Furnulum pani nolo

"I don't want a toaster."


I'm taking a break from the church and starting on my mode of transportation--a crashed war plane based off the Soviet MiG design. I'm actually enjoying this more than the church itself, which is weird, because I've never really cared about modes of transportation before (at least vehicular ones). Planes are pretty cool, though, and seeing as the "transportation" part of the assignment was fairly broad, I can have a bit of fun with it. Here are a couple of progress shots:

I've seen a pattern so far, both in creating the church and the plane. I'm very slow starting off, because I have this mindset of "Well frick, I've gotta make a whole plane" or "I've gotta make a whole building" and I end up starting over a lot, second-guessing myself. But once I get a base down and I can see where it's going, I get faster and much more involved with it. In this case, building the body of the plane gave me quite a bit of trouble; I wasn't sure what polygon to start off with, etc. But I think it's coming along nicely so far.


I've researched a little bit into aerodynamics, and realized it's an incredibly difficult thing to research just by jumping in with no knowledge of how planes work. I really want to know what the pointy thing at the front of the plane is called, and what it's for (no, not the nose, but the deadly needle-shaped looking thing.) If I find out before my next blog update, I'll...include it in my next blog update. Because I'm sure you legions of faithful followers are dying to know.

Silly Russians

I plan on designing an MiG war plane (or a crashed one, anyway) to add to my scene. Technically it was a futuristic nuclear war that destroyed the church, not the Soviets, but MiGs look super cool, so I'm making one anyway. Oh, and I know I promised Latin phrases for titles, but I felt I should tip my hat to the Russians for this one.


Here are a few image refs.

By the way, I'm a complete idiot when it comes to planes, so for all I know, Google lied to me and one or more of these isn't an actual MiG. But they all look like them, so all you plane enthusiasts SHUT UP.

Semper ubi sububi in caput tuum

I've decided I'm going to start titling things with fun Latin phrases. That one means "always wear underwear on your head." See, now you've learned something.


I've also decided that, for this post, I'm going to use random and completely inappropriate adjectives for each description. Here are some progress shots.


Hammering out the basics with some scintillating cubes and sexy extrusions (oh my, I didn't even mean for that to sound the way it did, but it's there, I can't change it now, sorry guys.)

Raising the stakes with these glorious pillar designs. Watch them sparkle.

A glamorous facade to this exquisite church exterior.

Uh huh, work it, baby. Work those vivacious front designs.

Oh, oh a window. Look at that incandescent archway.

And the whole radiant structure thus far:

Up next will be a pair of dashing double doors with some luscious iron railing.


I really need sleep.

A New Project

We're starting our own project now, as in no Tutorial Guy telling us what to do. Which is both scary and exciting. I'm really looking forward to seeing how well I'll be able to apply what I've learned.


Our theme for this project is "abandoned." We were given photos of different environments to use for reference, and we're also supposed to include some mode of transportation in the scene (a bike, a plane, etc.) I haven't decided on the transportation yet, but for my environment I've chosen a church:

Not very abandoned-looking, right? That's okay. Ima fix it. Prepare to see broken windows, cracked cement and bricks, debris and overturned objects.


I'm so going to hell for this.

I'm Writing This to You From the Other Side

Do you know why I'm writing this to you from the other side? It's because Maya killed me. Remember a long time ago when I said I worried about her sneaking into my room one night and just stabbing me? Well that's what she did, and I'm dead now. There was a light at the end of the tunnel and I think someone told me to follow it, but I tripped and ended up somewhere else, help it's dark WHERE  AM I WHAT IS GOING ON HELP, THEY CAN HEAR ME, THEY'RE COMING--WDBLAARGHABNWEI3333333


Whew, sorry bout that guys, I'm back. Just kidding. Anyway, here's what I managed to accomplish before Maya literally stabbed me in the back:

Aaaaaand a drumroll please...

Funny story: while I was still texturing, I was pretty much losing it altogether, and my sister called. She asked how I was, I told her stressed out and frustrated, she said "Anything I can help with?" I said, "Nah, you have to know Maya." And she said, "Who's Maya?" I was like yeah...exactly. I appreciate her concern though :)


Moving on, here's a fun list of things I learned:


1. I hate UV mapping, and I can't believe some people do it all day every day for a living, but it's a necessary evil. WE WILL NEVER BE FRIENDS. Mark my words. I will TOLERATE texture mapping at best. But he doesn't get to sleep in my bed, ever. Maybe on the floor, sometimes.


2. Modeling buildings is much easier than, say, modeling a bike. It's a bunch of blocks with a bunch of smaller blocks on top of them. Texturing, however, is a whole new territory and I hope I'll learn to like it, because it's...sort of necessary in making things not look gray all the time.


