Module 3: 3D Realisation: 3DS MAX Design Development: Fine Art Cabinet

 

My second 3D development piece is a cabinet from a Fine Art studio. Like the Iron in the last 3D Development blog post was given to me by a random number that I was given to an object with the same number attached to it.

In the images above, you can see I started with a box, tried to get the cabinet as close as possible to the proportion and scale of the live object, and extruded the front face in revealing a rectangle with a hole in it. In the second example, you see I have made one flat rectangle with the same box tool, and duplicated the first (on the top) and placed the last two underneath one another.

In this screenshot, I used the bevel tool to make the top of the cabinet expand and shrink the top face in order to show the result that is found on the image of the object in question.

As I went on, I kept adding each individual the objects found from the live images, one by one and duplicated them where they shown great quantity from the images I took before modelling.

The first image shows a box with a piece of paper sticking out of it. This was done by making a rectangle out of a box, where I used a shell modifier and extruded the face on one of the sides inwards to get the hole in the middle. To make the flap at the front, I   extruded the line connected to where I pushed the front face. I made the paper by making a plain from the plain tool and gave it about 5 width and heights segments and manipulated the vertexes within that shape and then repositioned it, into the box. To make the tubes in the second image, I used a cylinder, bent one of the sides, and kept the other side the same. This was a process of moving lines and vertexes around. I then made the caps separate, where I made a cylinder and bevelled the top face three times, to get an elevation and create the shape that appears on the actual model I copied it from.

 

Here is what the 3D Representation of the cabinet looks like with all of its contents.

After the most time consuming part of the this development process, I went into more detail and added the hinges that adds the realistic look to it. I started by adding the outer cylinder by using the cylinder tool, where I added the lines with a Swift Loop and extrude them inwards to add depth.

The second image shows the inside of the cabinet where we see how the hinge mechanism works, but this design is purely estimation, as I couldn’t get a good look at the object as I couldn’t disturb it.

The hinge was create by using the plain tool to make a flat surface, where I just manipulated the vertexes, in order to bend the plain and get this result.

The first image in this stage of the 3d development process, we see the bolt lock that connects to the left cabinet door. It was made by manipulating the verts from a standard plain, where I added one cylinder, used the bevel tool to expand the top face and shrink it. Which were then duplicate seven times across the manipulated plain.

The second example shows the pad love, which connects to the opposite door of the bolt lock. This was made from a simple box that was beveled on the top and bottom, where I also added a cylinder by using the line tool, create a circle, highlight the bent line (made earlier) navigated to the compound primitive tab; loft tool; select the circle; revealing the metal pipe to be attached to the padlock base. This was achieved by positioning the cylinder over the lock, right click with it highlighted and scroll to Attach. This shown the complete padlock, after I changed the positioning of the vertexes to completely copy from the live image.

The plain that is attached to the padlock was made by a simple plain, where I used the Cut tool (shown on the toolbar ribbon as a pair of scissors) to delete a rectangular shape within the middle of the plain. The plain was then Attached to the door of the cabinet and the vert’s positioned to make the bent look that was shown in the live image above.

The third image shows the handle of the door underneath the padlock. It was created with a plain to start with, where I Attached a cylinder that was beveled, and the face was deleted to correct the topology.

That’s all of the cabinet and its assets made and here is the end result:

To make the rendered image, I modified the render settings that included an output size  as a HDTV (video) and assigned the material to the renderer as a mental ray.

Reflection:

I feel and think that I have not missed a single detail within this model and the smaller models, a part of the larger model in question.

At some point before the second semester, I will be texturing this model, in order to achieve higher potential with this model.

 

3D Model Design from Reality: Iron

Object Reference Drawings

For the next few weeks, I will be undertaking different 3D design tasks, where the task are to make a three-dimensional object representation of a live object that I have to model within one week and add the finishing touches to after that 1 week deadline. This is, of course, if I haven’t completed the object/task in question.

The idea of this is to rally look at an object closely, draw it to confirm that, and take pictures where the object sat. These are the drawings and images taken to use as a guide, before the object is moved. As, the object in question wouldn’t be in that position forever.

