2 days to go on this. come on ben, wake up mate, lets go...

think/hope i get what you mean stwert. cheers



p.s.......dave, was thinking, i really would recommend the apache tutorial. it also shows a way of working using proxy models. that one tutorial taught me how to understand the relationship between unsmoothed and smoothed surfaces, and ever since its been the kind of conceptual approach to modelling that i have used. it also demonstrates 'snaps' very well, particularly 'v-snapping', which is the one of the single best maya techniques ive ever learned yet which i dont see being covered in many places, and which...i think...is crucial to hard surface modelling . i never finished the apache, but the two or three techniques/ideas i learned while doing what i did have always stayed with me. must be about two years to the month since i did that.

Thanks Ben
I thought that the apache tutorial was subd, I have been looking for a tutorial that shows the diffance between hard and soft edge modelling for a long time and its been under my nose all this time..............LOL.......dave

ps. am down loading as I post

I hope I haven't overtalked it. Hope you get as much from it as I did.

Thats OK Ben I had a lot of point that I have not used, only going to download the modelling part.............dave

planar mapping is just a start for UVing, if you planar map a cube in z axis, then apply a texture with a dot on it. the dot will appear on both sides of the cube in the z axis.

planar projection, projects the dot. so if you move the camera projection node it will move the dot around the surface. you can project the dot anywhere on any plane, by positioning the projection node.

this would be better with pictures.

I get you I think Hammer. I always just use automatic uvs, but as I just had some logos and stuff and it was all pretty flat surfaces I thought I could get away with a planar. What I did in the end was just, instead, where I had been using say, one black plastic material, and one silver metal material for all the black and silver parts, I duplicated a new version for each part that had a texture. Seemed to do the trick. I much prefer working with materials rather than uvs.

So, although it looks like there's just one main black colour all over, theres really 5 or 6 black shaders on there. Perhaps this was the long route.

I created a quick animation of my phone. It's about as basic as it gets, but as I want to send it off tomorrow a.m, I did what I thought I knew how, and what I could get done by tonight, without messing anything up. I should have pushed myself harder, maybe put in some ease-ins and out's or something, or had the camera flashing. But it's ok. There are two more CG society courses I'd like to do (Nuke Compositing, and Photorealism in Mental Ray), but I think I need to add an animation one on top of that too. I'm uploading the animation to my Vimeo account at the moment, will post a link when it's done.

This is the link to the video on Vimeo. Bit jerky, 'quality video hosting'...hmmm...


anyway http://www.vimeo.com/15035192

let me know what you think.

I like....looks like an ad to me LOL. I dig the scene dude on the matte painting..didnt see that one before...I like that more than the phone LOL

well done though mate

cheers bullet

Thanks man. Yeah that scene I did a little while ago now. I didn't realise that it was still the older version up there. I added some snow into it later on. Have to upload that and replace it at some point

Looking good Ben
The only thing letting it down is the number pad looks a little faint or is the phone like that?...........dave

No, you're right dave. It is kind of faint in real life but I should have made more effort to punch it up a bit. I tried adjustment layers in ps, but I think the photo I used for the texture must have been pretty low quality, and the als destroyed it more than helped. That was the best texture I found in terms of angle, size, evenness of lighting, lack of reflections etc. But I should have looked harder.

Why not just make it in photoshop (the letter tool) using what you have got as a template..........dave

I did consider that. But, the keypad was the last part I made... On the phone itself, as I think/hope you can see, the keypad isnt flat, its kind of wavy with smooth grooves running across it above and below each row of numbers. I didnt have enough space left, when modelling the keypad to make geometry 'groovey' enough to cast its own form describing shadows, so I needed to get that information across in the texture. I knew nothing I could have done manually in photoshop would have been as good as the real thing. So it was a compromise I guess, between having the tonal variations of the light on the surface,and having the numbers themselves. If that makes sense.

Have you tried the bevel tool in the style layer in photoshop to get the same effect...........dave

Edit:I have learned one or two thing from that tutorial, you where wright about the snap tool I did not know you could use it like that also:attn:

That all sounds like a big excuse for lazyness doesnt it.

Tch, youre right again dave. I should have done.

Well. I sent the link and 8 stills (four normal, four wireframe) to the guy at the recruitment agency in the small hours this morning.

I dont believe I have a wide enough skill set to do the work they do, so I figure if they choose me, they must be short of applicants. Im pleased overall with this project, so another piece for my portfolio, but probably just too soon for me yet.