Crates

My next models on the drawing board are environmental props like crates, lamp posts desks etc. The first of these I made is a crate.

To do the crate I willbe using a technique that Richard showed us in a tutorias a couple of weeks ago.

I began by drawing a box, I then selected one edge and used the ring and connects tools to create more edges. I then extruded the middle polygons inwards on all sides.

Finally I applied a wood bitmap as material and added a bump map to make it more textured and realistic.


Here's the finished product:

Plane materials

This is my finished plane. The materials were added using the material editor. I used images I gathered using research to encorporate an accurate portrayal of the colour and patterns on the planes.

For the cockpit I used a raytrace diffuse and added a reflective map, changed the specular level and glossiness to give is a glass type material.

I added a sky picture in the render as the environment just to see what the plane looks like in the sky

plane model complete, (no materials)

After 3 different attempts; I finally finished the model of the B5N. It has taken me a long time as I have never made a complex object like this before.

The propellars I made from a box and manipulated the vertices into a propellar shape. I copied the blade so I had 3 of the same, i then used the link tool to connect the plane and proppelars.

Getting There 2

Particle Systems

Today we looked at particle systems. I've never used particle systems before so this lesson was really important for me as I wanted to learn a new skill.

This skill could also be used in our animation to create smoke and fire in the attack. These were the two things that we learned in the tutorial.

The first thing we looked at was smoke.

The first step of the process was to select particle systems from the create drop down list. I then drew one onto the workspace and was given the object in the above image. I then selected the super spray selection. I then selected load/save presets and selected hose. Moving the time slider allows you to see the effect in mosion, as displayed below

I then went into the particle generation tab and changed a number of different presets until I was left with the effect that I wanted.

The next step is to add materials to the polygons. I used the diffuse selection to add noise, I also added a gradient to the smoke. O nrendering, I added a blue background to act as sky.

To create fire a similar process was followed, however the presets were different. When adding matreials I still added both noise and radial gradient, I used yellow and red for the gradient.

This was the fire result:

Getting There...

Personal Development

During these first few weeks of this module, I have learned many new skills, these include smoothing groups and low poly modelling with help from Richard's tutorials(see older posts), however, the skill that I have learned and used the most is using reference planes to accurately model a complex object. I developed this skill by watching various youtube tutorials (there are hundreds), and reading some written tutorials online.

I have never used this method before and am finding it both useful, and although the method is quite fiddly, I find I am getting used to this way of working and really like the fact that it gives a more acurate portrayal of the model I am creating.

When I first started modelling the aircraft, I was using basic shapes and moulding them into the desired shape. I found this method difficult and it gave an un-proffessional, in-accurate result. I then discovered the reference planes and using the bottom of a box shape, used shift and drag to copy this object to the lines on the bluebrints. I used select and move to move the vertices to where the lines match those on the blue prints, I also learned  how to use the target weld tool. This tool is really useful as it allowes you to join vertices together, I used it when I needed to make a slanted shape, an example being the rear body of the aircraft going down to the tail, I joined two vertices of a square together to make a triange instead. With this, you can use select and move tool to reshape the polygons, as the objects are welded together, they can both me moved.

 

Smoothing Groups

Another tutorial we took today was looking at smoothing groups. Smoothing groups are handy when using low poly modelling as it adds no extra geometry to the shape, no extra fuss. To start I created a sphere, lowered the amount of segments to 24, so I could see whats goin on, The sphere currently has no smoothing groups assigned to it. I then selected all the polygons in half the sphere, and selected a smoothing group of 1. When rendered Half the sphere is smooth, and half the sphere isn't.

I then selected the other half of the sphere; polygons without the smoothing group, and added another (different) smoothing group to these polygons, I chose group 2, when rendered I'm left with one sphere with two different smoothing affects.

 I did one more change, I selected some polygons from the top half of the spere and gave those a smoothing group of three, this gave the sphere a different look, as seen below:

Low Poly Tutorial

Today we looked at some low poly modelling techniques. We had to make a shed. I started with a box from the create tab; we then converted it into an editable poly. The next step was to make a door; to do this we selected on edge, and used the ring tool, this selects all the parallel edges to the selected one. Then I used the connect tool to connect these edges. We use the settings menu to change the number of edges to two, then change the pinch and move the edges to where we want them. We then do the same for the other edges, but instead of having two edges, we only have one to make the top of the door. I then used the extrude tool to extrude a door frame, then the inset tool to make the door effects. I then made a window, using the same technique.

Main body

 

The main body of the B5N is long and slender, perfect for manouvering. The nose however is more bulbous. in order to create this, I made the body in two parts, the main body, and the nose.

 I started with the nose, I created a cylinder as it is the closest shape to that of the aircraft body. In the Modify tab I went for an Editable mesh and selected the vertex selection. I used this to mould the nose into the desired shape using the blueprints.

 



When I felt happy with the nose; I moved onto the main body. I again used a cylinder as a base point. I also used the same technique as I did with the nose, editable mesh and vertex selection. I made sure that I aligned the body with each blueprint to ensure that everythin all lined up and was the correct size. I then used the attach tool to join the nose and the main body together:

 

Propeller

The First Part of the plane that I am going to make is the propeller. At first I thought that I would make each blade individually, and then animate the rotation of the blades after completion.

However, after some thought, in the interest of rendering time, and RAM usage; I decided to make a circle shape, (made using the cylinder tool in the create tab) shape it to the thickness of the propeller using the blueprints and applying a materiel to the propeller that gives the illusion of moving blades,
like in the image below:

As you can see, the moving proppellers just look like a whooshy circle shape.

This is the tactic that I will apply when creating the propellar on my model.

The first step that I took to create this was to create a new cylinder shape, I then converted it to and editable poly and under the Selection menu selected the Vertex tool. I then used the select and non-uniform scale tool to align the thickness of the propeller to that of the image on the blueprints. I then added a Turbo smooth.

I then needed to make the tip of the propeller. To do this I made two more cylinder shapes, one smaller than the other, and centred them on the propeller (smallest on the outside). In order to bring thr outside nut into a point, I again converted them it into an editable poly then used the vertex selection tool and descaled the end to a tip.