Our recent work with UVW texturing has gotten me thinking about its benefits and its limitations. While hyper-realistic UVW textures, especially ones made from photos, are nice, they have their limitations. I modeled and skinned a soda can recently, and the metal parts don't look exactly metallic. I had to use shading so they wouldn't just be solid gray, but even then, the lighting wouldn't reflect properly in a real scene. On the shipping box I textured, the staples were not 3D. Obviously, playing with shaders and bump maps is very useful, but my issue with the can specifically is that some parts need to be shinier than others, which is typically done with multiple materials. However, this is not how the object was textured; it used a single material with a UVW unwrap. The objects we've been using have also been basic primitives, with harsher edges than are usually seen in real life–this can lead to the edges looking a little odd, especially when things don't like up completely. The boxes have this problem especially. More rounded edges, and at least using a bump map to give the staples a more 3D-look, would be nice. Then again, this is meant to be a basic game asset, which the player will not look at too much. Using a simple cylinder for a soda can (which in real life has rounded edges) is little too far, though, but my skills aren't quite at that level yet–it was meant to be a simple exercise. So, to summarize:
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It's my first post of 2020! I'm going to take a look at something that's been bugging me, which is the practical applications of the cloth and garment modifiers. There are, of course, times when you will need to animate cloth. Cloth exists in real life; of course it's going to show up in video games and animations. However, it can be glitchy and has some tendency to lag badly when rendering something complicated.
For things such as a tablecloth or bedcover, cloth modifiers make sense, especially when the object is then converted to an editable poly or something similar, leaving only the end product of the simulation. This allows for realistic folds. For 3D animations, animating complex movements of cloth can be complicated. Even a simple act of pulling back a bed cover (with the end goal of a nonmoving, pulled-back cover) with a dummy object proved incredibly complicated to get right; the simulation tended to glitch a lot. While this might be worth it for, say, an animated movie or even a cutscene in a game, having a cloth simulating in realtime in a video game, especially one the player could move and interact with, would be a terrible idea in most cases. It would probably get caught on something and turn into an unpleasant mess of polygons sticking out at odd angles (I've seen it happen). Even a flag blowing in the wind is probably best as a fully rendered loop rather than allowing it to simulate continuously. I'm having more trouble finding use for the garment maker. So far I've used it to make a sack, which turned out somewhat mediocre, and I understand using it for props like this, including clothing hanging on a rack. For character clothes, I also understand using it to create the object, but as I said before, realtime animation of the cloth is a bad idea. This leads to a trend I notice in some video games of characters' clothing stretching awkwardly as they walk. This is especially noticeable with skirts, especially when they avoid unfortunate up-the-skirt camera angles by connecting the bottom edge of the skirt with a flat plane which the character's legs poke through; I've seen it with figurines as well. I'm not sure why, but I find this particular visual to be incredibly uncomfortable. I just flat out don't like seeing characters' legs sticking out through a flat plane, and I don't like how uncomfortably solid it makes the skirt look. I think a flat plane a little higher in the skirt, where it's less likely to be seen, could fix this weird visual. I don't have a solution for the awkward stretching of clothing as characters walk; I understand it's just easier to animate it that way. That's the price we pay for less computer strain. I made a model of a fire hydrant today out of a bunch of primitives; I had considered lofting, but it likely would have taken too long. That's got me thinking. While attaching or booleaning a bunch of primitives might be quick, it can also look clunky. My original idea for making a fire hydrant had been to loft the main body, then loft the bits that stuck out to the sides and attach them. I ended up just using attached primitives, which worked fairly well considering that fire hydrants do have some angular features, but I feel it might have looked smoother as a loft. I did, however, use the extrude tool on some of the primitives to add detail (I remember a time when I would have made terrible use of the boolean tool for the same purpose). What are the benefits and drawbacks of these different techniques? Lofting creates smooth transitions between cross sections–mostly–and eliminates the seams that are common with using multiple primitives or even extruding. Transitioning from cross sections of a different shape, such as a circle and square, can get messy. In addition, because of the smoother curves, lofting generates a lot of polygons, which