Ideas and Research

Potential Asset Packs

• Carnival/ fairground – would include popcorn machine, cotton candy and a fairground ticket

• 50s diner – would include a jukebox, a milkshake and a bar stool

• Arcade – would include an arcade machine, a ticket/ coin machine, claw machine, fast food cup

 

Having considered my three potential asset pack locations, I have decided to make assets for a 50s diner. I have chosen the diner asset pack as not only are there plenty of reference images for this location, I believe the assets I want to create for it are achievable within the time constraints of my project, whilst also challenging enough to enable me to introduce myself to new tools in Maya, hence making me more confident with using the software.

Below I have included the moodboards for each of the three assets I will be aiming to make:

 

Asset 1

Asset 2

Asset 3

Having completed the research for my location, this has helped me to recognise the importance of finding reference images in industry as it enables for a clear visual representation of what the asset is attempting to resemble.

 

Progress beginning week 29/11/18

During half term I made a start on my 3D asset pack, beginning with my stool as I believed this would be the easiest to make of my assets.

From my moodboard, I needed to decide between creating a bar stool or a booth. I decided to model a stool as I believed this would enable me to challenge myself more than the booth would allow me to.

Progress beginning week 5/11/18

• Modelling my milkshake asset
• Finding textures for my 3D assets
• In class we learnt about the ‘unwrap’ tool when texturing, which will make the textures for some of the shapes within my assets to look nicer

 

Progress beginning week 12/11/18

• Modelling my jukebox asset
• Started making the UV unwraps for my assets
• Learnt about rendering in our 3D lesson, including adding lights and shadows and rendering the final image

 

Progress beginning week 19/11/18

As my deadline is this week, I am focusing on completing the model for my Jukebox Asset, as well as completing the UVs/ textures and renders for all of my assets.

 

Above are the screenshots of my jukebox model (left) and the textured model (right). Unfortunately, when I attempted to open the jukebox files to take a rendered image of it, all the files seem to have been corrupted, so I am restarting my jukebox asset.

 

Renders

Below are the renders I have handed in for my 3D project

 

Asset 1: Stool

 

Asset 2: Milkshake

 

 

Asset 3: Jukebox

Asset List

 

Evaluation

 

Modelling

Asset 1: Stool

I am pleased with the final result of my stool asset model and am happy with the time it took for me to model the stool. While I hope to get quicker at modelling in the future, I believe 6 1/2 hours was a good start.

 

Notes on Techniques Learnt/ Process:

When modelling the back of my stool, I briefly switched from the Modelling tab to the Animation Tab. This enabled me to apply deform > non-linear > bend to my object. To make the curve go in the direction I wanted, I then had to rotate the bend and then curve the back of the stool as far as I wanted. I then selected the ‘edit’ tab and selected edit by type > history’ left just the model for the back of my stool, which I could then scale to my liking.

Additionally, I had created the back of my stool using a cube, which meant that the corners of my stool were sharp, and in order to make my stool look like my reference image, I needed to smooth these corners somehow. To do this, I selected the outer four edges of my object, selected edit mesh > bevel and increased the number of segments from 1 to 8, making the object’s outer corners appear smooth like those seen in my reference images

 

Asset 2: Milkshake

While I am happy with how the model for my milkshake turned out, I am aware that the strawberry model has gone over my polycount. Although I could have removed the strawberry as it is not part of the actual milkshake, I have decided to leave it in my final render. Over the Christmas holidays however, I am going to try and learn how to bake textures so that I use fewer polygons in the future.

 

Notes on Techniques Learnt/ Process:

• Using the X-Ray tool to see through my 3D polygons and at the reference image I had inserted into my work space.
• When making my strawberry, I made use of the ‘edit edge flow’ tool to adjust the position of the edges to make them fit the strawberry better
• Poke face tool
• Reversed normals for milkshake by going to mesh display > reverse.

 

For a considerable amount of my project, I was using the smooth mesh preview (3) when making my assets. However, as this was just a preview, my assets wouldn’t be as smooth when I come to render them as it is just a preview.

As I was aiming to make low poly assets, this meant using the actual smooth feature wouldn’t be very practical as it would increase the number of polygons. Instead, to make my assets look a bit smoother without increasing the number of polygons, I selected the soft edge tool from the mesh display menu.

When I was about half way through the process of creating my milkshake asset, I decided to get my current progress reviewed by my peers, where I found that the strawberry would likely be at an angle in real life as opposed to straight on the glass, and that the strawberry wouldn’t go through the glass at the centre and would likely be a bit off centre.

Additionally, as strawberries aren’t symmetrical, this drove me to consider ways in which I would be able to distort my strawberry so I distorted the strawberry by using the soft selection tool and setting the falloff radius to 0.5.

 

Asset 3: Jukebox

At one point in my project, my initial model of the jukebox broke. As I had multiple saves of my jukebox, I opened these but the jukebox looked broken on those too.

