BennyK - Summer Challenge
 

Yay :attn:
My second SM competition :)
OK, here I go:
First Idea:

If I've got anything abandoned in my house it's my brothers old bicycle (does ~ 5 years count?)
It looks a bit ambitious modeling-wise so I'm not sure I'm going this way.
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/6...2713nm4.th.jpg

Second Idea:
None yet, but Ive got lot's of OLD stuff in my grandparents'
house (for those who think ~5 years isn't enough to be considered abandoned I've got ~20 year old stuff there :) )
Among the wreckage:
*Extremely old refrigerator , in the process of falling apart - my favorite.
*Old and rusty training bicycle (antique version of what you may find in gyms today)
*Old work tools (axe, saw, shovel etc.)
*The house itself - again pretty ambitious, but if I model just the entrance gate/the roof in front of the house it may look pretty nice.

I'll post some more images soon (after Ill give them a visit, with my camera)

That's a pretty good opportunity for me to learn how to use all kinds of shaders and different maps since I believe they will be pretty useful in this challenge...

Benny

I've paid a visit to my grandparents and took some pictures...
(It took me a while to explain what I was doing... They're both over 80 and barely even know what internet is, let alone Maya)

It's 0:15 so I'll try to keep it short (though that's not my style)
Edit: 1:00 by the time I finished uploading the pics ;)
I've posted this poll:
http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=30459
Please help me by voting and supplying some critics and comments.
Benny

I decided to go for the fridge - My favorite as I already mentioned.
I made it's handle yesterday:
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/6643/tempmi8.th.pnghttp://img144.imageshack.us/img144/5...2730vb7.th.jpg

And I have a question about this part:
How can make the holes for the bolts and still keep the geometry clean?
I tried using booleans with a cylinder but the result isn't satisfactory.
Any ideas?

Benny

Progress
 

I've started doing the rest of the fridge:
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3453/tempxu5.th.pnghttp://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5...2728yg4.th.jpghttp://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2...2726bq0.th.jpg

My plan is to model it all and then start breaking it up.
My ref pics aren't enough to model this so I'll pay another visit to my grandparents and take some more pics before I continue...
C&C are welcome

***I still need help with the bolts(previous post)***

Benny

I started modeling the environment for my fridge (that's just about the original one):
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6793/tempba6.th.png
The wall is basically sculpted NURB spheres sticking out of a polygon cube, but it took me a few hours so far and I'm not done yet...
I also tried modeling a wire fence of the following pattern -
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/...8I7GK/610x.jpg
but with my face count jumping to a few hundreds of thousands I decided to make it with a texture later...
C&C please

Benny

Progress
 

Finished the stones, added some basic textures(CG Textures wont let me download more then 15MB a day :( ) and some basic lighting:
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/4144/tempki0.th.png

I'm done for the day :zzz:
C&C please...
Benny

Personally I would keep the main focus on the main "character" so to speak. The environment will come second to it given the challenge is more object centric.

Looking pretty good so far!

The problem is I can't go on with my fridge until I get some more ref pics... I'm probably going to get them tomorrow morning, but thanks for the advice :beer: .
Benny

Are you still struggling with the bolts? Could you maybe give us more of an idea where they need to go?
I think, as this is a modelling project and it's not gonna do any moving, you can go wild on the modelling. Sure, try to keep your face count low, but don't worry too much about it.
Also, don't worry about building stuff that no-one will see. I didn't build the back bolt on my chair, cuz no-body will ever see it. It's complex enough to keep me busy for a whole day, but who cares?
But ya, a bit more of an idea of what you want the bolts to look like might help.
Good job so far though!.
Oh, and afaik, we're not supposed to build a scene, just an object. That might help too.
Cheers

Holes for bolts on the handle + No holes in my model = Problem
Benny
EDIT: Sorry for lack of progress today... been kind of busy...
BTW, I'm might be going to Buenos Aires for the Luta Livre grappling world championship :attn:

