3D modeling Reflections

My First Reflection

Why I Took 3D Modeling and Animation

I've always loved video games ever since I played my first game Angry Birds. I did a lot of pondering about how video games were made and wondered if I could make my own. I found game engines like unity and unreal. Though after a couple years of almost no progress I found this class and saw it was a prerequisite for game art and design so I decided to take 3D Modeling and Animation so I could take game development in my sophomore and junior year. I understand how difficult this is and want to do my best so i can become a great game developer.

What I Expect to Learn

I expect to learn a good amount of 3D modeling and of a high caliber too. If I'm going to make games I'm going to need good models so I expect a high standard of modeling in this class.

Job Search

For a job opportunity I chose Environment Artist. The job in question is a Remote Environment Artist for Insomniac Games. they are the company who made games such as the Ratchet & Clank series, the Marvel's Spider-Man series, and even the Spyro series plus their new upcoming game Marvel's Wolverine. What the main part of the job is building stunning environment art assets and locations with small details not getting oversighted. I'm going to need to work closely with other Environment designers and need critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. It would be so awesome to work here at least for a little bit to learn lot about how it is working at a game studio and how it functions. plus with how highly regarded of a studio it is it would be very beneficial to a newly aspiring game designer. Now I briefly touched on the subject of soft skills but now I'm going to explain why they're the best to have in this in environment.

Link to Application

Links to an external site.

Critical Thinking

Now critical thinking is a very important part when making things whether that be 3D models or not. Without it you wouldn't be able to over come issues you might encounter while working. For example if I'm making a town and need to implement stuff that connects it to the story but it has to be believable like its actually a real place or have things complement each other. Another issue could be if I'm implementing a day night cycle and the textures distort and get all funky I'm going to need to look into the problem and use critical thinking to fix the issue without having to waste a lot of precious time.

Collaboration

When making a game with multiple people collaboration is a must have especially as an environmental artist. For example as I said in the intro I need to work closely with other Environment Designers, but without collaboration it would all be for nothing and we would get nowhere because nobody would know what I'm doing so I could mess up and I would never know. plus its not only other Environment Designers but Level designers and even storyboard artists. So in total I need to collaborate a lot to be successful and not get fired.

Communication

I'd also need to communicate with my co-workers to help the process speed along. If I have a suggestion I need to talk to people to get my idea across or if we need lots of people to work on different things we need to communicate. Plus bouncing ideas off each other is a good way to get ideas to make things better. if we all have the same vision then we can all work together seamlessly and be a lot more productive.

Summary

To summarize I would need to have critical thinking skills, the ability to collaborate with my co-workers on certain tasks, and to be able communicate with them to get ideas, make suggestions and give tips, and ask for help when needed.

9/13/24 Block Modeling Reflection

These activities of simple block modeling really helped me understand the basics of how to use basic primitives, parameters, and transforms by allowing me to get familiar with the software interface and using simple objects to model like a snow man and a pencil that are made up of easy shapes to make it feel really easy to get acquainted with. I mostly used the move and rotation tools. Both tools were easy to understand and very easy to use with the simple interface that anyone could figure out. Applying these techniques to other projects would definitely be a piece of cake. I mean they are the most important tools of the software and without them I wouldn't be able to move the object if it's in the wrong place or if it's meant to be tilted I can do that either. The tools are easy to us though so I wont have any problems with implementing it as I had said previously. Though a challenge I did face was with the camera and how it kept switching to the physical camera instead of staying in perspective mode which really irritated me but I figured out i could just press P to change it back so it turned out alright. Other than that, though, I had no issues at all. Overall working with primitives was a fun way to get acquainted with everything and was overall a very fun style too. I liked it a lot but I'm also very excited for the part where we mold the shapes and stuff like that. Overall 9/10 project would recommend.