For the first, we I was given the task to model an iron within 3DS Max. Here is the process, I went through:

I started by positioning a crate shape within the centre of te program by accessing the objects tab and dragging across the screen, then changing the X and Y axis to 0 in order to centralise the object. The modeling process began by adjusting the top vertexes; revealing the top of the iron’s face.

After adjusting the vertexes and width, that shape was then flattened by using the scaling tool on the Y axis, by which I copied the object and place it in front of the previous object and scaled down to represent the face of the iron. And in order to get the full curve located underneath the iron’s face, it was a matter of vertex manipulation and a lot of patients.

The most difficult part of this stage was highlighting the faces on the inner part of the iron’s face, as I needed to extrude those faces and reposition the iron’s face object to insure I have a dip between these two objects. This is because the dip was seen on the live object.

Because the live object shows different triangular separations; the sepArate primitives how the object is formed. This was achieved by moving the verts outward from the perspective within the image above, otherwise, I would’ve attached a separate box object to the main piece, but this wouldn’t work, as it would double to amount of polys in the poy count.

After extruding the object from the last example image above, I made the handle where people would pick it up. This was made from the achieving the full object and using the edge flow  within the topology to my advantage by imagining where the shape of the handle will be seen, then deleting the faces there and bridging the edges together to make this hole, but have connected faces through the hole. On the opposite image above,it shows the iron showing the front wider than the iron’s back. This was corrected later.

These last two steps was focused on the buttons and switches on the back and stomach of the object in question. In order to make the flip switch on the handle itself, it was a matter of creating two extra swiftloops, extrude the faces inwards where the swiftloops were positioned and then extrude the front face of the inner face made from the extruded swiftloop, which gave me the first switch.

The second image shows the spritzer on the head ofthe iron, which was made by using the edge flow, by repositioning the vertexes the bevel all faces within the spritzer’s area, following on to the final shape. However this part was a bit more forward once the bevel tool was used. I corrected it by the rotation tool, which didn’t bent the topology as I could see, but corrected the proportion of the part in question.

To finish off all of the iron’s properties, I constructed the plug of the iron. This was achieved by creating a box, manipulating the verts according to the live object, adding any additional swiftloops (to create a certain form), and then producing a rectangle primitives for the outer points, where the bevel tool was used – revealing the dents at the top of the outer points; the plug was then complete.

Here, you can see how the wire of the iron was formed and manipulated from the line tool, which was shown as a three rings around the iron. The cylinder that we see in the image representing the wire was made from using the circle tool, followed on to the compound shape tab, loft, get shape (under this category) while the line was selected, and clicked on the circle (made earlier) – producing the cylinder form and the wire shown above.

Additionally, I made the wire in the exact position, how the live object stood, and where the wire actually starts. Meaning, physically producing where the wire came from, as opposed to the wire floating in mid air as a piece of floating geometry.

This was achieved by making a cylinder, and one by one arranging the shapes found on the wire cover behind the iron, then deleting the faces and operating the bend modifier – revealing the bent cylinder primitive.

Before getting up to this point I had to delete my first attempt and start again, as my real first attempt shown as a box, being forced to form the shape of the iron. Instead, I looked at the iron in segments and making these parts individually – decreasing the poly count.

Reflection:

This task, coming off from the previous week, seemed difficult at first, but the difficulty eased when I was advised to observe the object within singular parts put together. Similar to unfolding a box into its singular faces and fold them back into place. I can imagine that the next task would be easier to work with, now I have this useful technique in mind.

Reflection:

I realise that my iron model hasn’t been textured and the feet and steam holes on the front have been missed. The next step is to fix these imperfections, where the final iron model will be textured and all other details will be recognised on the final piece.

However, the shape of the model has been made, where I see also that the plug may be a bit small, but I will be fixing this if it appears true.

But overall, the whole modelling process went well, even though I had a few problems with shaping the model and how to build it.

I enjoyed the process: drawing from observation, taking images and then model the whole thing in a three dimensional program, that I have never experienced before. It was an exciting fun progress and can’t wait for the next model.

