So this week was definitely interesting. My aim for the week was to take a side step from my comfort zone of doing low poly models and work on my high poly modeling. The first thing I decided to take a bash at was the wood burner we have in our living room.
To be honest I'm happy with the final aesthetic, I mean, that's exactly what it looks like. However, when modeling this, I found it to be a little bit messy. The only difference between this model and one of my low poly models is that with this model i have edge loops going everywhere, which normally I would refine to reduce the triangle count. The total Triangle count for this was between 8 and 9 thousand so it wasn't anything rediculess, It was just a little out of my comfort zone. This method of modeling as well took me a lot longer; almost twice as long. Most likely due to the large amount of topology involved in making manor changes. Had this been an industry job, and I'd been given 2 hours to model, unwrap and texture an environment model like this, I would fail flat on my fact at my current working speed. Even in my low poly modeling I would struggle. This is one thing I most certainly need to work on before my FMP.
In any case I decided to take a short break from the high poly thing with a bit of speed painting,
and then a little speed modeling to boost my confidence again. This time, since we get Langoustine in the river that runs through the end of one of our fields, I decided to model one of those. This time I wanted to do a speed model that I could put into my Portfolio,
At the moment it's unfinished, the texture and the claws themselves need a little work, before I actually put it into my portfolio. However, I then started setting up a render shot for this which managed to consume 2 and a half days of this week. In the scene set up I was trying to create an underwater scene that replicated light refraction of the surface of the water, under the water. Having never actually looked at water before in max, and having nothing to work with but the default render settings, this was my result:
Which to be honest, I'm really happy with the result. What I intended to do then was apply a sandy dirt texture, add some rocks and import the langoustine to the scene. Only problem was that when i tried this, it consistently said that it couldn't find enough unused memory to render the scene. So, this has been added to another of the ever growing collection of assets and scenes that I can't wait to actually do when I get back to leicester. Only 2 weeks left now. ^^
Having had to put that on hold, I moved onto some more high poly modeling. This time I was going to attempt to model my blackberry.
To be honest, I'm really rather happy about the final look of it. Aside from a few minor faults on the curvature at the back, It's pretty much spot on. However! and this is a mahoosive HOWEVER, by the time I finished modeling this, it was about 25,000 triangles, not a problem, but then, I decided to turbo smooth it like crazy, just to see, only, i went too far, and couldn't co back, and i didn't save it before turbo smoothing... so the topology now looks like this:
It's now so dense in places it just rendered as a black block. Hmmm i think there's a lesson in there somewhere. Had i not been silly with this, I would have been able to sort out the curvature issue. Topology mess aside, the major problem with this one, like the last high poly model was time. This took me WAY too long to model. texturing was actually really fast and easy. It took me about an hour to unwrap, texture, and play around with the lighting. Yeah, safe to say I need more practice with high poly modeling, and after 2 years you'd thing I'd have learn't to save regularly =/.
In any case, That was last weeks productivity. What's on the cards this week I haven't exactly decided yet. I'd like to have another low poly model and more speed paints to keep my practice up with those at least but I feel like now I need to spend more time on my high poly modeling, since I've clearly neglected it.
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