look like it’s been held between someone’s teeth adds significant character to that pen, it gives it a life. Not to mention the polish, and realism, or not, that can be brought to a scene by being able to use custom materials and textures. I think this needs to be the next thing I work on while I continue to model interesting scenes for greeting cards.

On to the frustration. And a little more about work in progress worm pictures.

I sat about creating the worm. I decided that connecting a bunch of spheres together was the way to go. It could give me a pretty good base to start with. So I created a sphere. But the head isn’t totally round it’s a little flat on top. So I used an FFD modifier to be able to squash the top down a little. I squashed the bottom up a little as well. I collapsed the modifier changes onto the sphere and then I made copies of it. I positioned the spheres so they overlapped and then deleted the overlapping polygons. This let me then attach one to the other and then I was able to weld the vertices together so that I had one object. I did this with every sphere, connecting it to the chain before it.

When I got done connecting all the spheres I did a little scaling using the soft select so I could make the tail in a little skinnier than the head and shoulders. Then, I decided to pose it. Here I found that for some reason it was too big to use the same FFD modifier I had used on the first sphere. I couldn’t figure out how to adjust the size of the lattice so that it was all around the object so I scaled it down and then applied the modifier. I was able to get it to work and so I set about trying to make the worm look like it was sitting on a surface with it’s body and head upright. I moved the tail out to the side and up, I did some
rotating and more moving of parts using the control points of the modifier. I had to pay attention so I didn’t get too much deformation, pinching, or skewing in the model. Finally I had roughly the pose I wanted.WormGuy_05302016a_c_sm_wm

 

As you can see, there is no way to make a work in progress picture of a worm at this stage in the process not look obscene. It really is the beginnings of a worm like creature, I promise. But hey, I learned how to do a screen capture from within 3DS Max. I can even add a label to it as I create the capture, you probably can’t see it, it says WormGuy at the bottom.

WormGuy_05302016b_sm_wm

And then I shutdown the computer and went off to bed. Here is where the bellows of frustration happen. This was the point that I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to pose the worm. I would be much better off to leave it in a T type pose and then rig it, yes,
rig a worm. One of the nice things about creating a rig and using that is that during the weight painting phase you get to see and have a little more control over how the bones cause the model to deform. It can help to cut back on the bad deformations when it is
time to pose the character. Yes, bellows of frustration. Or the utterance of a choice curse word.

And so the next day, I started over with the worm creature. I followed the same basic steps though instead of squishing the bottom of the sphere I left it a little elongated and created more of a defined head/neck thing. Once all the spheres were connected I did some scaling using soft select to get a bit of a graduated scaling. Here he is with just the basic shape all put together and just the smallest amount of taper from top to bottom.

WormGuy_v2_05302016a_sm_wmWormGuy_v2_05302016d_c_wm

Then it was time to start on the features. I started with the nose and mouth. I used the cut tool to create some better edges and polygon shapes for the nose. Then I extruded the polygons away from the surface and then rotated them so it looks like the nose is upturned. Then I created the mouth shape using the cut tool for the extra edges I needed for the right polygon shapes. For this I extruded the polygons into the object to create a gaping hole sort of thing. You can just barely see it in this profile. You can see the taper here better. I also ended up needing to scale up the upper body and head some. I used the soft select for this too.

 

Here’s a screen capture of what it looks like to use the soft select with the scale tool.

WormGuy_v2_05302016e_sm_wm

So that’s where I’m at with the worm guy. I’m going to finish modeling him and then get WormGuy_v2_05302016b_c_sm_wmhim rigged so I can pose him. Creating the rig should be interesting. I have a feeling it’s going to be a little more complicated than you might expect. But it will be fun to see it come together. I’m also planning to try the hair and fur tool. This little guy has these hairs sticking out from him but they are quite thick. I’m hoping to figure out how to use the hair tool and create the hairs or spikey bits that way. Then there is the texturing. That will be another thing to learn on this project.

Don’t forget to check back to see how the learning is going and how the worm guy progresses. Once I get some really facial features going hopefully he will cease to look as odd as he does now.

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Bits and Pieces – Weekly Update May 24, 2016

Posted on May 24, 2016 by SusanG

Bits and pieces, or, this week I should have taken notes. Unfortunately, the Twitter tool I use doesn’t like it when I use a title that long.

I sat down to work on this update and figure out what pictures I wanted to use and I had to think about what I worked on this week. I think that could be a good sign. It means I got a few things worked on. Yay.