3. Quit leaving things until the last minute. I have paid for this mistake for only my entire school career, and I have yet to learn from it. Because of this, there are still some problems with my city model, nothing too drastic, but I wished I could have done a more complete job.


Over and out.

UV Mapping

I hate it. It's boring and tedious. It's also very frustrating at times. I wish I got a cookie every time I finished texture mapping a building; might give me more motivation. Actually no, I don't like cookies, but I like cookie dough. I should get a square of cookie dough each time, I tell you.


Anyway, progress pictures:

Small, even squares = good.


Big, distorted squares = bad.




Texture mapping, for you sad individuals who don't know modeling, simply means preparing a surface to receive texture. These buildings will obviously not be checkered for the rest of their building lives and no buildings were harmed during the making of this model. Soon they'll have brick and cement and...city-esque textures, and other buildings won't make fun of them. 

I Need More Creative Titles

Almost done with the modeling part of this tutorial. I've got doors, transparent windows, and some steps:

Lots of extruding and inserting edge loops. So many edge loops. If I don't know how to insert edge loops by now, I should just change my major.

I'm coming up on UV mapping now, which to Tutorial Guy looks like this:

And to me looks like this:

Which may lead to this:

And I'm sure it would make my teacher happy for me to set fire to one of his Mac computers (he's more of a PC guy), but it would probably not make the school too happy. In fact I probably shouldn't even be insinuating that this might happen. They'll be after me now. Should probably leave the country. YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, YOU UNDERSTAND? I'M OUT OF HERE.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, I need to finish modeling first. 

Wires and Windows and Water, Oh My

There isn't really any water, but I had to come up with a third "w" word. There ARE wires and a window, as well as a utility box and some roof thingies.

The wires and the S shapes for the railing were made by extruding shapes along curves, and everything else was made...not by extruding shapes along curves.


I'm liking the tutorial so far, but some of the guy's design choices baffle me...like his placement of the door handle and the fact that his railing only goes across part of the roof. I'm also wondering what black magic he's using to get the alley cam (camera) into such a perspective. I think the reason he doesn't tell you some of what he's doing is because he's summoning demons to do the work for him. I don't know how the moderators at Digital Tutors feel about demons, but they might kick Tutorial Guy out if they found out he used them. So he just keeps quiet.

More Progress

Okay I've got this so far:

And that took me a good chunk of my night but it was pretty easy to--no okay that's New York City, whoops. I found it on Google, guys. Chill out. Chill OUT. I didn't really make this. Not saying I couldn't make it. I just haven't.


This is my real progress. It's a door!

It's a door handle!

So now you can officially walk inside and...walk right back out. Yeah, that's right. There's no back of the building. It's like the dog that runs halfway into the forest before he's running back out, except there's no forest and no dog and no one's running. You know why? Because there isn't any character to run. It's only a building, and buildings don't run.


Hope you like my sexy door handle. I told a friend (wait I have friends?) that it looks like a seahorse, kind of.

Building an Alleyway

Well I've started on the next project of Maya, creating an alleyway and some buildings. Already I'm feeling so much more comfortable with it and I'm much less afraid of screwing something up. 


So far it's been polygonal modeling, AKA using a bunch of cubes. I'm excited about this because I love architecture, but it's a PAIN to draw. Much easier to create in Maya, and even better because you can look at it from different angles.


Phase 1, the building blocks...

...then throwing in some details on the alley...

...starting work on "Building A"...

...and adding an archway and eventually a window, once I work through a snaffoo I'm having.

I'm really hoping we'll get to model, like, a dead body or something and toss it into the street at the end. But probably not.

Rendered Bike

Just the rendered version:

The Actual Final!

Hey, just kidding, everybody! Fixed some pivot issues, THIS is the real Recon. The other one was a fake. An impostor. Don't trust him, he just thinks he's Recon.

-sniff- I'm so proud of him. He's my first real model baby. He grew up so fast...




But no really I hate this stupid bike, I want to work on fuzzy animals or characters now.

OMG GUYS DEBLAWKJFWNFIW FIRST MODEL YAY

After many hours of mental breakdowns, fetal positions and profuse crying (okay, it wasn't that bad), say hello to Recon!

This is the final render, done after the (mostly) fun part of adding color and textures. I loved the tutorial but I have only two problems: the guy went too fast, and he should have named all his parts as he went. It is a PAIN to go back through and relabel everything.


Anyway, I'm on to a city scene now!

ALMOST THERE

Added text:

And here's the ready-to-be-colored image:

So close I can TASTE it...