 

This task was completed by 28/10/15

Pirate Post – Low Poly

For 3D development task, I was assigned to make a Pirate post with half a ship steering wheel missing. This task was performed, by first, making a plain standard primitive, and placing an image with the picture of the pirate post printed on it, by adding it to the plain as a material.

Moving onto the 3D tools, I made a box standard primitive and copied from the image segment on the post itself, and worked my way upwards – gradually decreasing the block’s length as I extrude from the previous block and repeat until complete.

The wheel was built upon a cylinder that was multiplied by an array control, by which, they were arranged accordingly to the image within the examples. The base of the boat’s steering wheel was created by accessing the standard primitives with the ‘tube’ tool and create a short cylinder for the inner area to get the properties of the base. The handes were created by making on cylinder, use the array function after highlighting the full cylinde form, and adjusted the Y axis value by using the sum: 8 divided by 365 in order to make eight of them. Because the image of the Pirate post shows only four and a few damaged (present as shorter versions), I deleted the ones not in view and half remove the segments of the others for the shorter handles. I deleted them using the face tool function. After this, it finished the Pirate post within the lowest polygon count it can consist of.

Reflection:

The task was simple and easy to complete, even though there were some areas of the object and program were unfamiliar to me, but I worked my way around them, taking in the advice and support was given through the lecture.

 

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This task was completed by 21/10/15

Milton Glaser: Humans and Faliure

Milton Glaser has been a graphic designer for many years. Here, he discusses with us “the fear of failure” and what causes this to happen.

Here is the reference video:

He has a sense: “unless you analyse the nature of fear of failure,” it amounts to disagreement about “the consequences of failure.” This means the fact of not knowing what the fear is, there is an endless reason; so many people would believe their own thoughts and not anyone else’s.

When he talks to his students about the distinction between personal development and personal gain, he puts it this way: “In professional life, we discover a kind of identity for yourself that becomes a sort of trademark – a way of working that people can recognise.”

He also discusses about how you can get on the path to financial success. He explains that you need to gain something that is unique to you, which is known as a brand. This brand needs to be developed and distinguishable more than others. This is the path to professionalism. For an example: “someone knows how to draw cocker spaniels,” or someone is talented at building large scale adaptations of landmarks. Then you find something to get out into the world; your audience – something that is more distinctive and/or popular. Then, you become a specialist and people want you to produce more of what it is you have to offer. But after a while of doing the same thing that has been praised and appreciated for an amount of years, people are most likely wanting more of your work, so much so, they would ask you to do so of what you have succeeded at.

During this journey to professional accomplishment, it entails to demonstrate your unique offering and repeat it time and time again, until you have lost interest in that. But, the penalty of being involved in a specialism, it tends to result in emotional pain and doesn’t aid your development: Glaser says that: “Understanding the development comes from failure.” Which means, someone only develops when they fail, and try again with something new and repeat. The model for learning from of personal development is opposing professional development. It is Picasso you would learn from, because “he is the most influential individual” of this topic and most probably “your artistic interest.” Because, each time he has new discoveries, he left it behind – waiting for the dust to settle. His results ended well, surprisingly. Milton Glaser explains it as: ” the opposite to professional accomplishment.”

The following questions show the idea of fear of failure; “an inhibiting characteristic”:

“What are you afraid of?”

“Is it the condemnation from others?”

“If you do something, do you feel that it isn’t adequate?”

Is it the large criticism of the people who appear to be experts or critics and/or who are not your family and/or friends?  And, because of them:

“Do you feel embarrassed?”

But, it is said that the professional perspective sees it as someone not receiving anymore work, he continues: “Physical failure is a detriment and they (the public) think that you don’t know what you are doing.” He means that the failure itself damages yourself and, by doing so, the public thinks you don’t think you know you are doing.

But one part of fear of failure shows as own self-criticism. And, apart of our creative artistic progression and own reassurance is for the people to tell you, while on your journey, you are a genius. But, them the reality comes into play where you discover you were being lied to; you are not the genius you thought you were. Genius is a rare mental state. This utter realisation of the truth is the most recognisable fact about failure.  You know now you are not this extremely talented individual. Proving this comes when, for instance, you are developing a project that may seem complex and difficult to complete. It tests your abilities to their highest level.

