initial idea sketch
This is my initial idea sketch, its my plan for how my iron drone will look, I’ve used different colours to differentiate the different parts of the iron, my idea was to have a iron, that transforms into a drone which will have wings or helicopter rotors, with a security style camera on the top for navigation and a torrent gun making it, weaponized
I will be using different images of irons and parts that are needed such as cameras and rotors as reference to help me when the modelling and help improve the quality and realism of the model, I will also research on how other artist and designer model weapons and drones in order to gain an understanding of how I could model the mechanised parts of my iron.
Inspirations that led me to creating this were from movies such as transformers, star wars and iron man, also animation such as Rwby, they have examples of objects that transform and become weaponized.
There a different ways I can use to go about modelling this, I can could the overall shape and use Booleans to punch holes into the model, this technique can go Wrong easily because Booleans can create triangles instead of quads making complication when adding subdivisions and smoothing your model,
The other way is to create the simple shape my manipulating the vertexes edges and face, and then use the extrude tool to extrude out a new part of the iron and adding on edge loops to help when smoothing,
I think I will be using this technique because it will have the least complication when smoothing the model.
These are reference images for my iron drone idea, as the target for this unit is to model a normal household appliance or object in general and turn it into a James bond themed gadget. My initial idea is to model an iron turning into a flying drone.
I have collected images of the different parts I wish to have on my drone such as drone wings, in order to get a idea of how my iron drone will look like.
I will be using these images to not only get the general look and shape to of the parts I will model, it also give me reference on how I would add finer details to really make my model come to life
I was thinking to model an iron from a life reference (my own iron) and add parts which will turn it into a drone, I will be adding wings or helicopter rotor, to show that the drone can fly, I then want the drone to have a gun torrent for my drone. My 3d model will not have any of these functions but I will need to make sure that I designed my model in the same practically way the manufactures has created these gadgets, this will help get the realistic convincing look to my model
These are my reference images for the iron I will be modelling, they images I have taken, I will be modelling the basic shape, and then adding the finer details, such as the buttons and creases on the iron.
One problem I might come across is that it will be difficult to replicate the curvy shape the iron, also that some the details such as the creases on the iron where the different parts connect will be hard to replicate without changing the typology of the iron which will lead to problems when smoothing it, techniques I could try is by adding edge loops in order keep the shape when smoothing and making sure all my polygons quadrilateral so my models won’t have any unwanted deformed parts to it
I may be using the iron for texturing,
The problem is that I will need close up flat images with lighting that has no shadows in order to get good images for texturing, and I can accomplish this by take a close up flat image of the iron in a place with balanced lighting with a higher res camera
This is my modelled iron, this is the phase 1 of the modelling aspect where I use a reference image to model a convincing model of an iron, The tools I used to create this were basic tools such as the move a scale tools, to manipulate my shapes and size, and the extrude to create and pull out new parts of the shape, for example I used the extrude tool to pull out the top handle from the base of the kettle, I also used the extrude tool to create smaller finer details such as the buttons on the top on the handle and the creases on the side of the kettle.
My focus when modelling this to try a have good topology in my model, to make sure all my polygon are quads and to make sure I have a good edge flow to my model making it look smooth while still maintaining the shape I wanted when smoothing, the way I did this was to use the multi cut tool in order to create new subdivision in model. I could of done this with the add division tool but this method led to having weird topology which was not needed and led to creating triangular polygons, ruining the overall topology and creating errors in the shape of the model when smoothing
moddeling progression
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After modelling the main iron, I started to model the wings; I decided that I would only include the jet wings for my final model, instead of my initial idea of guns and a camera, due to the fact of the time we had left for the project. I decided to spend more time modelling and texturing the wings to a higher quality than to try model and texturing all the parts I had for my idea and rushing it, meaning it wont look as good. Just like modelling the iron I started out with a simple shape (rectangle, and then stated to extrude to get the basic shapes and details, then I added edges with the multi cut tool to fix the topology and edge flow of the model and once I was done with modelling the wings I imported the, place them together and use the merge objects tool to create one single object, what I could of done to create a more seamless objects was to actually merge the vertz of the wing and iron or to have another object such as a hinge to make it seem its connecting the wing and body.
