3D Project Assignment 1

I have put this here as my file had issued being submitted and im not sure if it actually sent:

3D Project

With 3D modelling anything that can be thought of can be made even if it doesn't really exist in real life. between movies and the games industry 3D is used quite differently.

In films 3D modelling is pretty straight forwards. Models are created at whatever level of detail that is required for the project. finding a balance of production and time working is the main key to modelling in a movie for the graphics can be pre rendered for as long as you like.

In the games industry a 3D modellers job is a lot more detailed and time consuming. Game engines only allow for assets that are closed polygon meshes, and the number of polygons is determined by the hardware or console that will be running it as every single frame must display the all the models and polys that many times a second (avg 30-60 Frames per second) unlike films where detail is important with the increased render time, in games it is all about efficiency, and is the most key thing to making a model, because from the first cube you place down you are being limited by your maximum poly count for that project, knowing that your object is one of thousands that will be in the game all rendering 30 times a second. because there is a technology limitation on what different consoles and pc builds can run, modellers use many different techniques to lower the polycount of their models. The most common and reliable method is Normal Mapping. Normal Mapping is a process in which smaller details are not put into the model and instead put onto a grayscale version of the texture of the model, being that the brighter the area is a raised up area and the darker the area means the more indented the area is. So instead of creating nooks and crannys as details into a rock instead the rock is a completely smooth object with the normal map adding in bumps and cracks to the rock.

3D modellers use different software to produce 3D models. diffrent softwares have diffrent pros and cons to them.

• Maya

• Blender

• 3DS Max

• Cinema 4D

• AfterEffects

• Photoshop (used for UV/norm/bump maps and creating textures)

Maya is the most widely used software for good reason, it can handle entire scenes really well and the tools it has are pinpoint and the best their is, common issues people have with maya are next to none other than personal issues with opinion. Maya has next to no downsides, Maya is free to download and use, but requires you to buy a license to publish models

Blender is a free community run 3D modelling software, it is loved by many for the fact that it is a completely free modelling software, The upsides to Blender (excluding its free) is like most 3D softwares there are plugins to change what you can and can't do, blender being community run has the most plugins available making it possible to do loads of diffrent things with all the tools. the downsides however are, the engine can't run too much and can't handle extremely high poly models as well as anything published using blender is technically owned by blender as their is no way to by the rights to the models other than buying them individually, but buying every model you make is expensive and upsetting that you have to buy your own work.

3DS Max is another beloved 3D software, ALmost every 3D expert says their is no fundamental difference between this and Maya. but 3DS does offer some tools maya does not, however Maya has things 3DS Max doesn’t have as well. What's interesting about the competing softwares is they are both owned by the same company: Autodesk. The main difference is the UI of maya and max are inverted things on the left of maya are on the right of 3DS Max. Overall people do prefer Maya as the tools it offers over 3DS Max are more useful for game development of making models while max more themed to animation and/or film work.

Cinema 4D is known for its ease of use and very intuitive layout of the UI and a few of its tools are very well developed and made, Cinema 4D is also an extremely stable software, however Cinema 4D has seen some better days as updates are becoming less common especially to the parts such as Modeling workflow, UV editing and BodyPaint 3D which have not been updating in a very long time and the software is slowly becoming obsolete.

3D models can be constructed in various ways thanks to the various tools available to the user. I will be going over Maya’s most common tools used for this.

• Primitives

• Insert Edge Loop

• Bevelling

• Construction Parameters

• Display modes

• Extruding

• Vertexes, Edges, Faces

Primitives are your basic shapes to start your model the most commonly used one is a cube as it can be formed into anything if done correctly, the primitives available in Maya are as follows: Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Plane and Torus.

Insert Edge Loop adds an edge around the entire object, enabling you to add new vertexes and modifying face dimensions (as well as adding them) and a new edge ring, this can be used to add extra detail into an object or split an image into separate pieces to if you scale one end it will only scale up to that edge loop.

Bevelling is pretty self explanatory but maya allows you to edit your bevels a lot. Bevelling is essentially turning an edge into a more curved edge rather than a point. this is achieved by turning the one edge into lots of edges all slightly positioned round to give a curved edge. In maya you can adjust how many of these edges are added to decide how smooth it is, as well as the the offset from the edge to decide how wide the curve goes along the object's side faces.

Construction Parameters are very similar to an edge loop except these are added as soon as the primitive is created, the construction parameters decide how many polly the object shall be made of, for example a cube has 6 faces (12 polys) however it's very hard to add details onto the faces as its purely 2 triangles per face, if you were to add sub divisions into the object lets say 2 sub divisions along the length width and depth of the object your cube would now have effectively 2 edge loops along each axis (X, Y and Z) evenly spaced tripling the amount of polys your cube has per dimension.

Different display modes are available in maya these are used to see your object in different ways, Solid mode is your standard grey scale object this lets you see details without distractions from any other sources, there is a wireframe mode that removes the faces and shows only the edges and vertexes, this allows you to see the entire object all the sides at the same time without it being unwrapped and get a better view of the amount of polys and where the most detail is in the object, the other mode is texture mode which renders the texture onto the image live, which isn't too helpful while building the object as the texture is created afterwards, but is useful to see how the object looks with the texture once done.

There's also view modes on maya to display the model differently, there is perspective mode where you can pan around rotate round to get a feel of the object in 3D in a perspective mode, there's also side, front and top views which are all orthographic drawings, these are used to see if everything is aligned as they are not perspective so you can see if everything is aligned with a grid view.

Extruding is the most used tool in maya when you extrude you create new faces, vertex’s and edges onto an object and pull them out this creates an edge loop from the edge of the object and allows you to pull out the object increasing overall size of the object and used to fundamentally proceed onto the next part of the object.

Vertexes are the points of objects where edges meet (usually but not always creating a corner) while an edge is a line which marks the edge of the poly, all edges must connect to to a vertex as game engines don't allow open meshes they must be closed objects. once all the edges connect round using the vertexes they create a face, a face is what's created from connecting vertexes and edges round and they are the actual visible texturable parts of the shapes, layman's terms the “side” of the object.

The constraints on making a 3D model include various things the 2 most important and obvious ones are your poly count, your model needs to be able to fit the max polycount that has been determined for your game in order for it to be processed so many times a second without causing the device rendering it live to overheat or break, the 2nd biggest constraint (which does not occur much due to starting with primitive objects) is closed meshes in a game engine all meshes must be close meaning all the edges must connect to a vertex that must connect to at least one other edge again and again until eventually your object is completely sealed and there are no holes leading inside the mesh.