Qhimm.com Forums
Project forums => Team Avalanche => Topic started by: Scrat on 2014-06-07 09:33:50
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So I thought I would give a progress report, since I have been teaching myself blender and working on this for like a week. I'm still working on the modelling processes in blender, which operate differently to how I am used to, but it's coming along. Haven't even started rendering and texturing yet :P
This is how my design looks so far, it's a long ways off, but I though early critique would be best for my first attempt. Hopefully I will get faster in the future.
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-1.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-1.png.html)
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First of all, it's alright to be very slow in the beginning. To be honest I wasn't expecting any update from you in the next 2-3 weeks - I don't mind you made this update at all, likewise we can guide you in the early steps.
A bunch of comments which are very likely to be of use:
- I know of a good tutorial for making a realistic car wheel (http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/how-to-make-a-car-wheel/) (some aspects might be different because it was made on an earlier version of Blender, but the core is the same). I suggest you use it as a strong inspiration for making the truck wheels (of course, you won't be making a BMW wheel in your case).
- I strongly suggest you use a mirror modifier, since more than 90% of the truck has a symmetry. It will cut down your modelling time a lot. I guess the only non-mirrored element would be the dashboard of the truck.
- The metal part covering the wheel could use a bit more geometry. It's up to you to see whether adding more subsurf is sufficient, or if you need to make a more detailed mesh.
- One thing I am unsure of: I don't know if parts of the planes you used for the front end of the truck bin are exactly overlapping some parts of the planes from the rest of the bin. If that is the case, you'll have to correct this. Whenever some planes are congruent, you're going to run into z-fighting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting).
- To see things more clearly as you model, you can alternate with wireframe view by pressing z. Another option is, in the Properties tab of the 3d vewport, to tune the setting of the "background image" (namely, bring your image to front with limited opacity).
- In your wheel, you have some odd shading artifacts. I don't know if it's on purpose. In any case, whenever you see that kind of weird shading and you want to get rid of it (personally, getting rid of it is what I want 99% of the time), you simply need to add one extra loop cut.
- Some very basic tricks that I wished I had figured super-early (instead of discovering it after a few months) when you want to do precise modelling where different objects are in contact. For example, let's take the case of a situation where you want Object B resting on Object A:
a/ Select Object B bottom vertices, and then use "Cursor to Selection", return to object mode (still Object B selected) and use "Place origin to 3d cursor". Select Object A's top vertices, use "Cursor to Selection". Return to Object mode, select Object B and then "Selection to Cursor". You can apply this trick for countless situations.
b/ Select Object A's top vertices, then use "Cursor to Selected". Then go to Object B, select bottom vertices. Use the 3d cursor as the pivot point for transformation, and Scale-Z with 0 as the value. This technique does not really do the same as the previous one, but it's extremely useful for clamping geometry of an object onto that of another. Overall, the limitation for this technique is about the number of axes you can use (Global X, Y, Z, and Normal X, Y, Z), but I find that very useful.
Take your time with the modelling first, we'll see about the texturing later. I'd rather you go slowly and be crafty about the details for now. You'll begin to worry about speed after you complete your first scene ;) If you nevertheless want to learn bits about texturing, I think it will be best for you to learn texturing related to Cycles render directly, not the Blender Internal render (texturing methods are different). The difference between what you can achieve with Cycles and Blender Internal can be huge (if you browse my thread of Sector 5 slums, the early scenes where with Blender Internal, the later with Cycles, you can see the differences for yourself).
Keep it up, and if you need advice (even very noobish advice) don't hesitate to ask here.
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Thanks Mayo :),
I'll take my time and try and get this really right. I must admit I am much more used to creating individual parts from the ground up, planing them off in places and then mating them together as an assembly. It is nice that I am picking this up though, the functions I have been using I am getting faster with and hopefully I will have this ready in the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for the help, read and appreciated, so far I have used noob-to-pro, some blenderguru tutorials and I have watched videos by blender for noobs on youtube. If nothing else I now know how to move around blender and arrange my windows with greater ease. Looking forward to the stage when I get to full scale scenes as well.
Definately the start of a new hobby for me.
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I must admit I am much more used to creating individual parts from the ground up, planing them off in places and then mating them together as an assembly. It is nice that I am picking this up though, the functions I have been using I am getting faster with and hopefully I will have this ready in the next couple of weeks.
