Less-than final touches

I have put the finishing touches on my chrome Box-stick man, originally I was going to start off with a box and “Box Model” a simple character, by pulling (Manipulating) vertices and polygons to make the muscular shape of the character in the way I wanted, then I briefly tried to use a more memory taxing way of making a character in Sculptris, which I have had a lot of experience with.

I then went back to making a simple character but for the sake of time only made a simple man, I am still unsure if I should refer to it as a box man or a stickman.

Throughout this project I learned how to navigate Blender on a Mac 1-button mouse, as well as learning hotkeys on Mac and Windows alike, this helped me a lot in my other Blender projects in terms of workflow. I also learned the how to fully customize the UI, at one point my screen looked like this because I couldn’t figure out how to collapse some aspects of the UI. An optimistic person might see this screenshot and think “Wow! He must be organized and productive” due to my having so many useful UI options open simultaneously, however this was not the case and eventually I reached a point where I would attempt to close a feature but instead open multiple, this has however been taken care of and as usual I feel foolish for not knowing how to do something that is somewhat basic.

I also learned something completely new in a 3d software, Rigging, I had always known that to make an animation in a 3d software, the animator had to assign bones to certain parts of the mesh, but I had never tried doing it myself for fear that it would get too complicated, however in this assignment, because I made a simple bipedal stickperson; I was able to add simple “Armature” to the model. Armature seems to me like simpler bones, with less defined joints and ball and socket features which make other models more detailed in their movement, however it is much easier to work with than bones in Blender I am told.

It seems like my original plan for what I wanted to do within blender has now become quite skewed from reality, I ended up trying to unwrap the model of my stickman, so I could add eyes and a basic texture to it, but I ended up failing horribly. This wasn’t all bad however because I was able to take a shot at adding armature to the model, the feature for which I kept seeing in the corner of my screen when I worked on it.

In the end I have made an amorphous man model, with a chrome finish that has rudimentary movement, I could then use this model to make a short animation or refine it further to give it more character. But more realistically I will try my hand at box modeling some sort of rudimentary quadruped with a real texture.

This project has let me learn the basic skills I need to start really getting into a complex software.

Stickman Moves

Today I tried for the first half of class to unwrap my model with little to no knowledge of how to do so, obviously this didn't go well and I ended up giving up on custom texturing my model in the way I wanted to.

Instead I have added a simple material to my model and started adding armature, which are basically bones, I will try to get it moving in a stick/boxish fashion for my final assessment.

I learned that unwrapping seems generally painless with the UI of Blender but I have a lack of unwrapping models in general which got in the way of my learning in blender, whereas most things up to this point I had some sort of knowledge in 3dsmax, I will be working on learning unwrapping in blender on my home computer as the school year winds to a close.

Smooth, Flat and Subdivision Surface

Last class I tried the Smooth function on Blender and found that It acted very differently from what i was used to on 3DSMax, the option modifies the shading and warps the way light hits the model, while i thought it would warp the geometry.

As you can see the one on the right has a defined point of light on its torso which is where i pointed the light, while the one on the left has a defined point on it's torso as well as shade dispersing outwards, this is easy to see when you look at the outline of the arms.

Now since last class I have learned that the geometry modifier I was looking for is under "Subverson Set", which is similar to meshsmooth in 3DSMax.

The Model on the left was rendered using the Subdivision set modifier, but lacked the application of "Smooth" shading to it's geometry, therefore you can still see the subdivided polygons created by the Modifier. The Model on the right however has both Subdivision set and shade smoothing. The end result is either a Beep-Boop robot mesh-looking model, or a "Proper" Tubeman which I will hopefully be giving some rudimentary textures to.

Stickmen, Underrated

I decided that I would work on getting a detailed model much later in my Blender life, So i'm back to creating a character in blender through the use of boxes, glorious boxes.

In this situation Extrude and Vertex manipulation X 10 is the recipe for a Stickman. However my model currently looks more like a headless stickman or a boxy robot....... I think this is a result of the MeshSmooth on Blender acting differently than Turbosmooth or Meshsmooth in 3DSmax.