The last piece of advice he explains to us, before solutions to this come into play is the most important part of failure in regards to it, is people’s “own self acknowledgement.” The fact that “we do not know what we are doing.”

He explains the solution: “embrace failure.” He is saying, if someone admits their talents that he/she may or may not have talent, that person is already dealing with the fear and uses their self as the sudden realisation of their skill level and how good they want to be and hope to be as people may think you are. But, Milton Glaser acknowledges this and states: “This, of course is delusional. There is only one way out; embrace failure.”

Identically, Glaser also discusses his advice to young artists. He say that you have to work hard at something and takes a while to get there. As he read in a book by Malcome Gladwell: “it takes 10,000 hours is the amount of time someone has to put in to attain mastery”. Milton agrees that it is a good number before the known skill level is acknowledged. And, his advice is to “put in your 10,000 hours and after that, don’t simply get stuck in your own beliefs system.” He also has stated that the issue with this is not about the “style” or “what is going on at the moment.” “but things can be more profound,” and “more influential.” This simply means, ideas are developed from others, but it isn’t plagiarism it is making more out of previous ideas, where we show improvement and better than pre-instalments. For example: when the telephone was invented, the idea was to help people connect with others and it encouraged laziness of not leaving the house, but communicate with the outside world. Then, somebody thought,: “there should be a telephone that people can go on the move while still communicating and do two things at once, instead of being held prisoner to a cord.” Then the telephone came about in the 1980s. Then, somebody thought: “but we can’t see that person. I know, what if there was an invention that collaborates between the two, but still enables the user to communicate from the phone?” Then Skype was invented in mid 2000s.

This was an invention that was invested into, developed and improved by others that took reference from a pre-existing innervation. And, this is something new, but an old concept.

Milton Glaser also explains, “you can’t stop working,” “give up” or “be lazy.” You have to work hard and be “engaged” with what it is you are doing. But, even though you do this, he stated that people may not be successful. But, then he states about the only explanation he, an other people can give is: “that’s life.”

Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by Peter Zackariasson: 250 Word Reflection Essay

 

Joseph Wharton-Brown

BA (Hons) Games Design

Hull School of Art and Design

Open University

Year 1

November – December 2015

 

              Marshall McLuhan, Video Games, and The Secret of Walter Mitty

                                      Conference Paper Reflection Essay

 

 

The paper explains how people can extend or degrade their capabilities through video games; living between imagination and realisation. McLuhan discusses his theories that media is a life extension, hinting at possibilities of living in a universe of dreamers, where a connection is established within Snow Crash (science fiction novel, 1992) and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1933), as they may have foreseen future events

Mitty lives within worlds of imagination, alongside his physical one, as gamers do; imprisoning themselves in imagination; potentially decreasing their life skills.

The paper suggests McLuhan “may have been anticipating the higher levels of video games that we see now.” (Zakariasson, P2, Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), McLuhan explains, “Rapidly, we approach the final phase of man – the technological simulation of consciousness”, (video games) and, “ when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society (gaming demographics), as much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media,” (interactive systems) (Zackariasson, P2, Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

Virtual worlds consist of ‘detentions’ and ‘extensions’. Detention worlds are fictional that differentiates from physical ones (i.e. online games, life simulations etc.), where people escape life limitations and problems, whereas, extension worlds are the opposite: developing physical skills from technological advancements (i.e. educational games). Mitty tries to escape life problems and enters a detention world: he operates between fictional and physical dimensions, similar to online gamers today.

Snow Crash entails “anticipating where the virtual world of video games maybe headed,” and “suggests technological developments in the physical world.” (Zakariasson, P4, Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) which could specify more possibilities of trapping people in detention worlds. Otherwise, we will extend our minds and capabilities through extension worlds.