texturing progression
This is my UV map, in order to create this I had create a UV map in Maya, I did this by opening the UV texture editor in Maya, select the faces that I wanted to map and then planar mapped it, Maya would project it on a random axis, the problem with this is the map was distorted and stretched so what I did was that I first selected all the vertz and the used the unfold tool, this tool makes Maya unfold the UV shell into the least distorted shape possible.
In order to get a more seamless UV map, I had to stich together my UV shells, in order to do this I selected the edges where I didn’t want a seem to be between the two UV’s and the use the move and sew tool, this stiches the two UV's together
One problem I had after was that when it stitched the new UV shell, it would be distorted, in order to fix this just repeat the process of selecting the vertz and unfolding the UV again, and to check if I was creating undistorted UV shells I would use the checker box tool to see as a preview texture to see if it would be distorted or stretched.
Finally I had to place the UV shells created, what I did is use the layout function and adjusted the setting to layout my map so my shells were all the right size and orientation in relation of the modelled object and so it fills up as much space as possible to get good pixel density (The size of the pixels).
Before I started actually creating the texture in Photoshop, I had to create an ambient occlusion and UV snapshot these two files is what ill put into Photoshop and paint over.
In order to create an ambient occlusion I had to open the rendering tab in Maya, go into lighting and setting, and press on batch bake mental ray, I then had to find the ambient occlusion map in the project folder and bring it into Photoshop, I did the same for the UV snapshot. I then began to start texturing, I started off by adding a concrete texture over the AO and snapshot for a base colour and then did the same with a scratched up metal texture to get basic scratches. I started to add in scratches and parts where paint will flake off, with a custom paintbrush, after adding in the scratches I started adding paint, with the paint bucket tool and ticking all ‘layers setting’ on, this make sure it doesn’t the paint over the scratches, giving that flaky paint effect.
This is my final textured model. The way I added the textured map onto the object was to simply add the texture map as a Blin texture, and because it has the ambient occlusion map and UV snapshot shape, it places all the scratches and paint flakes where I planned them to be,
The way I decided to add paint and scratches was to switch between Maya and Photoshop looking and the UV shell on the model finding what part of the model correlate withe the UV shell and painting the same area in Photoshop, I also kept updating the texture on the object to see what worked/didn’t and changed it accordingly.
As I smoothed the model, I saw distortion in some parts of the texture, this was due to bad topology in the model, in order to fix this I had to go back in and fix some of the topology in the model by removing triangles and making sure it has good edge flow, by doing it fixed the distorted and stretched part of the texture,
To finish off the texturing I changed some parts of the Blin material property like the reflectivity and incandescence
final render
Above I have 3 different types of product visualisation, one video and two still images, the first product visualisation, is a show real of different animated products, the actual product in terms of modelling texturing and rendering is not that impressive, what I took from the video was the idea of showing a transition from idea sketch to fully modelled, textured and rendered product, I think this will be a good way of presenting my product design visualisation. The next still image is a good example of the standard of quality my final rendered should be. This product shows example of good modelling such as the microphone grill, very nice clean un distorted texturing and good composition of the object seamlessly blending with the scene, the shadows on the table and how we know the product is the focal point because its the only thing not blurred out, this image will help me and give reference to how my final render should look in a realistic environment. The last image focused on one part of the product and had text around, giving the viewer an idea of how the product works in real life also the text really compliment the product and gives clean professional look, I will use this idea for when I have to show my wireframe or rendered image, in a format of a blueprint or similar.
