3D Modeling & Animation I

Career & Employability Skills: 

As a 3D modeler, I focus on pinpoint accuracy with my work, making sure not to skip any important details. When I create models, my goal is for them to easily stand out in an environment. I want them to be seen, as well as recognized if, for example, I'm modeling an existing object or character. With my skill at manipulating primitives, creating textures, and applying modifiers, modeling is a breeze. I would like to say that I'm heavily inspired by video games when creating such models, which I grew up with, and objects or characters found in video games can be always traced to some sort of 3D modeling skill. Realistically, I just want people to look at my models or animations and take the time to appreciate the work that went into them. It always puts a smile on my face.

Artifact 1: 

Modeling: I found the PBM Project as a good way to really challenge myself. Now, from a normal student mindset, with something as big as the class final, you'd think that they would choose something easy and try to cheese their way to a 100. Not me. I decided to put in the effort and time (A lot of time, maybe even too much) into my model. I knew that Sonic would be just the challenge for this, because he's not too over the top, but he's not just basic. When creating him, I started from his shoes, which were pretty simple, but I tried my best to nail the look. From there on, I had to use a LOT of different modifiers and primitives. Pro boolean, bend, MeshSmooth, chamfer, extrude, just to name a few. You can see the bend effect being applied to his spikes, which where originally just pyramids, as well as his arms, to give them a non-stiff look. The hardest part of modeling him to be honest was probably his hands. The reasoning behind this was because I tried to model out like 3 different types of hands, and they all took me a while to really figure out and try to make look good.

Challenges: Some of the challenges I faced in this model included the hands, like mentioned before, as well as they brow type of thing he has. I didn't know how to actually make it look realistic, similar to how it looks on one of his actual official renders, so I had to improvise. His ears were also a little weird, but once I knew what to do it was easy. One other difficult thing to do was to try and keep the poly count down while still making sonic look accurate, but I tried my best. The poly count rounds out to about 271,100 Polys.

Overall: I would say that I'm pretty proud of what I've created. I think I might have spent too much time on him, but I'll probably be fine. I think I made it so that he will not be hard to animate, which is going to be the second hardest part of this project. UVW unwrapping and scene making should also be perfectly fine.

Artifact 2: 

UVW Mapping: To be completely honest, UVW mapping was so much more easier than Artifact 1, which was modeling. I want to say that unwrapping was rather simple, because I got lucky and all of the objects got seperated into just their own parts. I could have grouped things of similar color together and saved time, but I found this way to be much more simple (even if it is more cluttered), as well as better for the time constraint I'm currently on. To keep it simple, literally all I had to do was seperate all of the object maps, color them in, and then re-apply to the model.

Challenges: I actually did have a few challenges, but they were all my fault. Very oftenly I would mistake an object for something else, causing the object to have the wrong color. This was annoying, because whenever this would happen I would have to re open the UVW map, and change the color. This happened multiple times, so it was a little bit of a setback.

Overall: Overall, this was a rather simple and not super time consuming artifact. I want to say that I did a good job, but it's a little rushed. I'm just nervous about having to make my scene next, because we only have 1 week before presentations.

Artifact 3: 

Process: This artifact was also pretty simple. I created a goal plate, a loop, and rings, which textured all of. I also then had to add the lighting, which was not difficult at all. I added a skylight and 2 lights focusing on the loop from different directions, balancing each other out.

Challenges: I only faced a single challenge throughout this artifact. For some reason, whenever I tried applying a gold texture to the rings (seen above the loop), they would have a little bit of a shine but would just show up very dark. I tried multiple different gold textures, but none worked, so I just had to settle to color them relatively gold-like.

Overall: The scene didn't take too long, but the loop was probably what took up most of the time. I really have to speed up though, because both Artifact 4 and 5 are due in less than 4 days. I would also say that I'm satisfied with how the scene looks. The grass texture doesn't look great, but you can still tell what it is.

Artifact 5: 

Process: This Artifact was basically just a direct continuation of Artifact 4. You needed to keep everything the same, except you animation had to be a least 10 seconds and you had to animate a camera. Luckily for me (just due to the time constraints), my animation already was 10 seconds. This meant that all I had to do was flesh out the rest of the scene and add a camera that would follow my object. To do this, I added extra water panels and rocky cliff panels to give the scene more depth, adding "realism" (in a context like this) and making it so that you wouldn't see the black void in the background. After this, I had to toy around with the camera a bit. After a while, I realized the best thing to do would probably be to rotate the camera around the scene, while still maintaining the view on sonic. I made it so that the camera would rotate across the scene, and get closer to sonic during the loop to make it more of the focus. After the loop, I moved the camera back and rotated it down to get a better cinematic view of Sonic.

Challenges: In this artifact I also took the time to try and get rid of the eye bug, and this time I actually managed to fix it. What I had to do was clone the moving eyes, delete their animation, and then link the still eyes to Sonic. I have no idea how the eyes got their own animation, but I'm glad I managed to fix it.

Overall: I think that this was a great conclusion to my project. I was able to apply every single skill I learned this year into a project I was passionate about making and completing. It's really nice that we got to choose whatever we wanted to work on, because a set project would have been plain and boring. I think that everything looks amazing; the animation looks smooth, the model looks good, the lighting compliments the scene and my object, and I like the way I animated my camera. Overall, I feel really proud of my work and I'm excited to show it to others.