You can also use that kind of work flow (making individual parts and then assembling them) in Blender. I think I like the fact that there's often more than just one way of modelling something, it mostly depends what tool you feel the most efficient with.
Thanks for the help, read and appreciated, so far I have used noob-to-pro, some blenderguru tutorials and I have watched videos by blender for noobs on youtube.
For the noob to pro guide: even though it's useful for the basic modelling techniques and functions, I don't think you'll need to read much of the texturing chapters. That wikibook is a bit old, and the texturing techniques for Cycles made most of that chapter obsolete. Except maybe the section about UV-unwrapping (took me some time to get around it).
Definately the start of a new hobby for me.
That's good to hear :) I hope your motivation will be lasting.
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Lol I think so, I have worked through the tyre guide you linked and I am making one for the truck now. Learning some new convenient modelling methods too! starting to texture the tyre now (as part of the guide and taking ages to make a picture for the final Fantasy wheels :)
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So trying to follow your advice mayo, still have a long way to go and I haven't changed everything.
The tyre and the mud guard are completely re-done. (even had a go at rendering the tyre :D)
the hub cap etc will be my next step, but I dont have any more time today unfortunately, let me know what you think please.
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-2.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-2.png.html)
the lighting isn't perfect here, but it shows the tyre and the mudguard off enough to see what I have done :)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled2.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled2.png.html)
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Regarding the tyres: that's good progress, although there are some improvements I would suggest:
The tyres you made a very, very wide, and they're square-ish along the rim. That's more the like of tyres you'd see on a sports car. In this case, I think that more rounded tyres, about half the width, would be suitable. As you'll notice with trucks, you get two tyres side-by-side on the rear, to improve traction (the one in front is always single, since it's the directional train). I also suggest you take a look at reference pictures of tyres for rough roads (and dirt roads), they're more rounded. Whenever you feel like redoing them, I'd suggest you make them from scratch but using the same recipe as you just did. I pretty much always use tutorials as "cookbooks" which I adapt to my particular situation, not something that has to be exactly replicated. Of course, it takes a bit of experience. Anyway, you don't have to get back to the tyres right now.
EDIT: Actually there's a cheap and quick way of doing this. Place your 3d cursor in the centre of the wheel. Assuming the Y-axis is through the depth of the picture, then:
a/ scale the whole wheel along the Y-axis by 0.5
b/ select the middle edge loop in your tyre. Scale outwards, locking the Y-axis, using proportional editing with sharp falloff.
This should achieve a convincing result.
Otherwise, I like your efforts at modelling some parts such as the tank and the exhaust pipes, it's the sort of details that make a difference.
If you want a very basic lighting to get started, the very basic outdoor lighting is: one sun lamp, very slightly yellow, and a sky-blue ambient light.
By the way, I just sent you by email a very good reference picture of the same truck, as viewed in a CG cutscene from Crisis Core (you can notice what I was mentioning about tyres, besides). I hope that'll help.
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Very much so!
I must say I am grateful for your help. You always provide detailed descriptions of changes and thought out feedback with immediate solutions if you have them and it is much appreciated.
Referring to the picture you sent me, I have received it and I will definitely be using it when I get to texturing and rendering the whole of the truck (the tyre render was really just to play with the tyre tutorial :P)
I actually used a lot of the techniques in the tyre tutorial to make the exhaust pipe, etc. For example making the shapes conform to a curve except playing with different curve shapes and stuff, much fun!
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Anytime :)
By the way, in my previous posting, on second thought I don't think the "Sharp" setting will work in proportional editing. Most likely, "Sphere" or "Root" will be more appropriate. In any case, you can play with the various settings and see how each comes out.
Oddly enough, I rarely ever use the tool about conforming a shape along a curve. Like I said, the good thing in 3d modelling is that there are often several path which lead to the desired end result.
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OK, I went a bit mental on the tyre.
I will use another thingy to texture it properly, I was mainly focusing on the shape.