Idea research
The way I wanted to my product to look was futuristic in order to match the James bond gadget theme. Research I done on futuristic aircrafts from movies such as star wars and star trek gave me a good idea on how ill go about the modelling aspects like the wings for my iron drone.
I have also noticed that many of these aircraft in these movies have wear and tear on them, this is done to give detail and for dramatic effect.
I took this idea and also research damaged metal parts as a texturing reference. I ended up finding the wear and tear details for robotic metal armour from movies such as iron man and Boba Fett from star war, this was good reference on how I would add scratches to my texture, I also like the shiny red coloured amour on iron man giving me an idea for the colour scheme for my product
reference images
product visualisation research
Unit 6 Product Visualisation
An and integrrated aproach to 3D problem solving in art and design
rendering progression
Here I have both types of final rendered images, above I have a rendered still that is realistically in style and is composited into a real life environment, on the left I have a rendered image of my design sketch final product and it wired frame in a stylised composition.
Using the mental ray image based lighting I rendered the object into the environment. This uses the lighting from the image your using and recreates that light source to reflect off your objects, creating convincing shadows, giving the illusion that the object is inside that environment.
The way I did this is by turning on image based lighting in the mental ray rendering tab, I used a HDRI image for my object to comp in with, I turned on final gather for shadows, created a floor plane and changed the material to 'use background' and the adjusted the reflectivity on the object
To create the image of the wireframe and design sketch I got the 3 images into Photoshop copy and pasted them into one scene. I then added the background by adding a gradient effect, adding he text and red lines to finish
evaluation
This is my product visualisation for my James bond themed gadget, my gadget is an iron that turns into a drone like aircraft.
My inspirations are from movies and franchises such as star wars and star trek, which gave me an idea for futuristic looking airships, which also gave good references when modelling the wings, other inspirations are from characters such as iron man and boba fett, they gave me ideas of how to add wear a tear scratches and paint to my texture to give it that a dramatic futuristic war effect, Another inspiration was the research done on visualisations, they gave me a ideas on how I could composite my product and give a good reference to what it should look like.
Production:
Modelling
The way I created my iron drone, was to first model a basic iron as closely as possible to what I used as a reference, I used the basic tools such as extrude, edge loop and move and scale tools to create the basic shape and details, I then use multi-cut in order to add in edges and help fix topology of the model so that there will be no faults when smoothing with subdivisions. I then repeated the process when creating the wings and then I combined the objects together.
UV mapping
I then created the UV map using the basic tools such as the planer map the create the shell and then the unfold UV tool in order to undistorted the UV’s, also I used the move and sew tools to merge UV’s shells together, after I used the layout function to automatically layout my UV’s for me
Texturing
I created a ambient occlusion map and a UV snapshot and put them both into Photoshop, I then added a basic concrete texture, for a base over the AO and UV snapshot and then used the brush tool to create the scratches for the texture, after I used the paint bucket tools to with the all layers setting on, this fills the map in a way that gives the effect of flaky worn out paint.
rendering
after completing the textures and assign it to the model, I opened up the mental ray renderer tab and turned on image base lighting, I used HDRI of snow for this image and rendered giving me the realistic rendered still of the iron in snow.
What went well?
thing that went well was the Basic modelling, I feel that the model was similar to the reference iron I was modelling and that I kept good topology and edge flow on the model making it making easy to UV and have no fault’s when smoothing. Also I think the texturing went well, I was able to place believable looking scratched where I wanted on the model.
What could I improve?
Thing I could improve were some part of the modelling places that had unnecessary edges and faces, also where there was an error when smoothing the model. Another thing was UV mapping there were some parts of the UV, that still had some distorted and stretched textures on, I could have created a more flat and undistorted UV shell. Another thing I could of changed was the colour scheme of the iron, some parts appeared to be too dark, I could of used brighter colours to texture. lastly the composition, I could have got a more close up image at a different angle in order help the model and HDRI image to blend properly while still being able to see all the details of the texturing and modelling.