10/7/24 Custom Objects Relection

This project was about learning how to do basic modeling with polys and how to use modifiers, compound objects, and ProBooleans for different object to make them look how you want. The modifiers that I ended up using for thing project were Twist, Bend, Bevel, Noise, and Edit Poly. They really helped my modeling experience by allowing me to see how much harder it would be if I didn't use them and the way they interact with each other as well, I also used ProBooleans and we used only subtraction though. It was very easy to get the hang of and understand and made things a whole lot easier by allowing me to cut parts of shapes away to help me create the model that I wanted. Also the interface of it was super easy to understand making my experience with it even better. These techniques would have definitely helped out my block out project like for the drawer in the room I made I could have just do a slight bevel and extent it out to look like a drawer. And for the snowman I could have extruded out the arms to make them look better. I didn't really encounter any challenges or difficulties when using these tools and when I did it was always a fault on me for messing something up. All in all it was a really fun project and I learned a lot.

10/29/24 Basic Modeling Reflection

Creating these blockouts through the year has really made me see how much of an art form is this. For example as a mostly traditional artist I use shapes to block something out and add detail rom there and this is kind of the same. Also just like traditional art it's important to have these so you don't just go in worrying about all the details and make more mistakes in the process.

For example I used splines to make curves objects by just creating an outline and rotating it around a point 360 degrees. While yes it is kind of adding details in the beginning its a lot easier in my opinion when compared to the rest. Overall it was pretty easy to figure out in the beginning but as I started to move on to herder stuff to add detail like using vertices and edges I struggled a bit but I bounced back.

Of course the most used tool and important tool I used was extrude and bevel because of the simplicity of it and the amount of times I've used it. Also I may say working with subobjects has definitely improved the level of detail or accuracy in my models by just allowing me to be a sculptor and show me the amount of freedom I have with the tools. Modifiers like Bend or Twist have really helped me a ton transform my models because instead on trying to bend it myself using poly modeling I can now just insert this and change it to what I desire. To me it just looks a lot better in the end.

If I'm being honest I didn't use compound objects that much. When I did use them though it was very difficult and hard to get right. it just annoys me that it changes everything into a probolean when i can change it without it getting all funky and it sometimes straight up didn't work so it didn't help much.

Now after looking back over the quarter, I can say that I've progressed the most with using modifiers I would say. Modifiers were definitely the most challenging to master with the amount of customization available and types there are. My confidence with 3D modeling has really skyrocketed because before I couldn't get depth in my models and it would end up looking really bad. Now However I feel very confident with the knowledge I have acquired about 3D modeling.

10/31/24 Q1 refelction

In Q1 I have loved every second I spent 3d modeling. I learned so so many new skills that I feel I've mastered very well.

For example I learn how to use modifiers and they come in handy a lot like with the symmetry modifier or the edit poly modifier. I also learned a lot of aspects about 3d modeling I never knew before like when I was doing the basic model project I was really shown how to use modifiers and editing vertices from experience. All of it was just so cool to explore and see how differently these modifiers could react.

I can even apply what i learned in these projects to future ones. For example how the modifiers will help so much for future projects like if I need to bend something I wont need to do it manually. It's just a huge time saver and makes things 1000x easier.

All in all it was an amazing quarter and I loved it so very much. I've learned so much about 3D modeling and can't wait for the next batch o projects coming my way.

11/13/24 Exploring Maps Reflection

My experience working with materials was a very pleasant one. It was a bit much at first but I figured it out fairly quickly. There were a bunch of parameter that we messed with like color, normal, displacement, and roughness. They each have their own unique effects like roughness can make it look all dull or shiny. For displacement it can make the texture become 3d using a map that gives the texture different depths and such. Now you may be asking what are the differences between the base color, normal, displacement, and roughness? Well each has their own part to play in making the model look fantastic. The color/texture gives the model a unique appearance and makes it look a particular way and it's by far the most important. The normal map helps the object display tiny things like bumps, scratches, etc.. The displacement map (as i just stated) gives texture different depths and makes it more realistic and easier for you so you don't have to model each and every brick in a wall. Roughness can make an object look dull or shiny. All together they work together to make a beautiful product like the ones you can look at below. To assign them you first need to obtain them from a place that you can download assets from. Next you need to import them into your material editor and use a physical material to connect them all. Once that's done connect them to their correct node (Roughness node for roughness, displacement node for displacement, etc...). after they are all connected to the correct place you need to apply it to an object, Render it out and you're done. Adjusting the parameter for Bump and Displacement has some very interesting effects. For example if you make the value up for Bump then there would be a lot more scratches and things. If you adjusted the parameters for Displacement then it would determine how far the texture if pulled out of the object it's on. To actually assign the material to the object you can do it in 2 ways. The first is the drag it onto the model using the node of the right of physical material (or whatever base you're using) and he 2nd is selecting the object you want it on and them hit the 'Apply to Object" button.

