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Project : Nautilus 

3D modeling process 

-Programs used:
-Blender
-Marmoset tool bag
-Photoshop
-Keyshot

Tips

During the course of this project I have discovered just how useful the official blender forums can be, they are a extremely valuable resource  when it comes to problem solving without having to ask other people. ( Blender wiki )

Step 1:

1

 The first attempt at making the hull came from making a simple cube and subdivided the surface to give me some additional geometry to work with. Using the soft select tool I was able to grab groups of faces and pull them down in a even divide. In addition to this using the sphere addition it creates a very soft fall off creating a softer curve. This process however proved very time consuming and hard to get an exact smooth curve with so many subdivisions. A possible option here would have been to remove some edge loops and simplify the hull but I decided on another option.

2

 Using a sphere which I had cut in half and stretched on the X and Y axis, I was able to create the smooth rounded under side of the hull with ease. Pinching the front end where the bow would be. Selecting the top face I extruded an additional edge loop to create the side of the boat. At the rear end of the boat, adjacent to the bow I extruded again and tapered the aft of the boat to a nice smooth finish, as can be seen in the photo below.

3

 The the main bulk of the hull completed using mainly the 'Extrude' and 'soft select' tools I moved on to blocking out the other main features of the yacht. I find that blocking out is a very helpful way of starting a 3D project to give and idea of how certain shapes and volumes will interact and compare with others. Here I have added the wheel, mast, boom, keel. winches and bow spread. These items mostly comprise of using cylinders which have been extruded to scale.

4

 In this shot you can see the sleek profile of the yacht, Using a Blender modifier 'array' tool I have duplicated the poles for the side rail. This tool is extremely useful for saving time when modelling, any modifications done to the first pole is now universal to all the duplicates.

5

 The dual rudder have been put in place, this is done by using a modifier called 'mirror' in which everything is mirrored on the axis of choice. The fact that the boat is more or less symmetrical, I have found myself using this tool an awful lot to save time and ensure precise accuracy with measurements. The dual rudders is a design choice that is imperative to racing yachts as a vast majority of the journey shall be spent keeling on a steep angle, this ensures there is always at least 1 rudder in the water. The rear transom frame has been added, as well as radar equipment. These again are created by using the basic cube and cylinder combined with the 'extrude' and 'bevel ' tool.

6

 The spreaders on the mast have been created by 'extruding' cubes and 'bevelling' the edges to give a smooth look. The sails have been made by cutting a square in half, creating geometry and subdividing the face. I realise the geometry is extremely high but for the final render I wanted a very realistic cloth effect on the sails and hence sacrificed additional geometry on other items.

These are a few progress renders from about half way through the build, when posting this to the online community I got some great constructive feedback from the community and was able to work off there queries.

Rear View.

Deck view.

Bow View.

7

 At this stage in the build, it's important to use 'Orthographic' view which can be activated by pressing '5' on your num pad. From this view you can select different view by selecting additional keys on the num pad. This option combined with the magnet snapping tool can make your life a lot easier when doing precision modelling on mechanical sculpts.

8

The sails were something I really wanted to get right in the final build of the yacht, I started using the 'soft select' tool which worked relativity well. I later noticed that by using the 'G' key combined with the mouse scroll you can quickly change the area of affect with this tool. After struggling to get the dramatic full sail effect I was looking for with the soft select tool, I decided to use the 'Sculpt' feature in Blender combined with my wacom tablet. Using the 'infaltet tool combined with 'smooth' I was able to create a dramatic form I was happy with. ( Note this only worked well because of the high subdivision level).

9

 The cables proved relatively easy to do, once again using orthographic mode to grab the end cylindrical faces and drag them to the corresponding places on the mast. This part of the mast design helps structural stability and realism to the design.

10

 The UV mapping was relatively simple for the yacht, the only piece that really needed to be mapped was the hull and sails for the graphic design which will be textured on later. The other pieces will be material attributes within Keyshot and assigned textures and shaders. I have chosen Keyshot as my render software mainly for the results it can give but also because it's quickly becoming the industry standard for Industrial and Product designers across the globe. For this I invested in a year license to Luxion.