is generally something to be avoided to keep load times low. Lofting also takes a lot of time, as one needs to have the cross sections laid out beforehand, and it can take a lot of fiddling around to get things right. Overall, it looks nice but can be difficult. The extrude tool is useful for creating details quickly–I used this to add rings around parts of the fire hydrant, some of which were sunken in, others of which stuck out. It does tend to result in a lot of sharp edges, but has a lower poly count and is fairly quick. Sticking a bunch of primitives together is also quick, but tends to end up in a lot of polygons if they are simply attached rather than booleaned (due to the overlap). It doesn't require a lot of forethought like lofting, but is often angular and rough. So, to summarize:
The techniques I've been using to make simple house models in 3ds Max have given me a few thoughts. In order to save time, I've been using the extended primitives for house features such as doors and windows. I'm starting to wonder if I would have been better off making my own. In the Wild West Ravine project before this, I made my own simple four and six pane windows using little more than box primitives and boolean techniques, possibly in less time than it's taking me to fix these pre-made windows. There are a huge number of parameters, and editing is difficult because it often requires repeated small changes to each one for the desired result rather than inputing each value once. Making windows myself requires, surprisingly, less fiddling around. In addition, the pre-made windows are clunky even with reduced depth values, with the frame sticking out beyond the thin walls of the houses we're modeling, and unfortunately most of the detail is lost when the depth is reduced. This is not to mention that many of the options look the same, and certainly don't look like most windows I've seen in real life. They also consist of a huge and often unnecessary amount of polygons, something that's better off avoided. The pre-made doors have a similar problem of being clunky and having too many parameters, for a result that, in this case, could be easily recreated with a couple of box primitives and simple boolean. Overall, these extended primitives are decent at best and don't really suit the project. The Attach function, however, is incredibly useful because it allows for selecting each element separately, making texturing much easier and allowing for more detailed editing even after the objects are combined. This combined with some of the other tools can be incredibly powerful. For example, I duplicated the model I had for a house, deleted the windows, patched up the holes, shrunk it with the scale tool, and voila: two of the little structures that pop out from the roof (my lack of knowledge about architectural terminology is showing itself here). All things considered, this has been an interesting project so far. So, to summarize:
We've been working with a lot of compound objects recently, but which is the most useful–and for that matter, which is the most fun? The most useful compound object is, in my opinion, the ProBoolean. Cue the tomatoes! Yes, I know it's a simplistic answer, but I have my reasons. It's easier to use (and more stable) than regular Boolean, and has a bigger variety of functions than ProCutter, which is essentially a specialized boolean operation. It can produce a much wider variety of shapes than the relatively specialized Blobmesh, which isn't useful for any angular or completely smooth surfaces. Of everything we've used so far, I'd say the closest competition is Loft, seeing as it can allow for incredible convenience in things that might require a lot of manipulation of a lot of objects to create–I recently made a lofted screwdriver, for instance. However, Loft objects can be difficult to edit if you don't like your first result, and the transitions between different cross sections can be awkward. The fact that lofts follow a single spline limits the possible results. ProBoolean has the widest range of possibilities, and even using other compounds objects, a boolean will probably be necessary for a great many creations. A simple union can also greatly reduce the number of polygons, which is key for making games that load quickly, making ProBoolean vital for models which connecting objects. That said, I find Blobmesh to be the most fun to work with. There's just something amusing about goop; the slime craze of the earlier 2010s stands testament to that. As I've said before, the specialization of the Blobmesh makes it somewhat tricky to find uses for, but that's part of the fun. It's satisfying to know I've found a project where a relatively niche artistic tool is useful. So, to summarize:
