Primitive Battle
 

Open challenge for everyone here! I'm hoping lots of people will jump in this one, cause it's really easy to do.

Here's how it goes:
Create a scene using only primitives
Rules:
1) Primitives must be polygons (cube, sphere, helix, torus etc.)
2) Maximum 50 primitives in your scene
3) Primitives may be translated, rotated or scaled in any or all axes, but may NOT be modified at the component level (e.g. no adding or moving vertices)
4) lambert1 is your only material, no texturing
5) Light your scene and render it, do ambient occlusion, raytrace shadows, whatever, but no photoshop or color

The focus here is on form, shape, line, proportion, and balance. Being able to recognize simple shapes in the real world is a plus for good design and composition (so I'm told ;)). This can be really simple so I'm hoping even very new beginners to Maya will join in. But you can also take this very deep and focus on spatial relationship and interesting formations, maybe?

I should add that the idea is to create a scene, not just an object, that conveys some story or emotion. If you like, think of the psychological impact that certain shapes hold.

Make a new thread with your name and "primitive battle" here in the battle arena. Deadline is less than a week, this coming Sunday at midnight. If this goes well, we'll start a new thread (maybe here, maybe in the Finished Projects section) for the final entries. Judging based on a poll or if a moderator wants to judge, that would be great too.

sounds pretty primitive

question...
when you say no modifications on a component level does that restrict us from doing something for example
grabbing a torus and adding subdivisions as that can be done in the construction history or in the menu you can click when you create such stuff from the menus?

i wonder what sort of things we can pull off with just transformed primitives

i think we should provide an 'exploded view' with wireframes as well as an AO render.

Changing the attributes of the original primitive is fine. What do you mean by exploded view? Think of it as just blocking out a scene with carefully placed shapes.

It seems like a really mundane thing to do, but I'm hoping it'll produce some pretty interesting results. *fingers crossed*

i've started on the beginnings of many scenes to come :p

yeah exploded view is too hard to explain... kind of like having all the pieces but with a significant gap between them so you can see all the pieces

but yeah, probably not really needed.

needless to say i've accepted your challenge and we'll see what i come up with... i'm not sure what you're expecting but we'll see what happens...

Sounds interesting, I'm up for this too!

Will make a start later on and see how it goes, not a clue what to do but I'm sure I'll think of something!

ha, i like challenges like these. Here is one i did at work a minute ago

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y29...h_cubes_01.png

and here is one i did a while ago.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y29...3dworld_01.jpg

i would love to try and throw something i this battle, but my maya time at the moment is taken up with another project that i cant afford to deviate from.

Mayhaps though I'll toss something up made of primitives at a later date, just to see what i can come up with.

G-man

Awesome, but I dislike the limit. It limits me. haha. But I may do something anyway

i just read rules 4 and 5... that kinda ruins it for me. only a grey lambert? thats pretty dull.

In regards to the limits of primitive numbers and texturing/color, I was thinking to focus the challenge to certain aspects of composing a scene. If you had unlimited primitives, you could just mash a thousand spheres together and create a fluid looking organic surface, or design a highly detailed hard surface with hundreds of cubes and cylinders. That's not the point, though I'm not trying to be a dictator or anything.

As for texturing, I think one material works fine. Use the lighting instead of the textures to define the value of the objects. Value being the tonal range between black and white. If you'd rather choose a different material, that's fine, but keep it as a single greyscale tone for all the objects. (e.g. a dark grey blinn)

Personally, I find that some constraints enhance creativity. This is a challenge after all.

What about coloured lights?

I knew someone was going to ask that. I was tempted to say a small bit of color is fine in the lights, but what does that mean anyway? Younglion's car WIP is a good example of this

http://srv01.simply3dworld.com/showt...5&pagenumber=3

but since it's hard to quantify, let's just say no color period. There's no denying that greyscale images can be fantastic, so focus on the composition and shape. And value, if you want to go that far. Just try to generate something interesting, abstract or real-life.

If you really don't know where to start, find a creative commons photo and just start blocking out the shapes you see. If you want to be more artsy or something, look up cubism images.

lol, does this mean we can't do a turntable either?

...ok, so no colour, no texturing and only one material. using pure white and pure black and the levels in between on the lights. This is going to make it difficult to represent something in the real world.

I'll give it a bash but, I think texturing would have made it more fun

btw, can we use booleans? technically its not adding verts its transferring them. If i boolean a cube with a sphere i'd count 2 of course.

i'd assume it to be like making a greyscale picture.. like how photos were before colour

I think it's quite easy. And that's what I was going for... trying to represent something as opposed to recreating something. Don't think photo-real. Three cubes and four cylinders can easily represent a car. A sphere and a few cylinders can represent a human. I don't have maya with me right now or I'd put something together as an example. I'll toss together a few different examples tonight so people can get the idea of what I'm on about.

I know it's hard to create a challenge that everyone gets excited about. Maybe next time someone can start up a mini texturing battle or something.

Here's another idea to think about. Use the primitives to create a scene that evokes motion.

I don't really think it would be a problem to do a turntable animation, but again, it's about creating a scene, not just an object, so it might not be the best way of presenting it.