CAGD 230 Modeling

Week 5 - Game Scene Assignment Final Update

The goal of the project was to team up with your fellow classmates to design a building per person to then be put all together into a Unity scene. Students needed to use Maya to create the buildings and then use Unity to design the terrain/environment as well as the placement of the buildings.

Our group decided on The Witcher 3 game to base off our buildings off of the ones in the game. I was inspired to create a warehouse because to me in the game it means a potential hiding spot of some horrendous monster or beast waiting in the depths of the building.

I used Maya to first create the modular pieces to my building and then duplicated the pieces and snapped them together like a lego set. I then converted the file to an FBX and uploaded it to a Unity file to then be placed into a world of my design.

My workflow was first to find a building from The Witcher 3 game to base my design off of. Then I went to work on separating sections of the picture to help me decide what my modular pieces should be. Then I began the process of creating the modular pieces and found that I had made some mistakes that had created additional faces that were hidden to me. I went about tearing apart the model to find these additional pieces to help keep my triangle count down. This was my doorway modular piece. My window piece was far much easier to create and so was my wall section. Soon after I began UVing the sections so that hopefully the textures would not be stretched. They were. I then discovered I should not have been using planar to fit the faces, but using Normal-based. From there and out it was smoother sailing in completing the project.

The group was kind of really independent and when we got closer to the due date we started talking. Donnell, Ryan, and I were able to meet up on a Friday evening to plan and work on the Unity file. Cameron was unable to attend due to his band being scheduled to play. Ryan’s building was the first one to be uploaded for testing our ability to work Unity. I took it upon myself to start the Unity file as no one seem to be wanting to take the lead so I kind of fell into the role trying to quickly organize and provide easy access for everyone. I started a team google drive with individual folders for each member. I spent most of the free time I had designing the terrain and setting up everything we needed in the Unity file. I created the Post Processing Layer and Volume. I uploaded Ryan’s castle and set up his materials, Donnell’s prefab (He set up his building in a separate Unity file which made it easier for me to upload his file into the main Unity file because his materials were done) Chapel and Cameron didn’t really tell the group what he was doing until the very end. So the team dynamic was not the best but I was going to work with it.

Week 4 - Game Scene Assignment Update

I have pretty much completed all the textures, but some editing will need to be done in order for it to look seamless across the walls and not look like it has been snapped together as it does. I will be working tirelessly to complete the final touches of the building as it seems a little bit too much bland so I will add some wood decks, adjust the windows, and pillars to help create a more interesting building. As of right now, there is no roof because of the difficulty I have come to designing it but I plan to be not so picky and just design one and work with it. Additionally, the UVing of the objects needs to be reorganized because of some overlapping and needs to be separated to help anyone viewing it to sort through what faces are what.

Currently, the plan for the group is to upload their projects onto google drive into a shared folder that has sub-folders with their names on them to help organize everyone’s work. We plan to have the projects downloaded onto a computer and brought into unity so that we can create our scene. It will be interesting to see how that goes and hopefully, it will be not so painful.

Week 3 - ​Game Scene Assignment Update

So I have completed modeling the window sections and have gotten rid of most of the unneeded faces of the door section. I have also started on UVing the window sections so that they can be ready for textures. I have come to the conclusion that I have messed up the door section by not correctly modeling it in the first place. So I am now going back and removing additional faces that are almost not noticeable. While fixing the model I may have done something to the angle of some of the parts to the model that make it not 100% straight up from the ground, but honestly, it adds to the authenticity of the door to the world it will be in.

With current progress on UVing, I am able to work on the window sections but not the door section because of the additional faces that are interfering with the rest of the faces so I am cleaning up the model so that it will be ready to be UV’ed. So the current plan is to finish the window UVing and clean up the door section and add the rest of the wall section to the door section so it will be a whole.

Week 2 - Game Scene Assignment Update

I’ve finally come to a near-finished door panel. I had struggled with how the extrude tool placed everything, which really I did, but I needed to cover the entirety of the door. I had 2D faces which I had originally thought were just edge lines which I kept on trying to delete but were not going away because it turned out they were faces. I only had discovered this after moving vertexes onto other vertexes to connect them.

​I am disappointed how long it has taken me to get the door model to where it is now and I still have some work on the door to do. For example, I still need to model the wooden planks that support the rest of the planks. Additionally along with the door is the archway that hangs over the door which should have a more brick look to it besides just placing a texture over it.

My next few goals are to continue modeling the panels and starting next with a window. Additionally, I would like to state that I am dreading the bell and its housing structure, but I’ll save that for later. I just want to get the basics done first.

Week 1 - Game Scene Assignment

I am designing a warehouse from the game “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” that will blend into the same world. The look of the warehouse looked more like some kind of church, but now that I know what the building is I can see how it is a warehouse and the bells are probably used to signal certain jobs. The scene is to depict an ordinary town/village from Witcher 3, which in Witcher 3 there are unholy evils living around in the shadows of these towns/villages. A good place to find one would be in a warehouse potentially. So the look of the scene and the building is to preserve that same feeling or effect that other towns/villages have going for them. A dark setting with torches and campfires lighting the way for the victim/hero to lead their way throughout the town/village. Or daylight that reveals most of the shadows of the world, but has the darkness of the buildings still with how small the windows are to conceal the dark things hiding away from the townspeople and hero.