11

I really started to work the rear profile of the boat, It needed to be streamline and be easy for the water coming over the front of the bow to slip off the end of the boat as quickly as possible. Using the ' Cut ' tool I created a small slipway at the end of the yacht to help get rid of water. In addition I have added speed and navigation instruments to just in front of the wheel braces. These were made by using the 'extrude' tool on cubes and then using 'array' to duplicate them on the X axis.

12

 The extra supports that connect to the top of the mast and the base of the hull were a last minute addition to the boat to give it extra support, as these boats are very common to dis mastings in rough conditions.

13

This is a complete model of the yacht. I have begun playing around with the Ocean Modifier creating the scene in which the boats final render will be. I want the general pose of the yacht to be extremely dramatic ( within the restrictions of realism ) The boat will naturally be in rough conditions with full sail, including a Storm Jib, spinnaker and main sail.

Once the model was completed I started playing around with different colour pallets and textures. I wanted the colour to be harmonious through out the model which would leave a good colour balance. The teal blue and the black compliment the contemporary architectural structure of the boat helping it emphasis a modern distinct rendering.

Within blender I started to play around with different materials for the Ocean. Being that Keyshot is a relatively new Rendering software package from Luxion, the setting were relatively limited. In this image I actually used a clear glass material with a light teal colour to show the water, baring in mind this is only a screenshot render and not a fully fledged render with additional samples and ray tracing. I'm happy with outcome however, I plan to after move the rendering to Photoshop where I can add some additionnal spray and background sky.
using labels in Keyshot I want to make custom texture and add additional spray to the top of the waves, where they are peaking. ( this was something that was mentioned on my Facebook post on 'lunch crunch'. The feedback has proved to be very constructive.

The general feedback from the artist community on the Facebook page " Level up ", was brilliant and uplifting with constructive comments which will help me push the final design and render further.

Additional Buoy and Flags.

A thought came to me today whilst I was starting to render out the main scene in Keyshot. I wanted some way to give the final render a sense of space and location, also a way to emphasise the severity of the weather in the image. I have decided that a buoy would make the ocean look more realistic and give the impression that the yacht isn't perhaps to far off shore. I want the image and render to be able to tell a story when people look at it. I feel that flags will also help give and idea of what the wind is doing and its severity.

Progress Renders with the additional features 

Getting constructive feedback for this project has been a big part of its progression. One of my friends, Alex Chesham is 3rd year Photography and has also worked within the photography industry for many years prior to his degree. The bellow image is a rough out of his view on the lighting and how to get the best out of the render. Little tips like these from industry professionals can prove very insightful.

In the following image you can see I have added both the racing Buoy and flags. The flags are great for showing the force of the wind and give the scene an additional sense of ferocity. The buoy in the water also helps demonstrate this by heaving on an angle.

In this version of the render I felt the flags were far to clumped together and also were distracting from the centre cock pit ( where most of the detail is . I decided to push the flags further up the cable on the aft of the yacht ( In doing so creating a better spread for the eye ). At this point I also felt that the mast had been slightly neglected in detail so this was a great chance to spruce it up.

In this image I decided to mess around with some different colours and lighting effects, I am not happy with the render itself, like I said this is a experiment of colours.

With these 2 images the render has picked out individual polygons which can clearly be seen on the waves at the front of the render, I'm not sure why this is happening although I think it has something to do with me stretching the geometry too far when sculpting the additional details, I will go back into Blender ( sculpt mode ) and attempt to fix this before the final render and show reel.

Herakles 

Gate keeper of Olympus and champion of hero's

During the start of BA8 I was initially doing a Man of war square rigger which i got a little way into. The next project I switched too was a Greek warrior 3D Marquette. I unfortunately lost my USB stick for roughly 2 months and regrettably didn't have  back up so I decided to start my 4th and final project to do a Yacht design for a sailing game. I've always been a keen sailor so this project was really something I could dig my teeth into. The USb stick showed up 4 weeks before my final hand in. I decided that I still wanted to some Z Brush work this term so decided to take it up as a second project. This was relatively risky s but I wanted to show some Zbrush skill in my final show reel and show being able to work across a range of programs and not just to be a one trick pony.

