# 3D modeling Techniques Reference: [digital] Modeling by William Vaughan, 2011 William Vaughan is an award-winning artist, writer, director, and is currently the Academic Director at the Digital Animation and Visual Effects School at Universal Studios in Florida. Youtube channel: [link](https://www.youtube.com/user/TofuTheVeganZombie/about) ## No set way > An interesting fact in the digital modeling world is that no two artists use the same techniques when creating a digital model, even when the two modelers are working from the same reference material, producing the same final mesh. Consider this example: When I had classes of thirty students working on the same robot model, I never saw any two working with the same method. This just goes to show that there is no set way to work, and that artists are free to work with whatever method(s) they feel most comfortable with. ## More methods > Don’t limit yourself to just a few modeling methods. Every professional digital modeler I know gravitates to a particular method of modeling for the majority of the meshes each is tasked with, but each modeler is quick to use other methods when needed. The more techniques you become proficient in, the more efficient you will become. # 3D modeling methods ## Build out ### Point by point  ### Edge extend  ## Primitive modeling   ## Box modeling   ## Patch modeling  >Using curves, you can create a wire cage to define the surface of an object.  ## Digtial sculpting  >No consideration to the layout of polygons is needed when digital sculpting, leaving the artist’s focus on the shapes, not the underlying geometry.  >The high-poly meshes are used as source material to enhance low-poly models used in real-time games with the use of normal maps. ### Video - [CG101: What is a Normal Map?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHzIx41eiD4) ### Reference - [Som Downs blog](http://somdowns.blogspot.ca/) - [Homrighausen: Game Art Thread blog](http://polycount.com/discussion/116222/homrighausen-game-art-thread) ________________ ## More on [normal maps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping).   _________________ ## 3D Scanning ### Contact scanners  ### Non-contact scanners    [DepthKit](http://www.depthkit.tv/): Depth Enabled Filmmaking Tool using a Kinect V2 and a high end SLR camera. ## Modeling with texture and animation tools ### Texture Displacement   ### Bones, lattice, and deformers  ### Dynamics  All copyright of images are in [digital] Modeling by William Vaughan, 2011 ------------------------------ # Smoothing Polygon surfaces - [Autodesk: Smoothing polygons](https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-8A5D0FF0-9BA1-435F-A4CA-53183311B819-htm.html) - Smooth a mesh by adding new polygons - Smooth mesh preview overview - Subdiv proxy overview - Smooth a mesh by averaging the distance between vertices - Subdivision surface - Other than the ways in the above list, to see a smooth version of a model, you can change its normal direction (Modeling // Mesh Display / Soften Edge) too. ## Subdivision surface A subdivision surface lets you subdivide specific regions of a mesh, giving you the ability to finely tune or smooth certain areas without changing the entire mesh. Subdivision surfaces help you keep a lower polygon count because they only insert control points where you need them (instead of uniformly across the entire mesh). However, subdivision surfaces have the slowest performance of the three smoothing methods. Note: Subdivision surfaces are largely unsupported in pipelines outside of Maya, so you need to convert them to polygons or NURBS before exporting to these pipelines. You can convert using either Modify > Convert Subdiv to Polygons or Modify > Convert Subdiv to NURBS. For more information on subdivision surfaces, see the [Subdivision Surfaces documentation archive](http://download.autodesk.com/us/support/files/subds.pdf). ### OpenSubdiv OpenSubdiv is an open-source subdivision method developed by Pixar that lets you work with a high-fidelity representation of your model with great accuracy and speed. As a professional standard in the animation industry, OpenSubdiv is implemented in a variety of software packages, improving interoperability by producing the same results when models are transferred between applications. In Maya, OpenSubdiv is the default subdivision method when you preview a smoothed mesh, smooth a mesh using Mesh > Smooth, or create a subdiv proxy. ## Maya subdivision tutorial - [Maya Subdivision Surfaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpyJv8hhW_o&index=1&list=PL4fkBUcbgjGXSR7PUnjBuOSO3sDcLRF2F) - [Intro to Maya and 3D Modeling - Lecture B: 5/13 - Subdivision and the Rule of 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70e-3bidL-w) ------------------ # More on NURBs modeling  Art of Maya. P 47. __________ # Inspiration ## Game of Thrones intro - [Official Show Open 1:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7L2PVdrb_8) - [Extended Opening 4:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9xKpUXbxfM&feature=iv&src_vid=B3vqcbJwgCI&annotation_id=annotation_96828) - [Kirk Shintani from Elastic](http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=1659) - [Software used to create the intro of Game of Thrones , Quora](http://www.quora.com/What-software-was-used-to-create-the-intro-for-Game-of-Thrones-TV-series) ## 3D artists - [Kenneth A. Huff](http://www.kennethahuff.com/) - [Meats Meier](https://vimeo.com/53762767)  ## VR - [Kaleidoscope](http://kaleidovr.com/) is a community for Virtual Reality Creators to share their work and build a fanbase, secure funding and distribution, and discover new projects and new collaborators. ## Book - [Digital Art Masters]((http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=digital+art+masters&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Adigital+art+masters) [3dtotal](http://www.3dtotal.com/). ------------------------------------ ## Review ### Assignment - [Lab 1](http://2016datt2500.tumblr.com) - [Lab 2](http://2016datt2500lab2.tumblr.com/) - [Lab 3](http://2016datt2500lab3.tumblr.com/) - [Lab 4]((http://2016datt2500lab4.tumblr.com/) ----------------- # Lab ## Lab practice A: Polygon to subdivision - Organic modeling using the subdivision method. Reference image:    ## How to do: - Create a starfish geometry: - Start from Create / Polygon primitives / Prism : From the polyPrism node, change Numbers of Sides to 5. - Apply Edit Mesh / Extrude : You can turn off Keep Faces Together and change its attributes to make a star. - Using the shortcut 1, 2, 3 to check [smooth mesh preview overview](https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-4863E5AE-0EA0-4596-B1AE-10C19603838E-htm.html): you can edit the shape. - UV layout - Let's work on the **UV layout in the UV texture**. - Finalize the geometry - You can apply Edit Mesh / Transform to add a bit of irregularity to the the shape. - If you like the shape, you can **Mesh / Smooth** the star. - Shading - You can work on shading. [starfish texture](obj/starfish_tex.zip) ------------------------------------------ ## Lab practice B: Retro spaceship ### Reference - [Retro Spaceship from shutterstock](https://www.shutterstock.com/search/retro+spaceship)  ## How to do: - Spaceship body - Create a NURBs sphere and transform/edit it (choose vertices and Hull) to make a shape. - Duplicate the body and add it in the layer in the layer editor and make the layer invisible -> preserve the body geometry to use it later. - Window: Project Curve on Surface - Create a curve and transform it to a proper position and size. Select it and the spaceship body to apply Surface / Project Curve on Surface  - Window: Trim - Choose the spaceship body and apply Surface / Trim. You need to choose what to leave and press enter.  - Window rim: duplicate the trim edge - From the mouse left button menu on the body, choose the trim edge and select the window edge and apply Curve / Duplicate Surface Curves.  - Window rim geometry: Extrude - Create a NURBs circle as a profile curve, and use the duplicated Curve as a profile, locate properly and apply Surface / Extrude. Check the option settings as below:  - You can edit the profile circle shape to make it look better. Now move the geometry to the window position. Duplicate it and scale z -1 and move it to the the opposite side to complete the window rim geometry. - Three wings: similar steps to making the window rim - Create a circle and make a shape of the window intersection and apply Project Curve on Surface to the spaceship body.  - Duplicate Surface Curves and move its pivot to the top end. Duplicate it to around 5 curves.  - Transform them to the desired shape and select them all and apply Surface / Loft.  - You can still edit the shape after Loft.  - Duplicate wings - Choose the completed wing geometry, and check 1. it's manipulator is at the center of the grid and 2. delete the history by Edit / Delete History, and use Duplicate Special to duplicate them and make three wings.  - Further exploration - Other then Project Curve on Surface, you can use **intersect** between two geometries (here the sphere and the spaceship) to create a curve on a suface, leaving the geometry. Later you can use Trim to cut it out.   - You can use rebuild to increase the span numbers to make it more smooth geometrically.  - You can delete unused curves on a surface: select Isoparms from mouse left button and apply the delete key.  - Now you can explore shading attributes to create the visual look you want. Here I used a ramp texture for a color attribute. And I attach a checker texture to the middle color of the ramp texture.  ## Tutorial - [Collection Of Maya 3D Tutorials](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/the-ultimate-collection-of-maya-3d-tutorials/) - [Maya 2016 Beginners tutorial Pt - 8 NURBS Modeling Techniques](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzd7rqpmE-k) - [Maya: How to trim NURBS surfaces | lynda.com tutorial by Lynda.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2blYvA4NBY) ___________________________________________ ## Lab work to do - Review & practice based on today's lecture & lab class material. - Working on project 2: shading on the project 1 and project 3. ____________________________ ## Assignment - By Sunday Nov 6th midnight, please complete your customized starfish and retro spaceship and upload **rendering images** to the class Tumblr with simple descriptions: **"a08 by your name, date"**. - Prepare your texture for your lego texturing next week: [texture templete reference](http://nexusadventures.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Ferfature/Custom_Minifig_Textures) - Please review and play with shading and texturing. -------------------