Pokemon Ball

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Project Brief

Choosing the Pokemon

Modelling the Pokeball

Making the Magnets

Final Design Render & Evaluation

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Project Brief

Choosing the Pokemon

The first time doing this, we had to choose the Pokemon that we would be designing the Pokeball for. After looking at a video with some examples of Pokemon with their Pokeballs, as well as doing some research on Pokemon, I have decided to go with Magnemite. This Pokemon looks like a ball that has some screws and magnets on it's body. It is relatively simple, however, I might add some other designs to make it look less plain, like some screws and stuff around the body, but I'll only do this if I have some time once I'm done with the rest of the body. The magnets also would be a bit annoying to have on the ball when you hold it, so I might have to consider changing them a bit too.

As you can see, I did get an image of a Pokeball that has already been made in the Magnemite theme so I can use it as a base for my ideas.

To begin getting a rough idea for my Magnemite Pokeball, we first needed to do a 2D design that we could make 3D later. To start, I needed a Pokeball base diagram that I could use and put ideas on top of it. To do this, I loaded up Photoshop and began by creating a circle shape as the main shape of the ball. I then made three more circles that were placed in the centre. Next, I needed the straight lines that would complete the overall shape. I first made a centre line that went through the middle of the ball, and then I made two more lines of equal distance from the middle. Now that the baseplate for the Pokeball was complete, it was time to start finalising the design.

I began by rasterizing the layers to make them editable pixels instead of shapes. You can then see all of the layers below, which I kept like this so it's easier to adjust certain lines without affecting others. I hid the centre line since it wasn't needed anymore and removed some of the 3rd circle. This probably wasn't necessary since when I filled in the area with black, it would just have to be done in a couple of extra steps, but either way, I did it. I then selected the outer circle part that was between the top and bottom lines. I then moved this inwards slightly to give the separated bit a bit of depth. The Pokeball was now ready to be designed. To make sure everything was good, I first made sure to merge the layers so the fill tool would work properly, and then I made the basic, original design of the Pokeball to make sure everything worked. Since it did, it was time to start designing my Magnemite Pokeball.

To start designing the Magnemite Pokeball, I first wanted to get the screw done. I knew it would take a while to make one that I was happy with, so I decided to get one from the internet which was already done. I then wanted to change the design a bit since it was just a flat top, so I decided to add a little dip as screws usually have. I did this by selecting a bit from the middle and moving it downwards. I then copy and pasted some small parts and rotated them which gave me a smooth diagonal line. To complete the screw, I turned the brightness all the way down so it was black instead of the gray it originally was, and I was done. I then copied it and made two more. To make it look like they were inside, I did just do a bit of removing. However, I could've just kept them under the base Pokeball layer and they get covered when I would colour it in. I've now coloured it in so I won't make this mistake again.

For the colour, I wanted to get this light blue grey colour. For the inner circles, I made them light greys and changed the outline of the centre one to a very light blue. The separating line I made black.

Here is my final 2D design for the Magnemite Pokeball. I added the magnets that I got off the internet onto the side of the ball and made sure they were the correct way round. I then thought it would be cool to have screws holding the magnets into the balls, mostly just to reuse them since it should be a cool looking model.

Modelling the Pokeball

Starting in 3DS Max, I instantly knew this wasn't going to be an easy thing to model. Since I didn't have any ideas, I thought I'd just start modelling and see how things turned out. First of all, I created a normal sphere and gave it some accurate parameters as to what the size would be in real life. I then began thinking about what I would begin to model next.

I decided that I would try to get the middle line modelled and make the front face from there. Because I made it like this, I had a nice central line of faces all around the middle of the sphere, so I selected it all and used the chamfer tool to extrude the faces in, but with a slight slant to make it a bit smoother.

After that, I removed the inside faces so that I was only left with the top and bottom pieces. I then got a cylinder, shaped it to my preference, and put it in the centre front of the Pokeball. I then applied the ProBoolean modifier to the original sphere and used it to remove the cylinder from the sphere shape. As you can see, I am then left with a hollow ball with a hole going through the centre and a circle hole in the front.

I wasn't happy with how that was coming out, and when using the ProBoolean tool, it removes the bottom and top faces of the hole, so I'm left with a little gap which doesn't look great. Due to this, I started thinking of another way to make the Pokeball and I found a video online where the person rotated the sphere 90° and used the top since this part was already a circle, which means that I could easily make the circular front face part. However, the tutorial I watched was inside Blender, and they did some things to make a straight line that was the same thickness around the circumference of the sphere. Because I didn't really understand what they did and I was using a different program, I quickly abandoned this and went back to my original design.

When I went back to my original design, I thought of instead putting another sphere inside and making the ball from this. Although this is a great idea, the one problem still stands: I would have holes in the top and bottom parts. Therefore, I had to leave this idea behind which was a real shame since if I rotated the centre sphere by 90°, I would have a circular face that I could make the front face with.

Nevertheless, I thought of another way. Instead of removing the inner faces once I chamfered the outer faces, I would just leave them. If I then used the ProBoolean modifier again but only make the cylinder just long enough to make a slight hole, then I could have a flat, circular face to work off of. This was exactly what I did, and as you can see, I then also insetted the faces to give me a smaller circle inside which I would be able to use to create the front faces.

After a bit of trial and error with getting the front face to look good, this is what I'm left with. I'm relatively happy with it. Although it certainly could've looked much better, I got the shape done all by myself, which I'm happy with. I did round off the faces slightly since I thought it looked quite bad with very rigid sides, however, it doesn't look great with really smooth ones either, but I think I found a good amount. Another thing that could've been better is the size of the circle. It has quite a small outer region, but this is mostly because I didn't have much time in the end. After all, I spent so long trying various ways to make the ball. Another time, I'd try to get a better front face to work with.