Overall great fun but a bit annoying to get the hang of. 7.7/10

11/19/24 Multi Sub-Object Reflection

This was definitely one of the more annoying projects to complete. It's not that it wasn't fun and all but it was faced with a lot of different obstacles that were really tedious to overcome. But I'm going to go over it now.

First off there is definitely a lot of benefits when using multi sub-objects when working with complex objects. For example lets say I wanted to make a render of a water bottle, I would need to use different materials for the metal, the rubber, the plastic, and the water itself (if you want to add that as well). and instead of only being able to put only one material on an object you could put multiple which would be really nice.

Also assigning unique Material IDs to each polygon was a big help. I can give each a number and it help with organizing how these things look and not be a total mess. I did face a lot of super annoying problems (mostly due to me being stupid) like a bunch of my materials were missing from their paths and everything got all funky and 3ds max didn't like it at all. It was bugging out and I had to reorganize everything which was such a pain in my... you know lets just move to the next part.

When changing parameters like transparency or roughness it affected my materials in slight but meaningful ways. Like when I messed with transparency it either got all clear and see through (like a foggy window in a way) or it looked as solid and not see through like a rock. roughness just made it either less or more glossy.

Now you 'll probably ask "Oh but Emerson how you you say organized"??? Haha that's the neat part... I DON'T!!!! Well sort of. I just pressed the organize button in the material editor and all my organization problems there were solved easily (be better then me though). Alright lets end this off with the difference between using individual materials and combining them under a Multi/Sub-Object material. It's definitely a lot better so I don't have to have so many different materials on different objects so it just way better. Don't got a lot to explain there but anyways that was the project and for this project rating I'll give it a... 7.3/10

1/27/25 UVW Reflection

Working with UWV's was definitely an experience. Although it was a challenge to get the hang of along with it being very tedious at times, it was, in my opinion, a good way to texture object and make sure that its put on the way you want it. Sometimes it did made the UVW a bit odd and such a pain to go in and fix by manually going through the model and making sure everything was in the right place and was cut correctly. In my opinion the part where you make the texture was the hard part. I mean some shapes were a bit weird to get a texture around along with also having it blend with the other textures.

The first steps I took when creating and applying my UVW maps was first to select the object that I wanted to unwrap. Then I applied the "Unwrap UVW" modifier to the object and opened the UVW editor in the modifier.to work on it and make the UVW map template so I can create textures with them. Challenges I faced was getting textures to align and look good together. It's just very difficult to make it look seamless but idk if its really required to do that. I overcame this by just saying "Duck it" and let them be not as seamless and I would like. Using materials and textures definitely helped with the realism of the model. It just gave a little bit of detail that made the whole thing come together like a symphony. little bumps and scrapes made it look just that much better. I'm proud that I even learned any of this at all I can't really pinpoint anything specifically because when I first saw this it was horrifying, but after doing it and learning how to do it I feel like I could take on anything. For that alone I'm proud. After all of this UVW mumbo jumbo it's gonna be a lot easier doing this type of stuff. I mean I can pinpoint exactly what I want textured and make it to my liking so much easier and more efficiently. This on was definitely one of my favorites (even if it was stressful) and for that reason I'm giving it a 9/10.

2/14/25 LIghts reflection

This project, while short, was pretty fun. I learned a whole bunch of stuff about lighting and how it affects the scene. for example i didn't really know about ambient occlusion until this. seeing what it does to my scene really makes me understand about lights more.

Some aspects of rendering also affected things like render speed and quality. For example the size of the image render affects both EXTREMLY. If I rendered a 720p and a 4k image at the same time the 720p render would finished first because if the the less pixels in the render. Like when i changed it the time goes from maybe 45 seconds to 12 minutes. well to be fair 4k has 9 times more pixels than 720p.

Also changing if the ray tracing as advanced or not had a big impact. I mean if the ray tracing wasn't as intense then it wouldn't take as long because there's not as much light to render as intensely.

