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:
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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/. I started 3D modeling in Blender, and I thought it would be just like 3ds Max. I was wrong. I ought to start looking up tutorial videos. Now, behold the worst 3D model I've ever created: It harkens back to one of the first 3D models I ever made...but worse. I dove into Blender with absolutely no idea what I was doing. It took me about fifteen minutes just to figure out how to work the controls, and searching the web didn't seem to help. Finally I managed to create a sphere. Cue another five or so minutes trying to figure out what I could do with it. I started messing around with "sculpt mode," which raised the vertices on the object when the cursor was dragged over them. I still don't understand it. The coloration comes from "vertex paint" mode. I don't know what that does either. Finally I found a page that explained how to rotate the scene view. Afterwards, I essentially just clicked on everything I could see, without getting a lot of results, and honestly I'm disappointed in myself. I came up with a new plan for creating 3D models of cups: extrude one part of a circle to create a sort of pill shape, then subtract it from a cylinder to create a hole in the middle with straight walls but a rounded bottoms. Or–as it occurs to me just now–just subtract a chamfered cylinder. That would probably make more sense. I also spend a slightly ridiculous amount of time trying to design a wineglass in my head. Either of these things I could have accomplished in 3ds Max with ease, but in Blender I was a fish out of water. Honestly, I have to consider this a failure on my part, but I haven't learned nothing. The next time I'm faced with a new piece of software, I'm going to look up tutorials and really do my research so I can get the most out of it–and I'm going to start early. So, to summarize:
Works Cited:
tutor4u. “How to Use Blender without a Middle Mouse Button or a Scroll Wheel.” Blender Hut, 31 Mar. 2017, www.blenderhut.com/use-blender-without-middle-mouse-button-or-scroll-wheel/. |
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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