​Object List:

20x - 30x Windows

6x Doors

2x Bells

2x Wooden Housing Units for Bells

56x Bricks

5x Pillars

1x Balcony

4x Walls

1x Roof

Week 5 - Living Room Assignment Update #4

Some of the issues I came across were:

Lighting

​UVing

Texturing

Connecting objects together

Aproxx. Hours: 25hrs

For future modeling projects I would invest more time into UVing and adjusting textures so they do not stretch. Additionally I would work a lot more on the lighting as that seems to cause me a lot of trouble.

Week 4 - Living Room Assignment Update #3

So there have been some changes done to the overall scene through UVing and setting up the objects to have textures applied to them. One couch and barstool have textures applied to test the look and quality of the texture and how well the Uving was done. From looking at the second image the barstool still needs some work down on the UV, but the couch is looking good. Another thing that needed to be down is to remove the reflecting light from the barstool seat and the couch. The overall lighting has been increased to have a better representation of the living room and to help show the progress made on the assignment.

Current plans are to continue work on the UVs and apply more textures that also work with the current textures so that the overall scene is appealing to the viewer as well as editing the textures.

Issues that have come up are the UVs not working as intended so research into the issue will hopefully find a resolution to the affected objects. So far issues have been solved through finding forums of users who experienced the same issue or from YouTube tutorials to help avoid or fix potential issues with varies aspects of designing a scene.

Week 3 - Living Room Assignment Update #2

Objects were worked on again. This time I worked on removing extra vertexes that were not needed and only increased the value. The verts were 90k+, I was able to shrink it down to 38k+ verts. After working the vertexes down to a reasonable level I worked on the light fixtures, preparing the models for textures. I used the extrude tool to hollow out the squares to create the glass housings for the bulbs. The living room table has been added because I had originally overlooked it while planning out the scene.

I have gone through the scene adjusting objects so that they are properly merging and connect to other objects and making sure the vertexes are connected. Lighting is still something that needs to be addressed because there is no light source for some of the light fixtures that are around the room. That will be something that is going to be done next along with any further adjustments.

As always any problems I run into I will most find the answer through online sources to solve issues such as using merge or connect for the vertexes when I was adjusting the objects to make sure they were not overlapping or sticking out from the side.

Week 2 - Living Room Assignment Update

I have currently finished/improved the barstools, exhaust fan, couches, and some minor tweaks to the overall structure of the room. I plan to add the table to the room because that was overlooked and missing from the scene. I also intend to finish the couches, lighting structures, and again tweak the models around some more. I am going to look at the pillows and to give them a more realistic look of an average day pillow additionally with cushions that are on the couches and barstools. After that has been completed I am looking at UVing and texturing the models to give some color and look to the scene.

Some of the problems I have ran into is not efficiently altering the models to what they appear as in the reference image. To solve this I have used tutorials on Youtube to find the tools needed to effectively alter the models to my desired shape and look. Though they can be improved with further work on finding the most efficient way to model them. One of the issues I ran into was merging, detaching, and extruding parts of the models. I found this to be most problematic with my couches.

Week 1 - Living Room Assignment

I am designing a modern day apartment to demonstrate my skills as a modeler. The above reference image will be used to inspire the creation of the planned out render of the image to the left. The scene is to show a clean and tidy place that is occupied by two or more people in this apartment. This apartment is on the higher scale side of other apartments so it will include more detail than what a lower end apartment would have.

​Some of the objects are:

2x Couches

1x Table

1x Shelving

1x Set of Appliances

3x Speakers

2x Barstool Chairs

1x Kitchen Ventilation Fan​

?x Numerous Kitchen Decor

Grocery Shelf Scene

In this project I was to design a shelf along with various food items to occupy the shelves. I was allowed to reuse previous models to help cover the requirements of the project. I struggled the most with UVing in this project and had to refer to various YouTube videos to help set up the texture I had chosen to use.

Dinner Prep Scene

The goal in this scene was to test our ability at designing a box, a bottle, and a jar. The box needed to be folded, while both the bottle and jar went through a great deal more of work to get the desired model. The view of the two images are the best choice because they help to show off not just the front of the models but the sides as well. One problem I ran into was the wine bottle's texture had removed itself or so. I believe if I had relinked the texture it would have come back.

​Table & Chair Scene

In this project the class was asked to model a couch and table from reference images. In this project I struggled with UVing and lighting. I was able to improve the UVs, but not so much the lighting. This was due to me not increasing the intensity of the lights. The two views I had chosen really show off the two models with the way that you can see the textures. Admittedly the table's texture could use some work. I believe that has to do with the UVs on that part.

Marker Scene

The goal here was to design a marker from tutorials that showed you what tools to use to model, UV, and texture the marker. The struggle in this project was the cap and its slots around the cap. I find these two images and the way that the marker is displayed to be quite appropriate because it gives me a feeling that I am looking at a commercial for some kind of marker that is being sold to me.

Primitive Scene

The assignment was to show the ability of putting together a landscape that showed some sort of environment additionally lighting was added to give it some light along with shadows. While building this scene I made the mistake of duplicating the grass model several times over to fill the space on the ground, which lagged the computer because of all the objects. I was able to finish what I had intended to put into my scene to fulfill the requirements. The views I have chosen are ones that I feel like that would give the viewer some interest in what is captures in the image of the scene. I feel it is a popular view from which movies have used.