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-6.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-6.png.html)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-4.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-4.png.html)
Just realised in the second photo the tread isn't lit up as well as it could be, I modeled it on a chevy pick up tyre and used some clever mirroring to make it interlock rather than repeat, it may be kinda lost in the shoddy render
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled2-1.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled2-1.png.html)
edit: Note to self; If render is useless show it un-rendered :P
Going to redo the mudguard as well I think... Just so you know I am enjoying myself immensely
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well looks like I'll be redoing everything lol, overwrote my save...
well I'll make a back up folder immediately
I already made a back up, this message can be deleted :P I'm blaming the sun
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That's very cool! Very good progress on that tire. We'll see later about the texturing. It may be pretty tedious to UV-unwrap the tread, unless you planned it from the beginning (i.e. placing seams on the first tread element you model before you do the array modifier and then the conform to curve modifier). I think we'll be able to get around that, though.
By the way, always two things to watch out (specially when you do some more complex modelling like your tire):
- as much as possible, try to eliminate double-vertices (i.e. two distinct vertices which are at the same location and which should be merged, but aren't). To do it, select all, then type W, then "Remove doubles"
- Verify your face normals. I'm pretty sure they're off in your model: they're the main cause for weird shading artifacts which look kind of broken. Basically, your face normals should all point towards the outside of the volume you model (in some cases, you may have all your normals pointing inwards). Problems will mostly arise when you have some pointing inwards, and some outwards. One sign of such problem is when the shading in your 3d viewport looks patched (some faces look light grey, some faces look dark grey, for apparently no reason). To remedy this: in your 3d viewport toolbar on the left, in UV-shading tab, click "Recalculate". If you want to change the orientation (like outwards instead of inwards), click "Flip normals".
Anyway, it's looking promising :)
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AH! I was wondering why the faces I added manually were a different colour to the rest of the wheel, thanks mayo.
I knew about the doubles thing, it was in the tutorial you linked for the tyre. I have been carrying on today here is my progress so far. Trying to do easy stuff for a while before I go back into details.
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled2-2.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled2-2.png.html)
I'm not really goin to bother with the items which are out of the line of the camera, as (as far as I remember) they are never really in shot.
If it gets to the stage where we start adding new FMV's to the game then I may do a more detailed truck :P
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Detailed textures! Awesome! I wish Q-Gears will have controllable camera in the future!
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I realise that I seem to be giving daily updates, I hope you don't mind, your help has made each step a little bit easier :)
This is the way it is going to look when I redo it properly tomorrow, without all the creases and folds. :)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-7.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-7.png.html)
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I don't mind the daily updates. "Many" is better than "few" when it comes to updates, in my view. It helps managing and directing the project.
I don't have any particular recommendation for now, except to keep it up :)
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Coming Along nicely now, I will finish the door off tomorrow and mirror it across and then get on to some of the finer details, watch some more tutorials, etc.
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled-8.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled-8.png.html)
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You can make sharp edges. First select the edges you want to sharp and then push ctrl+E and select mark sharp.
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Thanks for the tip :)
I have been using the edge split modifier instead, does that do the same thing?
I have been basing the truck heavily on a chevy pick up, (as I felt in the original video that is what they were aiming for, despit the truck in Crisis core), hence lost of big curves. Can you highlight for me where I have missed a sharp edge please? For example, do you mean around the wing mirror support? I have been unhappy with the way that the shading around that area.
Ended up doing a little more before I stopped for the day, but it's not worth an upload
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Maybe this tutorial helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr3ufYhsu3M
He explains the differences between the different methods to make hard surfaces pretty well.
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Ah excellent! I will work through this tutorial tomorrow, looking forward to it.
Update: Checked out that tutorial, thanks for the tip Kaldashara!
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OK so I spent today playing with the edges and stuff, but I still get the weird shading thing when I link a new object onto the flat surface.
I have a flat surface normally shaded, I used scaling to make sure the vertices are completely flat. I create a low poly sphere and rotate it so that the rings are parallel to the surface. I put the sphere close to the surface and knife the surface so that there are vertices almost identical to where the sphere vertices are. I delete the faces inside these vertices. I delete the parts of the sphere I do not want.
Now I highlight both the surface and the sphere and join them together using ctrl+j, the shading is so far still normal. I then merge the vertices on the sphere and the surface making sure that the surface vertices stay static. As I am doing this I notice that the shading on the surface changes and lines up with the original faces on the surface (as in before I knifed them). When they are all merged I try to reduce this effect by using the crease function and it does not help.
