Chiaroscuro: Rendering Fabric Part 1

This week we began a long drawing where we are observing how cloth acts.  This helps in teaching how there are long, gradual transitions from light to dark, then sharp edges where the transition is very quick:

Next week, we will be finishing it up!

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim Part 3

This week was essentially the last week for the rims model.  I found out this week that we didn't have to model a car for our rest of the term project, but could model anything we wanted, as long as it was a hard surface model.  I have to do some searching to see what I can come up with, but it should be fun.

In the mean time, I added some fillets to the model where I could and softened up the edges.

Here is a nice little rendering done with a fake reflected environment.

One of the requirements we had was to do a turntable rendering with an "evaluation" shader attached to the model.  That essentially means that you reflect an environment that will help you tell how well your surface continuity is.  They provided us with a reflection map...

... but I thought that it was a bit ugly, so I opted for another one that I found:

Chiaroscuro: Composition

This week we worked on an understanding of composition.  Composition is a very important element that will make or break an image.  If something isn't composed right, it can feel very plain or uninteresting...  or it can feel downright nasty!

We started off by arranging our items in various positions and sketching quick, loose thumbnail sketches of the shapes.  From there, we picked the ones that seemed the most interesting to us and went one step further in showing some basic value sketches:

From there, we picked the most interesting one and did a final rendering of it:

I can't say that it is my best work ever, but I am slowly learning some interesting things from this class.

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim Part 2

This week in class we again worked on our wheel rims for the cars we will be building.  I managed to pick a bugger of a wheel to model up in NURBS, mainly because of the complexity of the surfaces that intersect.  I tried my hardest, but in the end, I still have some massaging to do with the surfaces to make it so that they have continuity from one surface to another.

One of the hardest things to do with this model is adding edge fillets to the models.  It is a necessary step, but it can be really tricky to get it done.  Every edge has to pick up some sort of light reflection to look realistic, even if it is very small.

Finally, I did a little test render (because another classmate of mine did one like this and I liked it a lot).  Looking decent, but I can see some areas that need work.

Chiaroscuro: Value Scales

I can't say that this class is too challenging.  I spent an awful number of classes during my undergrad learning how to properly shade geometric forms, which is one of the things we were doing this week.  To start off, we learned and replicated different forms of creating a 5-value shading scale for our drawings:

Next, we set up each of our geometric forms with proper lighting and drew them individually in full value.

Finally, we arranged our geometric forms into a composition and rendered it at full value.

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim

This week we started off our car project with the wheels.  The surfaces that you see below are NURBS surfaces.  NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, which is a fancy way of saying, "A surface that is defined by four mathematical boundaries."  Every NURBS surface can be infinitely subdivided to whatever resolution is desired at the time of rendering.  However, because they are based on uniform parameterization, they are incredibly difficult to texture.  They are well-suited for generating large surfaces that need to look mechanical or manufactured, rather than a random organic texture that you'd see on something like a tree.  Usually 3D modelers will start off with NURBS surfaces, then convert them to a polygon surface for texturing.  It's just one way, in a large amount of ways, to start off with creating a model.

The reference I decided to use was a rim from a 2005 Hyundai Tiburon, I think.  I found multiple views of it.  Next week, I will begin slicing things up and finishing the model.

Chiaroscuro: Line Value

This is my last studio drawing class I have to take for my core classes.  The title of the class is "Chiaroscuro", which apparently is the Italian term for controlling between light and dark in drawing.  I don't think they use it now, but it is a well known term for artists.  This week, however, we just focused on our contour drawings.  I have a set of basic geometric forms that I set up and draw from.  You'll see them used a bit over the next few weeks.

Hard Surface Modeling: Aaaaaaand we're back!

This week was the first week of the semester.  In this class I will be focusing on hard surface modeling.  That essentially means that I'll be working on non-organic models (i.e. vehicles, props, etc.).  This is a lot more akin to what I did when I was working in industrial design, so I am glad to be back at it.  For our first assignment we just were told to model up whatever object we wanted to to demonstrate our skill set.  I took about 12 hours and modeled up this FN-SCAR assault rifle that is commonly used with the marines and special forces.  It was a fun assignment to get started with, although I can see a lot of things I would have done differently for different purposes.