More Progress
 

I don't think the bolts will be a problem...
Here's what I've done today:
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/7231/tempwt9.th.png
*Some work on the interior.
*Some work on the frame and hull.
ToDo:
*Fridge's door.
*Wires and rubber strips.
*Textures.
*Abandon it :attn:

C&C please
Benny

alright.
I spent some time yesterday trying to see if I can make the holes, and the best I could come up with was extruding faces and moving verts till it resembled a circle, then extrude it in. BUT, when you smooth it has issues.
So just bump map them on. Looks like you're gonna have the door open anyway, so no-one will care much.
Good job so far.
Z

Thanks Z, here's my Idea:
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/1301/tempyc8.th.png
use booleans with this piece of geometry on a smoothed mash.
I don't even bother with cleaning the geometry on this one because it doesn't really matter (I think, we'll see when the time to render it comes :) )
I'm starting to model the door now, and will post some progress soon (I hope)

Benny

Progress on the door:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8766/tempyx6.th.png
And the other side:
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/3488/tempnc2.th.png
Still need to model the label on the front and some metal reinforcement strips and rubber insulation strips, but I'll do that later. apart from that I'm kind of done modeling :attn:
C&C please
Benny

impressive...

all thats been modelled with just polygons?

Thanks Chirone :attn:
Yep. All polygons (currently - I used revolve on the cover (for the pan))
Finished the logo:
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/5391/temppl9.th.pnghttp://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3...2727ks1.th.jpg

I'll post some wireframes of everything soon...

C&C please (as always)
Benny

cool

howd you make the curves? ep curve tool?

extrude face along a CV curve. The one in the middle is a bridge with a few divisions that I moved downwards a bit.

Here's the wireframes:
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/7267/temp2wp7.th.png

And here's approximately the angle I'm going for:
http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/3699/temptj1.th.png
I moved things around a bit to get the best scene... (the door was supposed to be opened from the other side, but it won't match my environment nor the fridges frame(the angle from which it is ****ed up) )

C&C please
Benny

Very nice work BennyK! :beer:

Great job!
:beer:

Thanks people :bow:
I made some work on the strips:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/8915/tempuc5.th.pnghttp://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5682/tempis7.th.pnghttp://img61.imageshack.us/img61/7892/tempis9.th.png

C&C please,
Benny

Progress
 

Finished the strips:
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/8229/tempvl7.th.pnghttp://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2...2726bq0.th.jpg

Had to overcome a little problem with rotation of densely grouped objects to get here...
Speaking of groups, I have a question:
Is there a way to add/remove an object to/from a group without creating a new group?

and another question: how should I approach the modeling of the wires? (See pic above, on the shelf)

C&C and help will be much appreciated

in the hypergraph or outliner you can remove things from a group of you middle mouse click and drag it out to the world

really nice job so far benny k - and great choice of model. a scummy fridge is perfect for this challenge. :)

Thanks Chirone... MMB just saved me about 10 minutes ;) .
I'm currently redoing the strips from the last post because Maya crashed last time and I've just noticed my progress wasn't saved :( which is very weird because I was sure I saved it :headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

Still need help with the wires though (my last post)...

Benny

Extrude along curve?

I thought it would have been quite tricky but it went out well...
Is it just me or the site experienced quite a downtime yesterday? I worked on my model a bit, finished the strips(again) and wires but I had nowhere to post it...
Well, here it is:
http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/8917/tempso9.th.pnghttp://img131.imageshack.us/img131/5193/temp2hd0.th.png

There's something I feel I forgot to mention...

Oo, right... I'M 16 :attn:

Benny

damn you young ones! if only i knew about this stuff back in the old days :(

nah, it wasn't just you, simply maya was down for a long long time...
i thought it was just me, but all the other webpages were working, and simply maya wasn't working on both uni and internet cafe computers.

then my friend pointed me to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com which told me it was down for everyone

Abandoned it some more:
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/8350/tempqx7.th.pnghttp://img363.imageshack.us/img363/7...2757up1.th.jpg

C&C Please...
Benny

OK, I'm done for today.
A few last tweaks, dents and bends I did:
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3089/tempxz6.th.png
And a ref for the dents (and the metal strip, I believe I haven't shown this one):
http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/9...2740vz6.th.jpg

I'm going to celebrate my 16th birthday :attn:
afterward I'm going to start laying UVs.