Can anyone see a mistake in my steps or give me any pointers or link a tutorial which explains how to avoid this?
It is most noticeable on the door in the last picture I uploaded (the wing mirror handle), however if you would like to see a close up I can provide one
Edit: grammar
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I'm not sure I understood everything of what you were trying to do, but here are some recommendations that might help:
- when you use the knife tool, Blender has the annoying tendency to create double-vertices which won't disappear after the "Select All+Remove doubles" combo (instead, you often have to merge the vertices in question).
- from what I see of your shading problem, and if I understand correctly (assuming you have no double-vertices problem), you can mostly address that sort of issue with additional levels of subsurf
- If your aim was to model the mirror holder, in my opinion and experience it is much more advisable to model the truck body and the mirror holder as separate objects, and not try to merge them. Merging objects is more advisable when you need some kind of unity, be it a geometrical unity (meaning: a seamless junction between to objects, like a weld) or a texture unity. Otherwise, in situations like "Object A resting on Object B", merging the objects is not advisable. I agree the surfaces where they're linked should meet properly, but merging the contact surfaces is not recommended in most cases (and not only because it makes the job unnecessarily harder).
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So would it be advisable to keep the telemetry the same but without merging them to use ctrl+j to put them together, but then not mere them? or even forget ctrl+j altogether and leave them as seperate objects but relate them together anoter way? for example as a group (this would also make sense as it would make the UV wrapping easier as well).
You seem to have got te crux of my issue ^^
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Honestly, for stuff like that, I suggest you keep the objects separate. Merging them is unnecessary (unless you really want to move them around and do all sort of geometric transformations). In your situation, I think there's no use in Crtl+J these objects at all. Personally, I tend to model a lot of objects as many individual pieces. For example, on this model (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=13786.msg211693#msg211693), the Playstation is made of many separate objects (the buttons, the top lid, the cable inputs in the back, the memory card ports are separate), it's just the geometry of these separate objects which matches perfectly. If you really do want to link two objects without merging them, you can do a parenting, which is explained in one of the early tutorials of the Noob to Pro wikibook. As you mentioned, it will also make UV-unwrapping much easier.
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Coming Along nicely now, I'll finish off the wheels and then start texturing and stuff. Is it worth using blender to texture or the other programs out there?
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled.png.html)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll202/scratbuster/Untitled2-3.png) (http://s289.photobucket.com/user/scratbuster/media/Untitled2-3.png.html)
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For me is blender fine. It has gotten recently many changes to it's texture system which makes it for beginners hard to understand at the first place. But if you understand the way how it works, is it very handy.
It's a bit old but it was the first tuto I had seen to understand the texture management system of blender:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQcD5N8QYKc
Maybe someone knew a better tutorial.
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Good job, Scrat, it's really coming along nicely.
I think Blender is fine for texturing - to be sincere I am not sure anyone using Blender is using something else to texture. Everything you've seen on this forum from me and anaho was textured in Blender.
Before you start on texturing, if you wish to learn about it, there are 2 things I must stress:
- Learn about texturing using Cycles render (it's still within Blender). The method is different from the "Blender Internal" rendering engine. A convenient windows setup (in my opinion is to split into 3 windows a/3d viewport b/UV-image editor c/Node Editor. a/ shows your model, b/displays the unwraps and can show how your textures overlay on the unwrapped mesh c/the node system in creating materials is very handy. Blenderguru's introduction tutorials on Cycles and Creating materials with Cycles are highly recommended.
- Practice UV-unwrapping for basic stuff first (cube and cylinder unwrap), I think UV-unwrapping gets easier with practice (and then more practice).
If you need image sources, most of what we have comes from cgtextures.com (http://cgtextures.com) (one of the few places that offers a large bank of textures for free). A good place to get supplied.
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Do an Ambient occlusion bake into your model!!! It's a little tricky but you with thank me later!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfLWrPmcXHo
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Do an Ambient occlusion bake into your model!!! It's a little tricky but you with thank me later!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfLWrPmcXHo
If you wish to use Ambient Occlusion bakes for creating dirt maps, I have explained the process in this post (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15033.msg211186#msg211186), too.