Next up, I wanted to try and make the screws that Magnemite has inside itself. To do this, I found a useful primitive called Hose. As you can see, I adjusted the dimensions to what I needed, and it already begins to look like a screw. However, you can't have a screw-like that, so I knew I had to rotate the sticking-out parts. now it begins to look more like a screw, but I still have to do the top of the screw.

For the top of the screw, I decided not to have it curved since that was going to be a pain to model, so I was just going to have a rigid-edged top. For the screw divets, I eventually found a great way of doing it. I made sure the face had nothing on it and used the inset tool. I then was able to click another button and have the edges meet at the centre. I removed the additional edges that I didn't need and I was left with these four edge segments.

I then extruded these and it gave me a nice dip in the top to make up a screw. I think this looked good, and so I straight away got to put it on top of the Pokeball in a position that I liked the look of. I then made some copies of it and put two more in the bottom part of the ball. I will reuse these screws later on once I have the magnets, since I thought having the magnets screwed into the ball could be a nice touch, and would be a good use of this cool model.

Making the Magnets

For the magnets, I originally attempted to do something smart by having a flat plane, adjusting the edges of that and then extruding them to give me the model. However, this didn't start great since I had this which wasn't looking horrific, but I was unsure as to how I could cut out the centre part. Nevertheless, I then decided to extrude the face and for some reason, it didn't make a top face so I had to use the bridge tool to join it all together. However, I didn't like how it looked, so eventually scrapped this idea.

This time, I was going to make the magnet very simply with the cube primitive and use some tools to get a rounded edge. I started off with this long cuboid and then used the chamfer tool to make some rounded edges. To do this, though. I had to extrude the shape downwards and outwards. The reason I had to do this first is that the chamfer tool needs the faces to make the curve on. It doesn't just generate the curves itself, but more or less edits the edges already there to make multiple more faces, giving it a smooth curve look.

After I had one side done, it only made sense to just mirror it onto the other side, since it gives me the shape that I want. I don't have to try to make it look the exact same by modelling the other side manually. Therefore, all I did was add the mirror modifier to the current model and make sure I mirror it in the correct axis. I then moved the place that it mirrors it from so the copies were more inside each other, and I have a completed magnet ready for putting onto the Pokeball.

Putting the magnets onto the Pokeball would be my next task and would be quite easy. To start, I began by positioning a magnet on the left side of the ball. I found a good place for it and then copied the model, and mirrored it to the other side so that it would be the right angle. I used the coordinates from the magnet that is already placed, and since the centre of the ball is at 0 0 0, I was able to just make numbers negative and it would give me a perfectly mirrored magnet. However, after doing this, I realised that I didn't have the red and blue parts made yet, so I quickly made two cubes and put them on one magnet. I later went on to copy the whole magnet across again to the other side which was probably a dumb idea since when it came to texturing, they would be a part of the same model so I had to paint each face separately compared to the other side where I could just paint on the model.

For the last part inside of 3DS Max, I made a few more copies of the screw and positioned them on the inside of the magnet, making it seem like they are held in by them. I then attactched the models all together, applied a quick unwrap to the UVW map, and exported the model into Substance Painter.

Here I used a Copper texture for the base of the Pokeball and gave it this nice light purple texture. I think the colour matches what I was going for quite well, and the shinyness of the texture makes the ball look like it's made of some metal, but something that won't be too slippery.

For the rest of the main base of the Pokeball, I used a Plastic Armor Matte texture for the black strip which goes around the centre circumference of the ball. This texture doesn't have much going on, which is good since it's meant to be quite a plain texture. And then for the button on the front, I used the Silver Armor texture which finished the base of the Pokeball off quite nicely in my opinion.

I then applied a Steel texture over the screws and magnets, which give them a great texture that matches what they are meant to be. I used the same one for the screws and magnet base, however, I had to make another two for the red and blue parts on the magnet. This was quite simple though since all I had to do was go into the files of the texture and change the base colour until I was happy with what it looked like.

Final Design Render & Evaluation

And in the end, we have this...
I'm quite happy with how this turned out. It isn't a perfect render and I kind of prefer how it looks in the regular Substance editor, but it is also probably due to the low poly model which gives the edges a very rigid look. Furthermore, I only rendered it in 2k, whereas I could've done this project in 4k if I wanted the render to come out even better.

I think this project was good for giving us another opportunity to improve our 3D skills further, as well as our texturing ability. Moreover, this is quite unique, and so the skills that we learn on how to model this may be useful for other strange models that we may want to make in our future of game design.

I think my plan for the Pokeball was good, and my execution matched it. I got some ideas from reference images together and began making my 2D design which came out looking quite cool. Although I probably didn't need to spend quite as long on the 2D design since that was more like a sketch to base the 3D design off of, I think it was a great starting point which certain helped with the 3D design since I knew what I was going for. The main part that I was a bit sceptical about getting right was the magnet screws since I thought they'd look massively out of place, but actually, I don't think they do. The texturing at the end certainly brought the model together and made it look great though, since everything looks like how I imagine a Pokeball to look.

The main thing that I would say doesn't look great on this model is some of the curved sides. For example, on the button on the front of the Pokeball, the cylinder isn't very smooth, so you can tell where each of the sides are. This could easily be fixed if I were just to add the smooth modifier inside of 3DS Max once I had finished the model. This might have even made the rest of the Pokeball look better since the base of the ball could also look smoother and less rigid.

All-in-all, I think this project went relatively well. Another time I'd probably make a higher-quality model to make it look more realistic and less sharp on the sides and stuff, but for a first time making quite a complex model such as this, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

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