Benny

it's looking really great - though 'm not sure i'm buying the bent pieces on the side - the dents look a little straight and uniform at the moment. other than that, great work so far. :)

The dent's are supposed to be relatively small so I'm going to rely on the textures to make them look realistic...

Sorry, no progress yet, I'm hoping to get some today

Benny

yay for bump mapping!

and happy belated 16th birthday! do you get to do anything cool now?

i think here in NZ you get nothing cool... you can start driving and working when you're 15

Thanks Chirone,
I got mostly money :attn: 1,300 NIS (currently 370.58 USD).
I'm gonna save it for a driver's licence. when I get 16.5 I can start learning how to drive...

I finished laying UVs of anything but the door. no time to post pics now cause I need to get up early tomorrow and my brother is asking me for the computer...

Benny

ah the good ol' days when you gotta share your computer with the other people of the house....

i'll assume from one of your other posts you used the UV editor in Maya to layout your UVs :)

:attn: finished laying UVs!
Maybe a few tweaks here and there but I can say I'm done with that...
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/770/tempan9.th.png (this is probably going to take a while to load)

Chirone: yes, I used Maya's UV editor ...

Now for the really hard part.
If any of you guys have a good tutorial for materials and shaders and all that stuff I'd like to hear about it because my knowledge on this subject is totally basic
:headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

let's hear what you've got to offer :attn:
Benny

Sorry, don't know of any tut's for that. Learnt all I know from The Animation School in Cape Town.

Q1:Do you have photoshop?
Q2: what do you know about texturing? IE, the difference between a phong, blinn, lambert, and phong E?
Not questioning your intelligence or anything. Just you said you don't know much about it.

See, different parts of your fridge are gonna need different finishes. Like the inside rack is shiny and rusty, and the rubber strips is dull and dirty, and then the outside is different all together.

Now it is possible just project a photo onto an object. But you don't have much controll over it.

Otherwise you could paint it using maya paint. But that's really hard to get it to look great.

For photoshop:
Combine all the chrome, rubber, painted and plastic objects in their separate groups.
Assign suitable shaders to those objects.
Fit their UV maps into the top right hand corner of the UV texture window.
Image-create PSD networks in the UV texture editor.
Now you have your psd doc. Go play around in photoshop and save .
Back in maya go to image-update psd networks. Press 6. The textures should show.
No you can trun off layers in photoshop, but do not delete them unless you're the one that aded them. It completely messes up the doc and makes you compy freeze up.

Ok so that's the really short version. Maybe I didn't help at all. You should be able to get most of this in Maya help.
Good luck kiddo
Zel

Thanks, but now that I think of it my knowledge is not TOTALLY basic... I know how to apply a texture from a file... I have photoshop, and i know the difference between lambert and blin, phong and phong E (I don't know the difference between the later three... Can someone explain that?).

What I'm having problems with is how to make it look good after I assign the basic texture. some photoshop tutorials might help too because I don't know enough to refine those textures that aren't abandoned enough.

Plus, I'm currently having problems with bump mapping.
When I apply a bump map the surface get's all dark and rough even when my bump map is a uniform color.

Any Ideas? Anybody?
Benny

that made me smile. :)

basically a blinn and phong have specularity attributes that you can adjust. i think phong shaders are more realistic but take longer to compute.

for photoshop you're just going to need to start experimenting. look up a few basic tuts to get a feel of the tools. focus on the color map first - get that right and then can use it for painting your bump and spec maps. try to think about where an object is shiny or not for the spec map. that adds a lot of realism.

here's a good overall tutorial of the process.

http://www.leighvanderbyl.com/tutorials.html

as for your bump, you need to lower the depth on the bump2dnode. pretty low - like o.1.

Thanks arran :bow: , good link :attn:
Hope I'll get something done soon...(Finally - I was just playing around and discarding any progress I made so far)

Any more tutorials you think can help? I'll try anything right now.
Benny