CAGD 330 - Intermediate 3d Modeling

The Door - MODELLING

 Most of this process went so dang smoothly. I had the idea from the beginning of relying heavily on curves to create the forms, and then detailing the hell out of the rest. And that's exactly what happened.

The major rings were all made out of toruses, but every other branch was made from curves. I considered dynamesh-ing those together with the rings, but instead I carved grooves into the outer rings around where the branches make contact, and blended them in that way.

The pattern in the center started off as an alpha stamp, using an image of the House Telvanni crest. Then I smoothed things out a bit, and traced over the pattern by hand to give it a more handcrafted effect.

It was very simple to retopologize this one. Basically, it was matter of building toruses and curves, then shrinkwrapping them to conform to the high poly. 

Blender has great curves. In the image above, there are 10 disconnected nurb curves that are beveled, and with a shrinkwrap modifier thrown on top. Once I got the right shape, I just had to convert it to a mesh and merge it together at the intersections.

The UVs were quite simple, too, so it did not take long to get this into painter. Textures are very basic right now, but it's definitely looking how I want it.

So, I've gotten pretty far with this, but I still need to make some changes. Possibly major changes. Something went a little bit wrong here, because so far it's really not as intricate as I wanted it to be. I really meant to push things further from my concept art and get creative, but so far I ended up sticking to the sketch almost exactly. Also, I still need to model the frame, but I'm really not that worried about it. I'm planning on doing something that sprawls out, like the archway in the middle of the bridge here.

 

The Door - Concept Art

 I said to expect a sketch soon, so here it is! I may experiment more, but I have settled on an overall design direction. I referenced several Telvanni doors from Morrowind and Skyrim by pulling the models directly from the game and arranging them in the same blender scene.

After looking closely at each of these, I had some ideas for where I wanted to take it. I got inspired to sketch something out in zbrush based on the hollow branch door on the far right. I made this using a series of curves that I dynameshed together.

 

I really liked the organic branches and vines, but I also wanted to incorporate intricate metal elements like the hinge, as well as the spiral design and the House Telvanni sigil. Here is what I came up with:

 

 Hopefully, this will evolve organically as it goes along. I can see myself having a lot of fun with building more and more detail into this, letting it grow like the magical mushroom house it belongs in.

 

The Door - Concept Post 1

So... the door. First thing that came to mind was the Strange Door from Oblivion.

Well it's called a door, at least. That door leads to the realm of the mad god, and I have a feeling that's where I would end up if I decided to sculpt this one. So probably best not to go there because I might not come back.

Then I looked back to Morrowind. One nice thing about referencing Morrowind is that many of the designs have an elegance to them, but the low resolution and polycount means that most of the intricate detail is only vaguely suggested.

The limited detail means that something is left to the imagination, which gives me room to explore and invent. It's a great starting point and it means that I will be less likely to mimic the original too strictly. I'm going to go in my own direction with this. I love the combination of the organic magic mushroom and vine shapes, with added wood and metal components. The Telvanni grow their houses and towers from magic spores. Trippy

 

There's a good bit of variety in Telvanni doors. I'll run around Morrowind soon and take some of my own screenshots. I want to follow that design style, but I'll find somewhere new to take it. Maybe I'll use House Telvanni symbols, or I might do something entirely original.

 

Expect sketches soon :)

 

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Beer Mug

Chug-a-lug, Gordon!

 

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Game Controller: DopeDoe 64 Controller

October 14, 2020

 

I chose to model this funky, alien, N64 controller. I would like to think that it was made for people with four arms.

 

 

Modeling this particular controller was a challenge because there is not a lot of reference material for it, and I do not own one that I can reference. That being said, I found that I could use the dimensions of the original N64 controller, and just mirror everything at the right spot. I modeled this in Blender because I'm just like that. The mirror tools in Blender and its general versatility are quite nice, in my opinion. Sometimes Blender crashes when I bevel foolishly while subdivision surface is enabled. I think I once had to redo half an hour of work because I forgot to save.

 

 

I didn't run into too many major problems, but I had some bumps along the way. The most common issue I had was that the mesh just generally kept getting a bit... messy. Things that were supposed to be flat were bumpy, and sometimes the topology around corners was wracking my brain. Usually, the answer was to just restart the part of the mesh I was working on at the time.

 

progression from first blockout to final form

Sometimes it was best to restart a piece even if I didn't think there was a big problem with it. I was happy with a previous version of the joysticks and buttons for a while, then near the end it occurred to me that I could do a much better job, so then I redid them in a way that was much cleaner. I'm glad I took the time to make that change.

I changed the branding from Nintendo to DopeDoe. An icon and alias that I like to use sometimes. Does are pretty dope, tho

Texture maps:

 

 

Final Renders:

 

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Game Controller - Week 1

September 21, 2020

Right from the start, I wanted to do something weird. This bizarre N64 controller, presumably designed for spider people with four arms and four legs, seemed to fit just right.

So far, things have gone smoothly with no real hang-ups. I found some decent reference images of this controller, and a diagram of the standard N64 controller. The measurements proportions are the same, so I was able to start with the measurements from the diagram. Basically, I am modeling the standard N64 controller, then mirroring it down the center and making adjustments.

Early work