To conduct my research I used websites such as google to find similar images and references to what I had similar ideas about as well as using sites like Sketchfab and Artstation to look at what other peoples gloves looked like as I created a glove with an eye for my hero piece, however because nobody else had done a glove with an eye that I could find I had to search up things such as futuristic glove with portal holes­ as this was the closest thing that I could find to my idea for the glove, overall these sites combined together allowed for me to finalise my ideas for what I wanted my hero piece to look like.

I believe that my planning, research methods and tools were used to the best of my ability as I was able to find a tutorial on how to construct a hand and I then used this research to mould my hand better than what I had constructed beforehand, my research really pulled together my hero piece though as I was able to finalise my idea using the different ideas that I had found on the sites such as Sketchfab and Artstation and whilst I didn’t copy the actual design of any of the other models made by other people they definitely played a big role in the layout of the hand and where the eye would be located on the glove.

For a hero piece I believe that it is important to use both primary and secondary data as primary research allowed me to make my own thoughts and process of what I wanted to make my hero piece eventually look like in the end however secondary research also gave me the foundations in order to create the thought process of what the primary research would be about, however I believe that in the end primary research is the best researching method as it allows you to be more creative with what you are making instead of just copying what other people have done as this has no originality and is just a copy of someone else’s imagination and in a thing like 3D modelling I believe that the thought process and ideas behind a project is what makes it stand out from the rest.

I think that my research was well planned and thought out as I already had some ideas in my head for what I wanted to create my hero piece about, this allowed me to be more precise with my research and so then in hand this allowed me to get more accurate results in the end of what I wanted to research about and I believe that because I had made my research as effective as possible it gave me more time to actually start constructing my hero piece.

To start off the modelling process, the low poly model has to be created first as this allows for you to get the basic shape and idea of the hero piece that you want and personally for me it is the easiest part of making a model as you don’t have to add any major details to the piece apart from the rough shape and design of the model, next up is creating the high poly version of the object which allows you to be more precise with the model and add in details such as wrinkles for example if you are doing a hand. Next is UV unwrapping and this process was one of the hardest ones for me as it took the longest amount of time however now that I have done it once I feel more confident in if I have to do it again, the process of UV unwrapping is very important as it is what allows you to be able to map a texture image of not your model, this is important as if you want your 3D model to look good and professional you need to not only think about how it is shaped but also how it looks with a texture on as eventually when a 3D model does get used for a game or in a movie for CGI the chances are the 3D model will have some sort of a texture embedded onto the model as without it, there is just a basic grey box pattern that comes standard on pretty much every 3D model. Lastly the process of baking my high poly texture and model onto my low poly is one of the most important steps of finalising your 3D model as this is where you make the model use only the low poly but appear as a high poly, this is extremely important as it saves a massive amount of resources which can be vital especially if you are using 3d models in a game as keeping the game under the best performance is what will keep its popularity going. Overall, the whole modelling workflow is pretty good once you have done it a few times as all of the steps in what you do for new models pretty much follows the exact same steps and so the only real differences you will be getting is when doing UV unwrapping.
The strengths of my modelling is that once I figured out what I wanted to make and had finalised my ideas it didn’t take me long to get started in creating my low poly model and I feel as though this is important as the low poly model that you start with is really the main foundation of any model as without it the workflow of modelling is gone and the straightforward processes can turn into frustration. My weaknesses however have to be for my UV unwrapping as this took me the longest amount of time to get under control and figure out properly and so I think if I practice a bit more with UV unwrapping and get better at it then my whole modelling workflow can go by a lot quicker, and this can allow me to get some star tome gained for editing my texture map. Next time I am making a 3D project as well I will try and keep more focus on my timings as there were a few times when I was doing some steps of modelling slower than I had hoped to, this could however also be down to my lack of experience with maya.

My bakes turned out pretty good and I had no problems when using them with my low poly OBJ in blender, the bakes worked really well with the texture map that I made and also the low poly model making it look a lot better, I think if I were to improve anything with my bakes I would try and make sure that my high poly model has a tiny bit more detail added onto it as whilst there was no problems for me I do feel as though it could have maybe looked a tiny bit better however this ultimately is due to my poor timings and doing my bakes and high poly model details till last minute.

My approach to creating my texture map in photoshop and then setting up rendering in blender was pretty straightforward and fairly easy for me to do due to me already having some past knowledge of how to use photoshop and this allowed me to line up the textures better and not have overlapping textures on top of each over the tools and methods I used were also a big advantage such as the selection tools in photoshop that allows me to get rid of certain parts of a texture to make sure that it doesn’t overlay itself onto the wrong part of my final 3D model.

I think that the final renders of my hero piece were fairly good for my first time, and it achieved the sort of intended visual style that I had hoped for in the beginning. When I think about the things that could have been Improved for my final renders I would probably just think about making my high poly model have more details like I said earlier as I believe this held me back a tiny bit from reaching a more realistic looking glove, this is definitely something that I would like to improve on as it will vastly make my work look a lot better and more professional once rendering, another thing that I could maybe improve upon is the textures that I used on the texture map as I could have maybe spent a bit more time in finding some more higher quality textures to use.

I believe that I have hit all areas of the brief, however this isn’t to say that I have nothing to improve in as this is far from the truth and the area that I believe I have to develop the most in has to be my UV unwrapping as this caused me to lose a lot of time that could have been spent on doing other things, I feel as though if I manage to get myself more confident and more skilled in UV unwrapping then I will be able to get a better overall product in the end and therefore reach those higher quality models.