Having looked for a reason as to why this happened, the only possibility I can think of is either the save being corrupted somehow, or, alternatively, it could have been down to the way I chose to model my jukebox.

On the front of the jukebox, there are certain parts that go inwards. To model these, I made a separate mesh in the shape that I wanted to cut out of the jukebox, then placed the mesh slightly overlapping the jukebox before going to Mesh > Booleans > Difference.

When looking for reasons as to why my initial jukebox had broken, I did find quite a few users stating issues with the boolean difference tool, and if this is the reason for the model breaking, it may explain why the broken areas of my model only impact the mesh that I used the boolean on and would also explain why all my different saves appeared to be broken too.

While the difference tool wasn’t the definite cause of the initial jukebox breaking, in future projects, I am going to try and find other ways to create the effect of the object going inwards.

 

Notes on Techniques Learnt/ Process:

When modelling the pink outer area for my jukebox I initially extruded parts of it inwards to achieve a layered effect, but this looked wrong so I tried extruding outwards which looked more natural.

To make it look even more natural and more rounded, I used the bevel tool to make it rounder, but I had to be conscious of my polycount as the polycount quickly increased when I used the bevel tool.

 

UV Mapping

 

Asset 1: Stool

Although this is a minor issue, there may have been a better place to place the cut in one part of the UVs. I put some of the seams at the back of the stool as I thought it was better to have them at the back rather than the front. However, as I have created a bar stool, it is likely you would see the back rather than the front, meaning placing the seam on the side or even the front may have been a better choice. That being said, the seams aren’t very visible on the back anyway.

 

Asset 2: Milkshake

Although it was necessary to fill two UV tiles for my jukebox UV map, I made each of the UVs for the different objects on the milkshake like the whipped cream and the milkshake itself separately, which I don’t believe was necessary in retrospect, as the UVs could have fit onto one UV tile. This did not impact the look of the final textured model but may have made it easier for me.

 

Asset 3: Jukebox

I believe the UV mapping for my jukebox was done well and I am happy with the final outcome as I believe the textures I added to it don’t look stretched, which I had to be careful to avoid with the shapes the jukebox was made from.

 

Notes on Techniques Learnt/ Process:

When UVing the base of the jukebox, I received an error when I attempted to create it as one UV and cut/unfold from the top. To combat this, I needed to do the top bit of the jukebox by using ‘cylindrical’ and then rotating the UV to match the position my shape is. Then I needed to make the planar UVs for the straight sides separately. In order to make these one UV so that the wood doesn’t look different when it is textured between the two sections, I selected an edge from a planar UV and the cylindrical bit, and then selected cut/sew and selected ‘move and sew’ to make them all one object

When trying to create the UVs for one part of my jukebox, I ran across an error to do with non-manifold geometry when I attempted to unfold my UV unwrap after cutting it. To solve this issue, I needed to go to ‘mesh’ and ‘cleanup’, which solved this issue.

 

Texturing

Asset 1: Stool

I was able to apply my skills in Photoshop – to ensure the leather was the same on both the red and white leather, I adjusted the colour of my red leather image to be white.

 

Asset 2: Milkshake

I believe my final texture for my milkshake went well as after peer review, I became aware of the fact I could find a better strawberry milk texture (pictured below).

 

When texturing my milkshake, this required me to learn how to make glass in Maya, which will be useful for the future.

When rendering my final model, I saw that I had an error which could impact me if I attempt to make a normal map for my milkshake. Although for this project I don’t need to make a normal map,

When selecting the faces to add the red and yellow colours to my strawberry, it took a long time to add colour to the strawberry because I had to select each individual seed for example. In future, it would be worth looking for a quicker way to select multiple individual faces without taking as long.

 

Asset 3: Jukebox

If I had time I would have liked to learn how to add a glow to the pink outer section of the jukebox and make it look more realistic. Although I have used a texture on the pink part of my jukebox, it is essentially a solid colour which doesn’t look very realistic.

That said however, I am happy with the final outcome of my jukebox textures.

 

Final Comments

As I can see my assets being used in a scene for a 50s diner, I feel like I have successfully made an asset pack for my chosen location. While I am happy with how my assets have turned out, I am looking forward to returning to them at another point to add normal maps to them.

 

Targets

Having completed my evaluation, I believe the key areas I would like to improve on are:

• Rendering – improving my shadows and confidence in adding light sources
• Texturing – I intend on continuing my work on these assets following the completion of my project and finding out how to add a normal map to my assets, hence making them look more realistic.
• Keeping track of my polycount – the strawberry on my milkshake was only supposed to be a small extra addition to the milkshake, but the strawberry wound up exceeding the poly count by a large amount. As video game developers have to work with a limited number of polys, I need to get in the habit of watching my poly count and also look into how to bake textures.