So that book that I was telling you I got. And I decided that, even though it’s probably more of a reference book, I would just read it through. Turns out I’ve learned something already. I had been using the Snipping Tool in Windows to get screen shots when I
want to show the view in the view port or with the wire frame or the skeleton bones or things like that that don’t render. I have been using the Snipping Tool because I couldn’t find the screen shot option in 3DS Max. I now know where it is. Turns out that I needed to use the Default Workspace with Enhanced Menus. I haven’t tested it yet and I suspect that there are some things I will still use the Snipping Tool for. So even though reading about view ports and view port configuration seems pretty basic, it turns out to have been informative.

I am still working on bits and pieces for the Halloween card. I finished up the base of the jack-o-lantern. I had to connect the fleshy edges to the inside shell. That was particularly time consuming since I started out using a lot more polygons to get some nice detail and then when I used the boolean tool a few times it created a few more to allow for the shapes of the cut outs. I also modeled the stem. This wasn’t especially difficult. I started with a cylinder with enough faces to let me get some good ridges. And I scaled the top of it in a bit to make it more tapered. Then to get it curved I used one of the Free Form modifiers so that I could shape it without having to do it edge by edge like I have done before. Progress. Here are a couple of shots of the jack-o- lantern with the stem. I haven’t assigned any materials to anything yet.

jacko_2_2016_05202016c_c_sm_wm  jacko_2_2016_05202016d_c_sm_wm

A glowing jack-o-lantern needs a light source. I need a candle to go inside, something a bitCandle_1_05212016a_c_sm_wm thick but not too tall. I started with a cylinder in 3DS Max and did some basic shaping. But I don’t want just a pristine unused candle. I want one that looks like it has been used. So it needs drips and a puddle. But I’m not very good at doing that with 3DS Max. It’s something I think more easily done in ZBrush. So to ZBrush the candle goes. Only, I forgot that to send from 3DS Max to ZBrush the object needs to not be too big. So the first time or two didn’t go so well. Once I remembered that lesson learned from creating the balloons for the Birthday Card, I scaled the candle down and tried again. I didn’t use a lot of different brushes to get the look I wanted. Mostly the smooth brush, the clay build up in subtract mode to clean up some stuff and for the drips I used the standard brush. Yeah the standard brush. I worked really well to hold it in a few Candle_1_v2_05222016a_c_sm_wmplaces and let it sort of puddle. Sending it back to 3DS Max wasn’t so bad but I had a lot of polygons so it was pretty dense. I decided to try to fix that and used the ZRemesher and set the target polygon count at half what I had. That worked out, not as dense, and it kept the detail nicely. Once again, back to 3DS Max to create the wick and call it good for now. Again, no materials yet, but here are some pictures. The base that I started with and what I ended up with.

And finally this week I worked on a book. Yeah, I know, a book. How easy, right. Well, yes. Not very difficult. I started with a box and a cylinder. I cut the cylinder in half and deleted the polygons from one side of the box so I could join the two up. A few strategically placed edge loops, and some extrudes to get the shape. The spine was still round from the cylinder and while it looked good, not quite what I was wanting. So a bit of manipulation of the edges to make it more square looking. I applied the turbosmooth modifier to it but I haven’t yet collapsed it down to be the final of the model. I’ll wait and apply the materials first. It would be easier with fewer polygons to select. I like the way it’s turned out. I’m a little excited to create a few other style of books. The challenge may come in applying materials or textures to them. I’m not sure how I want to handle that yet.

Book_Style1_05222016b_c_sm_wm   Book_Style1_05222016c_c_sm_wmBook_Style1_05222016f_c_sm_wm   Book_Style1_05222016g_c_sm_wm

Some progress. I’m always hoping for more. This week I have an extra day off from the day job and then there is the Memorial Day holiday so I have the opportunity to spend even more time on modeling and the like. Though I may not be successful in making the
best of the opportunity. You know, the more time I have to do the things I want to do or need to do, the less of that I get done. It’s sort of like the Murphy’s law of available time to task ratio or something like that. I’ll do my best though. Of course, I may have to take a break to see one or two of the new movies. It is, after all, a holiday weekend.

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I Took Notes – Weekly Update May 17, 2016

Posted on May 17, 2016 by SusanG

Last week felt really long. I know it was not longer than any other week, same number of hours and some number of days. But as sometimes happens, the amount of stuff that does or doesn’t get packed into those hours and days can make a difference on how long the week feels. Because of this, when I finally got started working on things, I made notes so when I sat down to write this I could more easily remember things to share.