If we're going for the renderer with the best quality of render I would have to give it to either Arnold or ART. Now I know I haven't shown an art render but you gotta trust its looks immaculate.

the easiest to use however was Arnold. maybe it's just cuz I use it more often and have a bit more experience with it but I find it easier to use. The most difficult however was, in my opinion, was ART. Now don't get me wrong it was stull very easy to use but it was still just the most difficult to use. I can't really explain why that's just how it was. there was also shadow differences like with Arnold it was all real and stuff but with scanline it was very linear and not very advanced. it was worse with quicksilver because the shadows were all block and not good looking at all.

If I were working on a real project, I would probably use ART. I just think it looks the absolute best and hope to use it a lot more.

This was an absolute blast of a project and can't wait for the next. For the first time i give this assignment a 10/10.

congrats

2/19/25 3 Point reflection

This is the 3 point lighting i did for the snow day. I dont really have a lot to say here. I put the lights and stuff where they were meant to be and took photos so yeah.

Sword thing i made

This is a sword I made for this project. It's kinda rushed and stuff but i think it turned out very well. The blade is about 41" long and is supported by a metal pole in the blade and handle. I took about 2 1/2 hours of work and SO MUCH DUCKTAPE. This was a very fun project because i haven't done this in quite a while and it was really fun to do this. I did mess up a bit but i made due with what i had.

If I was to make this into a 3D model then I'd first make the hand and cross guard with a cylinder and sphere respectively. After I would make a rectangular prism and turn it 45 degrees. then i would extend the edges on the left and right to make the blade a but wider. lastly i would get rid of the top gafe and connect all 4 points together.

3/11/35 Video Game Scene Reflection

So I finally finished the video game scene. Now it doesn't look exactly how I wanted it to but I'm still pretty happy with it.

The most challenging model in this is undoubtedly the Johnson house (main part of the model). Now it looks very basic I know but there was a lot of parts like the railings that really tripped me up. I was struggling for quite a while wondering how I could model it. Then, I remembered what we did making the pawn and used that technique.

I used 2 quad lights to light up the scene and made one of them a little dimmer than the other to make ambient occlusion.

For the renderer I used Arnold because the textures and stuff were not really working well for the others.

An issue I encountered was the models freaking out and starts looking like the mesh is broken. I had to manually fix it all but it was a bit annoying.

If I had a lot more time i would be a whole lot more accurate by like making it wider and having more of a warm color scheme. Still I'm happy how it turned out. 10/10

3/11/25 Exploring Cameras Reflection

This was a pretty easy assignment in which I used different properties of cameras in 3ds max to make the render look different. While doing the assignment I learned about a whole lot of things. For example lens size makes the image zoom in or out. The 15mm lens shows a lot so its gets a wide looking shot. While for the 200mm it was really zoomed in so we didn't really see a whole lot except for Marvin.

Clipping masks are also interesting. I don't really know how to say what it is. Best way i can describe it is it's a specific distance that a thing makes object not visible anymore using a plane of some sort. i can't really describe it anymore than that.

Next we have Targeted in a Free Cameras. These both pretty much do the same thing except for one important distinction. The Targeted Camera always looks a specific point. I can move it wherever I want but it will always keep looking at the point. A free camera, however, is not bound to a point so if i move it the camera will keep looking forward and not lock on to a point.

There is also one other camera. It's the physical camera. It basically acts like a real camera. there are some things to change like Aperture. That adjusts the amount of light that enters the camera.

All in all I prefer the targeted camera. It's just a lot easier to use in my opinion. Also it's easy to adjust settings there. I give this assignment a 9/10

Rendered animation.avi

3/19/25 Basic Animation in 3ds Max

Adjusting the time configuration affected my animation by affecting the speed of specific properties on that object. Some challenges that I faced when keyframing was the object not moving the way I wanted it to and it looking weird. The framerate impacted the smoothness of my animation by looking a bit choppy. If it was a higher frame rate then it would have ended up looking a lot smoother. I used Set K. for my animation mode. Idk why it was just a for easier for me. This relates to animation in game design because without animation in games things would look pretty bad. So if I acquire this skill my games in the future will end up looking a lo better.