According to THIS documentation, The meshsmooth in Blender doesn't change the geometry of the model it is applied to,  instead it changes the way shading affects the model. Whereas in 3DSMax the Turbosmooth function changes the mesh completely.

So what I would theoretically have to do, to fix this boxy problem would be to subdivide the model with 2-3 cuts and then start pulling the vertices into the desired shape, this way I have more "Clay" to work with in a manner of speaking and I could make a more detailed and convincing model, the question is if i still have time to do this as I plan on rendering and throwing basic textures on the model.

This is something that I might be able to work on if I continue to progress through this project.

Sculptris; Easy way out

Today I tried to download Sculptris on the lab computers, evidently this didn't work because students are obviously locked out of installing any programs. The one way around this would be to download the complete zipped archives of a piece of software on my home computer and then transferring the program via USB. Even then this only works for open source software like Blender or Sculptris, however I once again failed to remember that the computers are Macs and I tried to bring the windows version and i have no access to a Mac at home.

So my solution is to bring a completed Model from home to import into Blender, this is a failure in my opinion because I will have to use a relatively high polygon model, which makes things harder.

The Low Polygon Struggle

In the course of a regular school week I have the benefit of working with multiple kinds of 3D software in my IT class and my CADD classes. This means that what i learn in one class can quite easily be applied to the other.

The problem I'm facing in Blender right now has to do specifically with my goals, Originally i wanted to make a box modeled, low polygon count character. The reason why i wanted to do this is because having a low polygon model makes the entire process of what i wanted to do, much easier.

Low polygon means less stress on the software and in a 3D world it is detrimental to have anything interrupt your work flow, it also makes unwrapping and therefore texturing the actual model a lot easier. Of course with a model like this there tends to be less room for detail, there are a lot of linear areas, i tend to make a somewhat basic body, focusing on certain areas like the face or hands of course, this also makes it easy to texture.

The advantages of a high polygon model are things like detail, which is of course desirable to have a smoother looking character. It is also surprisingly easier to model something if you have a high polygon "budget", for example I like to use Sculptris while on the computers at school as it is a lightweight and relatively powerful piece of software, the way these types of software play out is something akin to modeling with clay, so many artists (much more skilled than myself) find it easier to use software like Sculptris, Zbrush or Maya.

Blender even has a "Sculpting" mode which i assume is similar, of course the downside to this is that the exported models tend to have extremely high polygon counts (Enough to crash 3DSmax and Blender), as well as being more difficult to texture.

Originally i wanted to use the low polygon and therefore box modeled alternative in Blender, because I had planned on possibly making use of the model in a game engine, but now i think i will just focus on getting a model that can be textured, so i am turning to Sculptris to model my simple character, the reduce polygons brush will be a big help in this area and hopefully I can make use of the Blender unwrapping and texturing functions.

Frustration; The Single Button Mouse

I remember when I was attending elementary school, very few students would use a computer mouse for more than things like "Kid Pix" or "All The Right Type", we used single button mice because they were more "User-Friendly" for kids. However this experience was in 2004 or 2005; 6 or 7 years ago.

At my highschool we use macs with single button mice, although i don't like macs OR single button mice, there was ever a moment where i couldn't comfortable use a hotkey command to simulate how i work on a PC, this was true for Photoshop so i didn't think i would have any trouble with software between the two operating systems and mouse setups.

This was true, until I started to use 3D software on a single button mouse. In 3dsmax, zbrush, sculptris and most of all Blender. The right mouse button is used to pan, rotate etc and the left usually to select and paint. Obviously on a Mac Mouse the right mouse button is to select and the left to select, the middle to select. Extruding, selecting faces and basically every aspect of a regular projects workflow is interrupted by this single button problem.

The programmers working on Blender have apparently figured out a solution to this problem though, the program has an option that lets you emulate a 3-button mouse on a single button mouse.








This adds command, shift and control modifiers to the clicks of a single button mouse and work to orbit, pan, zoom etc. However working on blender on a PC in one time block and then on a mac the next makes everything i learn on one OS collide with what i learn on another.

That is my frustration with Blender at the moment, the modifiers on each OS and hotkeys tend to differ and it will take a lot of getting used to.