Reference material:








Pinterest 

Pinterest has proven to be a very valuable tool when it comes to gathering reference images and creating boards to work from in a separate window. The website enables you to breeze through incredible numbers of images and easily pin them to one of your designated boards where you can browse at your lesiure in a tiled tidy format.

Below is a link to my pinterest wall, from where there are pages for all refference matterial for this project, such as Greek, sailing, yachts and sail design.

http://gb.pinterest.com/davidrallan/

Competitions 

Regrettably I haven't been able to partake in any competitions this year as a result of the course work. That's not to say I didn't look for any, I managed to find a competition to design and texture a yacht to be in  an on-line sailing regatta game. This would have been a perfect example to combine with my Yacht design for my studies but will now eagerly await the next competition.


Magazine

During the course of this year I have found it increasingly valuable to be signed up to the following magazines, 3D ARTIST and 3D ART AND DESIGN. These 60 page booklets are full of great tips from industry professionals, not just on 3d modelling itself but also on how to approach company's, going free lance and getting a good work ethic. The amount of knowledge that can be gained by these monthly issues are a necessity for new artists. In addition to the monthly magazine, I have also signed up to there websites where I receive weekly newsletters on events and updates.

NUA incident

Tutorials/ helpful links.

These tutorials are great for showing how to work with slicing geometry, using dynamesh and also using the mask and pinch tool. These were very helpful for my head bust, as creating realistic armour is not something I would usually choose to do in Z Brush. I would much rather to use hard surfaced specialized software like Blender. However with the combination of these brushes and the polish, H polish and flatten tools, I was able to create some very nice effects.




Blender Temple.

During modelling the Greek head bust I decided that the stone structure should have something to sit on, I quickly mocked up a temple design as can be seen from the images below.

Here I am beginning to triangulate the faces of the temple, this is essential for importing the model into ' Ivy Gen' which is a tool you can import models too and can create ivy that grows up the models. This tool was shown to me by a friend at uni and is very intuitive and easy to use. This will also match the scene's aesthetics in regards to it being a greek statue.

Programs used: Z Brush.

These are a few progress renders with the head bust. The inspiration and reference for the head bust was from taken Herakles, an ancient Greek divine hero in Mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene. he was the greatest of the Greek hero's, a paragon and champion of masculinity. I felt that this would be a perfect character to sculpt, something that can show power and prowess, but also something that has a story to go with the Marquette .



From this angle I started working in more of the ears and getting the basic forms of the head hair, using the same tools as the previous render.

1

 The initial sculpt started with a poly sphere in ZBrush, using the Mirror symmetry tool. From here I sued a number of brushes such as the Sculpt and smooth tool, combined with clay, pinch and polish to start creating the facial forms.

2

 At this faze I started to work on the beard more, adding another subdivision level. The majority of the beard was created using a small clay brush, combined with smooth pinch. I probably shouldn't have started to add such fine detail early on as this can cause problems in the mesh at later stages. I have also widened the clavicles and broadend the shoulders to stay true to the mythical Greek theme of Herakles.


3

4

 At this stage I am happy with the base sculpt. The model this far hasn't left much of a chance for using sub tools and masking. i have decided to leave the base for the mesh at this point and push the sculpt further than just the base mesh. I will attempt to add god like armour to the head.

One of the issues I ran into whislt sculpting was forgetting to have the mirror tool on while sculpting on the X axis. This bust is obviously identical on both sides ( at least for the base sculpt ). To remedy this problem I found I was able to delete half of the mesh on one side and then mirror it back over to the side using the following commands.

Cutting out mesh

Ctrl + shift and select LASSO RECT
With this tool you need to highlight and invert the selection to be able to hide the geometry.