Car Race.avi

3/21/25 Editing Curves

How I adjusted the tangents Really changes the way the cars move. For example if the line goes down at a sharp angle the car goes fast while if its not a very sharp drop it does pretty slow. The tangent type that was most effective for a realistic speed change was the Bezier Curve. It's impossible to go immediately to a fast speed so this is definitely the most realistic. Some challenges I faced when modifying the tangents was making it so they didn't go backwards (this is mainly for the pink car). This could be used in game design when driving and are adjusting the speed you are going in the specific vehicle. To refine it better i would just want to smooth out the animations.

Leasurely Drive.avi

Day time Drive.avi

Night time drive.avi

3/25/25 4 Corners Animation Reflection

Organizing my project folders in Google Drive did indeed help me access my work for this assignment. I didn't have any difficulty at all and I was able to pull it up fast.

Adding a path constraint helped by having the car follow the road without having to animate it manually. When I also enabled the option "follow" the car was also turning when going around a curve. Not only that but if you add bank then when it turns it tilts to the side a little bit adding to the realism.

After extending the animation to 24 second, the car's movement changed by going a lot slower. It went from a formula 1 race to a leisurely drive on the weekend? It was needed so it seems a bit more of a believable thing I guess.

I don't think changing from 29.997 fps to 30 fps do all to much, of course I'm not good with details so it probably changed something but I didn't notice it. I learned how framerate choices affect timing by the object completing the animation at a certain speed depending on the amount of frames like if I had a total of 720 frames it would take its time unlike if it was only 72 frames.

Part 2

The different lights helped with the video feeling different in a good way. The night felt like a chill drive a 2 am while the daytime feels like you're just going to work or something. the headlights helped the car feel more real to me and really made the look complete. I used the align tool to make it all centered and stuff.

well i forgot to do this sorry :(

It was importand to have the shadows so we can see how it will look in the render.

i forgot about this to i don't have time to do it at all sorry.

3/27/25 Quarter 3 Reflection

Over this quarter I've learned a lot about even more techniques in 3ds max. Some of the most memorable ones are lighting, cameras, and animation. The project that really had me let lose and use everything I've learned over the year was the video game scene. I juts had to choose a difficult one and i did everything i knew about 3d modeling to complete it. I even learned a couple of new things like how to make hairs work and stuff. I faced a lot of challenges over the quarter like the 3 point lighting was really hard and stuff. I also faced a lot of texturing challenges from the idea game scene. Some of the objects were a bit strange and I didn't have enough time to make a UV map so it ended up looking kind of strange.

The concepts of my 3d modeling over the quarter have become much more clear too. I used a much of techniques from other stuff to make my projects too. like that mech was a big leap for me and helped me become a much better modeler. I feel a lot more confident in the free modeling and using reference images to model. used to barely be able to do that stuff but look at me now. Some strategies that helped me in learning 3ds max as just to model a lot on your own too and do your own projects. It just helped me idk what else to say. I want my models to be a lot less rigid and have personality and character.

5/23/25 Quarter 4 Reflection

Over the time I've spent in this class I've definitely learn so so much. I've learned a lot of new skills like rigging models, exploring how to use the 3ds max ui better for productivity, and how to pull 2 all nighters in a row. I did a lot of projects over this year but the project I did that truly made me understand 3d modeling the most was undoubtedly the most helpful was the final project aka the pbms. Seems weird I know but I learned a lot about how so many things worked like rigging models, noise, uvw, and animation as a whole just from this one project. I did face a lot of challenges with time management due to family issues but I was able to overcome it by staying up until like 4am for 3 nights just to finish. My understanding of 3d modeling has changed a lot over the year and definitely improved when I was finding everything I could about 3ds max. I applied my skills from previous projects a lot with there being paths and complex polygon modeling. I feel a lot more confident with polygon modeling. I always thought it was pretty difficult but now i feel so much more confident. A stratigy i learned is using this option at the top of 3ds max to show all the edits you can make to an editable poly ithelps so much to save time.

for next quarter or rather next year I will become the top of my class to get into advanced game art and design and be part of a team to make video games. I've been given new life with this purpose to fulfil so just you wait I'll be top of the class and create splendid video games for all to enjoy.

Overall this school year was a 9/10

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