I decided to regroup a little on the Halloween Card. Remember I don’t have a set idea of what I want to make. So instead of working on something specific that may or may not be what I want, I decided that I would start by making a bunch of different things that I
might use for a Halloween scene. Jack’o Lantern, tombstones, creepy fence, spell books, cauldron, skulls or bones, different things like that. My thought is that in the process of creating these items two things happen. First, I add more models to my library. Second, the process of modeling some item may trigger an idea for the card. With that in mind, one of the first things I tried was a tombstone. This like so many things, is not nearly as simple as it seems like it would be. And since I want to create a few different styles, shapes, and conditions for the tombstones, I suspect a few of these may be candidates for some ZBrush treatment. I went ahead and applied a material to this one. I wanted a grey stone or granite but wasn’t patient enough to find one that wasn’t more like a tile pattern. So I went with the pink looking stone. It’s nice. A little tricky to see the letters carved in it with just the default lighting. I figure some spot lighting for actual rendering will be needed if I want it to stand out. We’ll see.

I extruded a loop around the face of the tombstone to give a little detail. I ended up tweaking many of the edges to make them not quite so sharp angled. To get the letters in the face I used the TextPlus tool to create the letters and then selected the face/polygon inside the outline and extruded it. Then I was able to create a compound object and boolean subtract the letters from the tombstone. It did take a little time to get the letters at just the right depth so they looked realistic, or at least not too deep.

Tombstones_05112016a_c_sm_wm  Tombstones_05112016b_c_sm_wm

In addition to my indecision on the content of the card, another reason for deciding to create a bunch of Halloween bits is that I’ve had another idea or two for the card. Something more elaborate, and possibly even humorous and they require many more parts than what I had originally focused on. With so many ideas and possibilities who knows, I could end up with more than one card for Halloween. That would be cool. And is a little exciting. I still have a lot of work to do though.

I finally gave in and bought a book on 3DS Max 2016. I know 2017 is out, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I can do with 2016 and for now, I’m good. It’s because I’ve barely scratched the surface that I got the book. I decided one day to look up creating a walk cycle so that it’s embedded in a character so that I don’t have to animate every single step, only the stuff that’s different. I did my search on the Autodesk site and found some helpful information. Not sure I can make use of it yet. But it was helpful in that it confirmed that what I thought I could do, I can. And it helped me to see that I needed a bit more information on the tools I would be using. So I bought a big ol’ book. It’s a reference guide. It sort of reminds me of the books I had for Autocad and Autolisp way back when. I’ve started reading it. Not just the parts I think I need. I’ve started at the beginning. Maybe view port navigation is basic but there might be a trick or two I can pick up. One thing I have been needing is the ability to zoom back in on what I’m working on when I have managed to get my view point all screwed up and don’t know if I’m just zoomed so far out that it’s a tiny dot or if I’m looking the completely wrong direction. Well there’s a command to get that back and I couldn’t remember it. It’s in this book. Yay.

While I was pondering Halloween Card ideas, and silliness, I came up with another card idea that I think will be fun. At the moment I have two versions of it in mind. Neither are very elaborate but I think they will be fun to create. I may work on them while I work on the Halloween Card.

For my big chunk of working time I decided to make a new Jack’o Lantern. I used all the jacko_2_2016_05142016f_c_sm_wmsame techniques and tricks as the first one. Though I am starting to use one other thing. For some pieces, I’ve started setting a “Freeze Transforms” on them. That way if I need to move them out of the way or to a different spot for a test scene, then I can Transform to Zero and put them right back where I want them. I’ve done this with the top of the jack’o lantern so that if I Transform to Zero it is as if it is sitting right on the rest of the pumpkin. I’ve also done this with the outer shell and the inner shell of the pumpkin. Though not before I messed up a thing or two. When I was creating the edges for the cutouts, eyes, nose, mouth, at some point in either the attach or detach process I managed to move the inner shell slightly so that notjacko_2_2016_05152016b_c_sm_wm everything lines up just right any more. I’ve figured out how to work with this without having to remake anything, which is really good because there are a lot more vertices with this jack’o lantern. Still, it seemed like a really good idea to keep from doing it again. Here’s what the new Jack’o Lantern looks like. I’ve still got to properly weld the edges to the inner shell before moving on to the stem.

I know, there are not a lot of pictures this week. Sometimes that happens. I’ll try to do better. I have a whole list of things to model for a Halloween scene. If I can get going on more of those things, I should have lots more pictures of in progress or finished models to share. Keeping that in mind, I think it’s time I get to work on that. Come back next week to see what’s new.

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