Visibilty tab and select Hide active
This will hide the active selected geometry

Geometry tab - Delete hidden and fill hole
This cuts out the geometry and fills the hole that has been made in the mesh, a great tool to use after this is smooth to round off the sharp edges with have just been made from the cut.

This project so far has really enabled to explore some additional areas of Z Brush. re taking this project on the side of the yacht design has enabled me to this year really branch my skill set within 3D. Ancient Greek mythology and culture has always been an interest of mine, the gods of mount Olympus. The stories that are intertwined with his history are so rich and mysterious within there own right. One of the stories of Artemis and Acteon features vicious hounds that are called upon to chase Acteon down once Artemis had turned him into a stag. The stories are really imaginative and can be a great place to draw inspiration for work.

The web is full of great tutorials for Z Brush, the Pixologic website has detailed tutorials on all the basics which have proved incredibly useful for this project. These feature all the tools that have mentioned in the above progress render.

In addition to the pixologic website you tube has been as useful as ever when getting stuck.

New Characters -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0q1hnYMHMw

Using Dynamesh - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lJArPtjUPs

Curved multi mesh - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqvjxHfU4PI

Keyshot

During the term I started to explore with different methods of rendering and how I could get the best results for my personal project. For the last few years I have been using Blender, cycles render combined with Maya and Mental ray/ V Ray.

Setting up lighting in these 3D software packages can be timely and when on a tigh schedule in the woring world you need to keep things tight. After exploring the Keshot interface I began to do some basic renders of my work in progress. I found that the interface was extremely intuitive and user friendly. The software enables you to drag and drop selected materials and texutres. Obviously this doesn't work for games at the moment, hence me still doing UV maps for my models but in the future it could definatley open some eye lids.

Aside from this, the program would be very useful for getting quick renders out to consumers. With the recent developments in 3D printing, I find myself wanting to become more and more involved in that side of the field, the thought of being able to design anything and everything for the consumer really excites me with my new knowledge in Z Brush and Blender. I can now see how I can integrate the packages to create anything from little toys to bespoke furniture, this could definitely be a possible career path for the future.

As in clear from this render, it gives a very clean crisp lighting that highlights everything that should be. This is a great example of what could be sent to a possible client, if this were a sculpture I was doing for commission.









3D Printing

Pinterest link 

http://gb.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=3d%20printing

Because of my main focus on 3D modelling, I am very interested in getting something 3d printed for the end of year show. From what I know about 3D printing, I know the mesh needs to be hollow which of course happens to be perfect for my helmet design. I have done research into costs and materials. I plan on printing the helmet in life size forms, so it can be worn and also used as a prop if needs be. ( This has the potential to be a possible business doing assignment work for clients to exact specifications.

http://www.keep-art.co.uk/

This site was suggested to me for the 3D printing, as it's relatively local. My friend Jake had great things to say about the word he had printed there so I have been in email contact with the manufacturer. Jonathan keep has done seminars and master classes at UEA which I have regrettably missed out on but mainly focuses on Garden sculpture, domestic ware, collaborative works and Digital.

I think this piece printed in real life wearable size would be a very eye catching piece for the end of year show ( not to mention awesome to wear for fancy dress ! )








After a talk with my tutor Mark today he has given me the thumbs up to go ahead and do the final renders. He said there was nothing model wise that could be added to composition at this point in time make it a better scene. I enquired about doing a possible Ocean physics animation with some breaking waves but at this point in the term it's all a bit too late.








Design Document

The design document needs to be sleek design that is both professional and clear. I wan't it to represent all of the intuitive design qualities of the boat





Games AD Post

This is a piece of work to go in the Games AD journal which is a piece that will be distributed during the end of year exhibition


David Allan

My name is David Allan and I am a graduate of Video Game Art & Design. My main focus through this degree has been 3D modelling. This final project has been a great opportunity to develop my 3D skills across a range of software which has enabled me to grow as a 3D artist. Additionally it has been a platform to collaborate my personal interests into one project.

Davidrallan.co.uk

For this image I decided to do a colour pass  on the render, The contrast .