As McLuhan stated “The visible world is no longer a reality, and the unseen no longer a dream.” (Zakariasson, P3, Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), he envisioned media could potentially change the world, as technology advances, the unseen is real and not just images inside someone’s head. With this, those changes are evident today: virtual, augmented and diminished realities, digital art tools within objects, cars controlled virtually via watches, motion controlled video games (Xbox Kinect); vision operated smartphones (Google Glass) and printable confectionary etc. have extended, but also degraded our capabilities because of these advancements.

 

 

Bibliography

Zackariasson, P. (2015). Marshall McLuhan, Video Games and the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. [online] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/958956/Marshall_McLuhan_Video_Games_and_the_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

References

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extenstions of Man. 2nd ed. New York: Signet Classics, pp.19, 46.

Zackariasson, P. (2015) Marshall McLuhan, Video Games, and the Secret Life of

Walter Mitty. (Conference Paper), pp, 2,3, 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3D Realisation: Map Types List Bibliography

Displacement Map

http://nxt.flamingo3d.com/forum/topics/displacement-map-how-does-it-work

Normal Map

http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps2.shtml

Reflection Map

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini15.0/render/envmaps

AO Map

http://download.autodesk.com/esd/mudbox/help2009/index.html?url=WS73099cc142f487551a80ae1b11df600637e-265.htm,topicNumber=d0e18902

 

Diffuse Map

https://sites.google.com/site/tessaleetutorials/unity-materials

 

Specular Map

http://unitycoder.com/blog/2013/07/16/normal-specular-map-generator-from-texture/

Opacity Map

https://iadtgame225.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/assignment-4-foliage-opacity-map/

 

Alpha Map

http://www.sharecg.com/v/1255/texture/leaf-01—alpha-map

 

Glow Map

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/Help/iClone3/15_Multiple_Channel_Texture_Mapping/Types_of_maps.htm

 

Bump Map

http://land8.com/profiles/blogs/rendering-tutorial-bump-maps

 

3D Realisation: Map Types List

 

Expanded Definitions:

 Diff = short for diffuse. It Is known to be the most used texture mapping technique. A diffuse wraps around a bitmap image on a 3D primitive’s surface, while consisting of the model’s original pixel colour.

 

Spec = short for specular, it is used to define the surface of a 3D primitive’s shiniest and highlight the colours of the image material.

Normal= Normal maps stores the direction at each respective pixel. the directions are known as ‘normals’. The red, green, and blue channels are for manipulating the direction of each respective pixel’s normal. Normal maps are generally functions to make artificial high-resolution details and on a low-resolution model. Each and every pixel of this map type contains and keeps the surface slope within the original high-resolution mesh as that area.

AO = Stands for Ambient Occlusion, is the soft shadows that it generates: It shows the model as if there was a light shone onto it without a direct light source.

 

Alpha = it is a channel, amongst others, translates the areas of the image, or clip that show transparency. Whence importing files as: QuickTime movies or a still image, a JPEG from another program, or the file was created with a 3D animation application, it would most probably have an alpha channel as an additional channel, as opposed it its colour channels.

My Own Findings of Map Types

Opacity = fabricate transparency and cut-out effects from greyscale images. The black areas of a model, will be cut out; the white area will be in full view; the grey values determine the transparency (alpha) capacity of the level object.

Bump maps manipulates the greyscale levels of an image map, where it creates the variations within the surface shadings, after he map has been placed onto a model. Adds the intricate detail towards a 3D model without raising the capacity of the model’s polygons.

Glow = Enables manipulative control over the glow shape, colour and strength. These maps are able to merge with original diffuse maps, where the lighter the diffuse colour (or the glow colour) is, the better the outcome of the effect in question. Overexposure may occur if a bright diffuse map alongside with a bright glow map.

Reflection =. As well as an environment map, a reflection map is an image map that is presented on a 3D model that acts as a reflection of the environment.

Displacement = this map is used to allow vertices be rearranged  with a texture input to a different positions on  rendered geometry. As opposed to Bump and Normal maps, where shading isn’t proportioned correctly, in order to give the illusion of a bump’s appearance. Whether, displacement maps are the non-artificial bumps, creases, ridges, etc in the actual mesh model. These deformations are able to project shadows, occlude other objects, and alters, where everything changes within the ‘real geometry’.