Today I was reminded of the fact that upon first seeing the word "metaballs," I will always think it says "meatballs," and that got me thinking: what, exactly, is the use? The ability to create soft, uneven surfaces sounds useful, but the more I think about it, the more bizarre the idea of a blobmesh seems. I've used it so far to make cushiony chairs and glazed donuts, and I'm not sure how useful those are in most video games. I've read that blobmeshes are useful for "thick liquids," but when, exactly, does one encounter those? Lava comes to mind. So does honey. This might sound odd at first, but I've noticed that the sci-fi and fantasy genres (not just of video games) seem to be a little too infatuated with the idea of giant bug nests, especially beehives and spider lairs. Giant beehives tend not to be structured like beehives, and instead the honey is just spilling all over the floor. Spider lairs are typically just caves full of webs. I think a series of lofted splines covered in blobmeshes might make for an especially disgusting mass of cobweb for the player to get stuck in; in fact, I'd like to try this. A pit of honey in an inexplicably disorganized beehive also seems within the realm of possibility. Designers of giant bug nests also tend to neglect the fact that real nests tend to have dedicated areas for the babies, and instead decide it's more fun (or horrifying) to strew eggs and larvae all over the floor and walls. Why not use a blobmesh to create a disgusting little baby worm–or multitudes of them? Another thing fantasy and sci-fi love is the slime monster. Take fifteen seconds and think of all the games you've played that had some kind of slime creature, typically as an early enemy. I like making 2D slime monsters because they're easy to create, but 3D has so far proved difficult to conceptualize. I've got a plan for a flying blob monster in the works. In addition to these fantastical ideas, there is, of course, there's snow. While there are situations in which a sad smattering of frost does make sense, knee-high snow just looks better. The player character ought to sink into it a little. There's also the possibility of furniture–pillows, cushions, etc–as stated before; a plush armchair or couch in an office, perhaps. There's also food. Funnily enough, my misreading "meatballs" might be somewhat fortuitous: I want to see if I can make meatballs out of spheres covered in metaballs. So, to summarize:
Recent projects have proved the usefulness of sticking two things together–or taking one thing from something else–but what, really, is the big deal? There are three types of booleans: unions, subtractions, and intersections. Subtractions are, in my humble opinion, probably the most useful type. It's easy to add detailing to an object by subtracting other objects from it–personally, I've used it to make decorative grooves and even carved-in writing. It also makes it easier to make larger changes that might be harder to design by just manipulating an edit poly, especially if the subtracted section is curved. I've used this to hollow out containers of all sorts, including some clumsily-made coffee cups from the days when I didn't know what a lathe was. It's also helpful for designing models of mechanisms and such, such as making the groove for a switch. I used it recently to level off the bottom of a sphere at an angle when doing it by manipulating the polygons resulted in a jagged, choppy mess. Intersections keep the area of overlap between two objects. I haven't actually done much with this yet, but it has produced some interesting shapes, including a cube with rounded corners and edges that didn't quite look like a chamfer box. As with subtraction, it looks like it's useful for situations where editing the polygons might get messy or inconvenient. I think it's definitely worth experimenting more. Unions are interesting because they are, in my opinion, the least outright necessary. There aren't a lot of situations where a union is outright vital to the model. You can group things together other ways, such as with actual groups. Sure, combining objects makes things like modifiers and textures easier, but there are workarounds for that. So what's a union good for? It reduces polygons, and reducing polygons is always something to keep in mind when designing for a video game. A large amount of polygons means a large amount of loading time, and therefore horrible lag if you don't have a beefy computer; limiting your player base to the people that do is an unwise choice and will probably make the community mad. Also, as I said before, unions make texturing, using modifiers, and generally just moving the model around easier. They might not be strictly necessary in every case, but they're very useful. So, to summarize:
We got back into 3D modeling pretty recently, and one of the key things that's stuck with me is how to work with splines. Where has this been all my life? Splines are basically 2D lines and shapes in a 3D program. As far as 3ds Max goes, they're incredibly easy to create–easier, ironically, than working with a pen tool in most 2D programs I've used–and can be converted into 3D objects using modifiers like lathe and extrude. This has given me so much more freedom to create unique shapes; I honestly really wish I had worked more with splines earlier. Lathe, especially, has been incredibly useful. It's essentially spinning a 2D shape and around an axis to make a 3D shape. This means I can make any kind of rounded object with ease. So far that's included bowls, candlesticks, plates, wineglasses, cups, and even a table. I've currently got a model of a flan (or a gelatin mold, depending on your point of view) in the works, and I'm working out in my head how I'm going to make a character I dreamed up when I was younger–the clothes and hat are essentially completely rounded, which