My personal recommendation (but you can have other work flows): first, try to texture the truck as if it were brand new and shiny. That will give you the basic shaders to work with. Then later you'll gradually add in all sorts of modifications for rust, scratches, dirt and all "weathering" processes (that's where the Ambient Occlusion bake will come into play). Pretty much in the "first start simple, then progressively add in complexity" logic.
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I personally go for the "bake" first and then shade under it using multiply in gimp. I get a better real time look of what I'm doing. That's just me
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Looking good, here is my first WIP blend.
(http://i.imgur.com/9zNG9SO.png)
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Well... I'm happy you got started on this scene! It seems it was ages ago when you asked me to help you out with it. It's a very promising beginning - If I remember correctly it's probably the most complicated scene I initially suggested to you. If you feel like you can work on it on a regular basis, why don't you open your own forum thread?
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Wow! Awesome!
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Wow we've got a lot of people adding their resources lately!
Just remember to take your time, everyone else :P
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Most of the new people haven't been here for a while... I hope they're still around!
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Still around, just got a job lol, dont have so much time as I did when I was at uni, but I am hoping to get going on it again soon.
the texturing is quite intimidating
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Glad to hear you'll have a bit of time to resume your scene :)
Texturing will be quite a big chunk to learn - I'll be happy to help along the way.
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I have stopped texturing for a bit to remodel some aspects of the truck that the lighting highlighted to my atention.
As a side I am also looking at options to use solidworks models in blender. Probably not the best way forward, but with blender I am doing a certain amount of fudging; I know I could knock up the exterior of a truck like this in a few hours on solidworks and it would be about a thousand times more realistic :P
Just want to give it a go and see how it turns out
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I guess it just depends on what kind of software you're used to! It's often about knowing the tools you need to use in order to get to your result. Often you can model something with 4 different ways, but one way will take you 4 hours and another 5 mins.
If you can import solidworks models into Blender without a problem, go for it. However they might be a bit difficult to UV unwrap (if you end up with fine triangulated mesh, it might be a pain to select the UV seams one by one).
What aspects of meshing you're not too comfortable with in Blender? I might know a couple of tricks which could make your life easier.
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Well it is mainly the features like the windows and wheel arches, At the moment to create these I am Makig my Shape as a solid and then creating other shapes to subtract from that solid.
The problem with this is it isn't very accurate, for example until I have nearly finished the whole thing I cant really tell how the windscreen columns or the curvature of the bonnet will look. As in I think it looks fine until I leave it a little while and then come back to it.
I'll grab a copy of Solidworks from work (if I can) this week and have a play, but by all means I am willing to take advice!
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From my experience, modelling in Blender using boolean operations on objects (addition or substraction of meshes) isn't the best way to go (while I'd believe solidworks handles that better), although I think Blender has improved in that area recently. I'd recommend other modelling approaches - I guess it's just for you to have in mind alternate ways of constructing your mesh. For example, in the mds5_w scene (weapon shop in a bus), you'll find some "grids" which are like some big plates with many circular holes in them to frame the baggage rack. I didn't model that by object subtraction. Instead, I modeled a 8 point circle within a subdivided square, where I'd leave the inside of the circle empty and make faces between the edges of the square and the "circle". Then use 2 array modifiers to replicate the pattern in both direction, use a solidify modifier to model the thickness and then a subsurf modifier to smoothen the circular holes.
Now, about giving you a better impression of how your model would look like and visually appreciate the curvatures, I recommend 2 simple options:
- You can switch to "real time render preview" on your 3d viewport (in the same tab where you can alternate between "solid view" and "wireframe view"), and if you have a good lighting setup, it gives you a good idea. However, if you don't have a good graphic card, it may be pretty slow.
- You can use a matcap (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_jdaBpq8Pg). A matcap is essentially a basic shading preview with a boost in gloss, which often give a better appreciation of curvatures. It's extensively used in sculpting (for instance when you'd like to make wrinkles on a face or folds on a cloth).
Hope that helps :)
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That definitely helps! I rememebr that subdivision of a square method from one of my first tutorials lol, i just didn't think of applying it to complex shapes like windows or parts that cross edge boundaries lol I'll play some more, maybe not tonight though I'm knackered. Lot's of overtime at real work at the moment :P First day I have got home in time for a week!
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Use whatever you feel the most comfortable in, if you can achieve faster results in modeling in some other tool.
Solidworks can be exported into a multitude of formats, so that should not be an issue.
8)