That was terrible, I apologize. I'm writing this update at 3am because I cant sleep. I don't update nearly enough, and Alex has issued a complaint, so Alex this update is for you...
Now onto business. This was technically our second digital module for our course. But unlike our last module, instead of 3 hours every Monday morning, and lots of time to forget stuff while working on other projects in between, we were in the computer room from 10am-5pm (but allowed to stay later) from Monday to Thursday. So it was much MUCH easier to focus on what we were doing. I have to say I really wasn't looking forward to this module because digital is not my strong point.
Aim: In previous years this digital project entailed going to the local toyshop, and buying something to model. How complicated you made it depended on what you felt your skill level was. Often they added a bit of an animation into the end of it so it required some moving parts. For our year however, we were to model a replica of one of the Blaschka glass models that are kept in a restricted area of the Natural History Museum in Dublin. They're very delicate, and so intricately detailed!
Materials: 3ds Max, Mudbox, Photoshop, lots a lots of reference photos, wacom tablet, hard drive.
Skills learnt: Transferring objects from 3ds Max to Mudbox and back again. Painting the model in Mudbox but editing the paint layers in Photoshop. Proper UV unwrapping. Animating a basic "turnaround". Using a tablet properly.
Project Highlights: We started with a basic frame in 3ds Max, shaping it around a front, side and top reference images. When I'd completed the body and tentacles of my chosen anemone (Sorry I cant post a photo of the original model, but I signed a rather strict form while in the museum), I unwrapped the UV maps for the model. It's like skinning for those of you who aren't familiar with the process, but you've to lay the skin perfectly even and flat before moving it to another program. I was doing it by hand for ages (and my lecturer saw this) before I was told the proper way to make all my lines straight. Least I'll never forget that again!!
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| Before finding out how to properly straighten all my lines... |
After I'd unwrapped the maps, I moved the object to Mudbox. Which does exactly what it says on the tin. The model looks like it's made out of a type of clay that you can sculpt and manipulate how you wish.
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| Working through the many many dots in Mudbox. |
Unfortunately for me the body of my anemone had thoooosands of sculpted dots all over it that I had to do individually. I did check to see there was a better way to be doing it, but my lecturer said it looked more natural the way I was doing it, and to just keep going.
When I was done sculpting the body I began to paint it. Because of trouble with my UV unwraps my tentacles painted the same colour (in simple terms they overlapped the body despite being unwrapped separately). I exported and deleted my body so I could work on the tentacles. I exported them to and posed them in 3ds Max together.
Oh, forgot to mention I also sculpted the rock that it was to sit on in the same way and added that to 3ds Max. Because 3ds Max was being used for the render, they were set up in there with lighting and a camera rig (for the turn around). I took a few stills, and then finally did a turn around which i'm now going to attempt to embed.
Awesome it worked! -- or maybe not. It did work temporarily...but apparently the HTML is wrong now. Here's a link anyway - Digital Blaschka Turnaround
[EDIT] Found my hard drive so I can add in some still shots of the model too!
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| Front View |
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| Top Perspective View |
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| Top View - Really happy with the lighting on this, looks like the reall thing. |
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| This to me is a little Dali esque - I tried adding in daylight, but it washed my colours right out! |
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| Then when i removed the daylight everything went a little wierd...but kinda funky, so i kept it =) |
Notes: Well, I'm not too reluctant to do digital now. Once you have a constant enough flow, I found it easier to work on the model. I got a B- for this (woo! continuing the B streak). I was happy with this because I expected a C. It's quite difficult to teach a digital module, and get around to everyone - I think this really came across, because most of us had only fiddled with these programs before and if a problem came up, we'd cry for help. With only one lecturer in the room it can be tough to get around to everyone.
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