will make it easy to draw a cross section and lathe it. A few modifications to the newly created 3D meshes should take care of whatever the splines can't. Unfortunately the normals on lathes tend to freak out, and I've ended up with huge dark patches on some of my models where the shading didn't work. The extrude modifier has also been helpful, though it does have its downsides. The sides of an extrusion are always flat, and as I haven't yet discovered how to get more vertices on the inside of a spline shape, I ended up with some awkward looking spoons and forks, as well as an unfortunately blocky coffee cup handle that looked like it would be uncomfortable to hold. The flat sides should be pretty easy to fix with a simple chamfer modifier. As for the internal spline vertices, I'll have to experiment and see if I can find a way. I'm still dissatisfied with that spoon; it looked like a bent spatula, because the only way I could get the middle to sink in was to lower points on the sides of the spoon as well, creating a tool that might help you dig through dirt–or maybe beans–but couldn't hold soup without spilling it. In addition to these two modifiers, I seem to remember something else I used a year or two ago, something similar to extrude but where you have to pick a spline shape that will determine the circumference of the extrusion. I've been digging through the modify panel, so far with no luck, but I'm sure I'll find it. So, to summarize:
I'd be lying if I said I'm looking forward to the school year, but I am excited for some things in Digital Design & Animation II. What's most exciting for me here is the fact that by the end of the year we'll be 3ds Max certified. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds like good news. I've never really been the kind of kid who won medals, or trophies, or contests, or...well, anything, really. Academics is really the only thing I've ever been good at, and I've never been outgoing (or motivated) enough to get involved in things like spelling bees, so the idea of getting certified for anything is a huge deal for me. I'm also super happy at the prospect of becoming skilled in making things, especially art. As a kid I had (and still have) extraordinary respect for anyone who could make things–tables, shirts, pies, what have you. To create was in my mind true power. Unfortunately for me, I was never any good at making things–any things. Art, especially, has always been a struggle for me. I'm just bad at it. It was always embarrassing to be the one kid in my friend group who couldn't make any sort of art, couldn't produce anything. The only artistic talent I've ever had is for writing, and maybe photography. With that in mind, this is a really big deal for me. Admittedly I'm terrified (no exaggeration here) about the possibility of having to sketch, but being good at art is something I've wanted for so long and never achieved. The other reason I'm excited for this class is that I've been in the pathway for three years now, with the same teacher every year. I genuinely enjoy the class. I look forward to coming in every day and working on a project, especially when that project is something that actually comes naturally to me. Honestly, I really just took the class in order to stay in the pathway. I'd like to be good at art, and I'd like to create cool 3D models, but I'm not really an artist. Programming is my thing–likely my career. As I said before, I'm not really good at any other art forms besides writing, so I don't want to leave the pathway. Besides, it'll be nice to have something familiar in my schedule. In a way, GAD feels like home. So, to summarize:
I was going to try to get better at using Blender, but my family just got a new computer with an absolute monster of a graphics card, so finally I can run 3ds Max. I took the opportunity to finally create a 3D model I've been planning since last year but never had a chance to create: a skyscraper. This required heavy use of the skills I've learned in using the material editor, object manipulation, and modifiers, and tested my skills with lighting as well.
Then I reset the groups for the material editor: the windows, the doors, and everything else. I created a multi/sub-object material and used the brick pattern as a bitmap for the main building, then created my own from scratch using standard materials for the windows and doors. Afterwards I tried for quite some time to use lights to illuminate some of the windows, but I couldn't figure out how I'd used to do that and was unable to find any answers from google, so I ended up creating another group for the materials after reading about self-illuminating materials, hence the lit windows. The flag on top was easy: I stuck a sphere on top of a cylinder for the pole, used a boolean to combine them, and quickly created a material to look like shiny metal. The flag itself was the result of a very thin box primitive, another quick material, and some fiddling around with the wave modifier. So, to summarize:
Citations:
Khalid, Hassan A. “Free Stock Photo of Brick Texture, Bricks, Building.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/brick-texture-bricks-building-cement-1200862/. |
AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
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