Final 3D Model

The Idea :

After much thought i decided that i would link my final 3D model with my game from the game design unit. I decided i would make the main character of my game (Kangaroo Bruce) in a simple yet effective cartoon style, just like the research i have done into this style. Little did i know how hard it would be.

The Journey :

I started off by searching the internet for character modelling tutorials that would help my achieve my goal. I found this very hard as there was next to none that were either not telling me things i already knew or that weren't incredibly simple and useless. I eventually found a simple tutorial on how to make a shark using hypernurbs. The tutorial gave me more of an understanding on how to make organic life life looking models by using the hypernurbs turned on to help with shaping. I then spent weeks trying to create a kangaroo but constantly ending up with something that looks like a lizard or getting stuck when it came to doing the limbs.

Here are some of my failed attempts :

First Prototype :

After many failed attempts and a stroke of luck, i finally managed to produce something that look slightly like a kangaroo. I had definitely made progress from my last attempts but this version still didn't feel right to me. I like the shape of the body, although it doesn't seem smooth enough. The main part i didn't like was the head, because the ears look unprofessional and the shape is more like an aardvark  I also didn't like the way the feet turned out and there looked like balloons. Because of these reasons i decided to start again.

The Final Model :

For the final model, i took every skill i had learnt from researching tutorials and i took the good things from the last model such as the body and thighs and i tried to improve them and take a different approach with the bad things such as the feet and head. Just like the other models before this i started off with a cube with a  3x3x3 segment layout. I then proceeded to use extrude, inner extrude scale and move the segments into the desired shape, constantly tweaking where i thought it needed to be. Once i had the main body shape i put it into hypernurbs to make modelling the limbs easier. I created the feet better this time by inner extruding the bottom to give a flat surface and also defining the thin to thick shape better than before.

It was all going great until i got to the head. I had followed the advice of a teacher half way through modelling and deleted half the model to use a symmetry object as it would be easier  This seemed like a great idea until i got to the head and it would do this when i tried to extrude.

I pretty much tried everything i could to get around this problem but never managed to do it. So i decided to leave it and make the gloves. The gloves were simply made from two cubes which i made flat and long and used extruding and rotating to make. Once in hypernurbs they looked just how i wanted them to.

I had now go to this stage, and was wondering what to do about the head.

I wanted the whole model (minus the gloves) to be one whole shape so that there would be no ugly seams and it would look clean and smooth. Unfortunately this was going to be possible because of the way i had modeled the polygons wasn't working with the symmetry. The only solution i had left was to make a head separately and position it on top of what i had already. The head was made the same way as the body using a cube to start, but this time i made sure to make the ears better by using a mixture of extruding and re sizing as i made my way up the ear. After looking at some pictures of kangaroos and tweaking the shape to look somewhat normal, i had finished the head and positioned it correctly on top of the neck.











The modelling section was complete.

Before Texturing :

Here i have decided to render out four different views of the final outcome so you can see the defined shape of the model before the hair texture is added. The lighting is the same as the lighting i used in the tutorials as there is no need for scene lighting yet, its just to show off the model itself.

3D Model Research

The style i have always loved for 3D models is the low poly simple style used in games for the PlayStation 1 in the late 90s. Particularly i picked upon three games which were Croc, Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. I feel that because of the way the characters in these games were initially designed, they could get away with using a low amount of polygons and it still looking great. What i mean by this is that they have added the most little detail possible, leaving only the essentials to model such as the eyes nose ears body and limbs. The rest is all done with textures, for example Spyros skin looks detailed but its simply a texture.

I tried very hard to find out who the 3D artists were who made these masterpieces but could find nothing. I think they should be credited allot more as these were some of the pioneers that has lead to cartoon based 3D sandbox games being made. I will try my best to use this style in my own model, and keep things as basic as i can.

Tutorials

Lighting :

I have used the same lighting in every tutorial to keep a nice pattern and a clean simple look. It was simply 1 plane set off to the front right hand corner of the scene and a plane in a cloner object using a 3 by 3 layout placed above to the scene. Then a compositing tag was added to the floor and self shadowing turned on followed by enabling ambient occlusion and global illumination in the render settings.

Tutorial 1 :
Cascading Bevel Text

This was created by using a spline mask with both a custom drawn bezier spline and a simple text object. By using the spline mask, it cuts out the shape drawn with the bezier spline from the text. I then duplicated this method 4 more times, each time moving the spline mask up by 10cm. Fianlly i made each masked text object  a child of an extrude nurbs object and positioned them 10cm back each time so they would line up. I found this to be quite easy and think it is simple yet effective.

Tutorial 2 :
Portal Companion Cube

This was Modelled from a cube with simple extrudes and inner extrudes and cylinders used as tools. The phong was set to 0 to keep a chiseled look and a slight fillet added to the edges. To start with i had to make 1 corner of the cube and then duplicate it to make the whole thing. Next was making the smaller cubes. That was simply just a cube put into a cloning object, then deleting the unwanted cubes. To make the circle cutouts in the center i used a cylinder, made it go just into the cube and then used a Boole to make the cutout. Finally the inner circles were more cylinders with bevel and the heart was a path imported from Photoshop with extrude nurbs added to it. Overall this was relatively straight forward to make, the only small problem i had was lining up the boole but i think that was my fault for starting with the cube in a different place than he did in the tutorial. It definitely taught me more efficient ways of doing things by using things such as boole.

Tutorial 3 :
Poké Ball

This was made by simply cutting a sphere in half which had a small extrude, using the knife tool to make a precise cut for the gap in the middle and then duplicating it for the bottom. Next i had to use boole to cutout the circle in the front of the two halves. Once that was done just i had to add a sphere inside for the "core" and finally make the button out of two cylinders. This was a simple yet effective tutorial but it taught me more about using the knife tool.

Tutorial 4 :
Ipod Nano

This was made simply from 3 things. First of all was a cube to make the main shape, this was done simply by using the scale tall to make it long and thin and then adding a fillet to the edges to make the curve. Next was a simple plane for the screen and then a tube for the button, i just had to re-size them and position them accordingly. Finally all i needed to do was add the textures. The button texture was from Google images and the screen texture was an edit screen that i made myself in Photoshop  Overall this was a very simple tutorial but i think the end product came out very well, and look almost real.

Tutorial 5 :
House

This was relatively straight forward to make because of the easy angle and symmetry of the whole thing. It was started by making a custom polygon for the shape of the building and then extruding it upwards. Then i made the roof by using the weld tool to weld the points in the middle. Finally the space for the windows was made by using the knife tool on the front face of the house and then the windows were made with a simple extrude and inner extrude. The extra parts that jut out of the house were not in the tutorial but i added then by extruding to make it look more interesting. The textures were also not covered in the tutorial so i took it upon myself to find them on the interent and apply them using cubic projection. I found this tutorial quite helpful in enhancing my ability to use the knife tool, the weld tool and making my own polygons.