[ENDED] BC3-1806 – June 2018 Class Homepage – Vehicle Modeling with Blender

[Aaron Rudderham]

@theluthier There’s an A++?! Damn, gotta step up my game, but it’s deserved, @ullreym your work was fantastic.

[agaton]

@theluthier

Hello Kent, thanks for this event ! Allthough I did not get the time to do as much as I wanted, I certainly learned new and useful things. I will unsubsribe now, only because I see that the most important and scarce resource for me is time. But you and the community have given me a boost forward, thanks, and good luck further, regards, Agaton

[Kent Trammell]

@oboshape Whoops – almost missed this one. Fantastic, Darren! I certainly feel the cobra inspiration throughout – good stuff. It’s an A this week for sure 👏

[William Miller]

@theluthier I think the next class should be about shading/texturing in general, not specifically vehicle texturing.  What if somebody didn’t take this class but wants to take that one?  By the way, if it’s in October, Blender 2.8 might be released midway through the class.

[Bauke Post]

I’m soooo tired of UV’s, I currently have to make like 15 different UV maps because I can’t make a texture higher than 4k in Substance Painter with my graphics card :(.

[Jake Korosi]

@williamatics I think it wouldn’t be a problem completing the class with 2.7x.  I imagine Kent won’t want to use 2.8 in any classes until he learns it himself.  The next “Getting started in Blender” class after 2.8 comes out may be one everyone will want to take, though!

2.8 will require some getting used to; and there are some courses on this site that simply won’t be able to be used with 2.8, especially any class whose work involves layers (no more layers in 2.8), and very new Blender users who aren’t able to work out the UI differences on their own may get very confused.  But, I’m certain that 2.79 will continue to be available for quite a while from the Blender website after 2.8 is released.  So basically the courses can be prefaced with “requires 2.7x”.  I know there is at least one course here, a VFX compositing course, that requires like 2.63 or something like that.

My own strategy for learning 2.8 is, once it enters Beta (which is possibly in August, I think?), I will begin using it for my own modeling projects; while I will continue to use 2.79b for class work here until I am fluent enough with 2.8 that the UI difference in the course videos won’t confuse me.

[Kent Trammell]

@agaton I appreciate the feedback! Glad to have you part of the class and I hope to see you in another one 🖖

@thecabbagedetective The ++ is quite rare. And you’re rocking 3 “A+“s for the month. There’s only so much XP in the CGC vault! 😛

@williamatics I’m also tracking in that direction, to do shading and lighting for the next class (after the august rerun of BC1). I can imagine structuring the curriculum around 3-4 types of scenes to shade + light, one being a vehicle (for leather, car paint, rubber, metal, etc) and the others being…I dunno, not thought that far ahead yet 😅

@baukepost Wow, you’re going super high res with your texturing. #respect

[Darren McBain]

see the June Week4 submissions have pipped the post on the report card 😉

[William Miller]

@theluthier I was thinking you could divide it by material type, such as organic, metallic, etc.

[Jack]

Homework Submission Week 4

Sketchfab link

Did this one without looking at any references, at 4am, from a box of scraps, while discussing with friends which classic Resident Evil was the best. Finished some details today. I think I’ll retopo it…

[silentheart00]

@oboshape @jakeblended  Thanks!

[Aaron Rudderham]

HOMEWORK SUBMISSION WEEK 4

“At the dawn of the 23rd century, the brightest technological minds at the Mars Mining Operation invented a piloted vehicle, designed to traverse the dangerous martian mines
whilst being highly productive. Their creation was the A.M.E, the Agile Mining Excavator. Equipped with six magnetic legs, carefully crafted to cling to even the roughest surfaces, and an overclocked MMO mining drill atop its looming tendril. It was highly successful, with the MMO receiving massive profits due to the increased productivity.

However, there was another mind at the MMO. A much darker, violent mind. This mind belonged to one Frederick Garvey, the lead designer of the MMO’s tools and vehicles. He proposed an idea, an idea to take their initial concepts of an excavator and turn it into something more. A means of war. After some initial trepidation he was given permission to “improve” upon their designs and finally resulted in the A.I.T, the Agile Ion Tank, with its front defended with a remote-controlled .45 automatic turret and its drill replaced with a devastating ion particle cannon, effective at annihilating anything in its wake, organic or otherwise.

Whilst events started innocently enough, merely being used to defend the AMEs from the horrors that lurked within the Martian depths, they were slowly but methodically used in acts of defense, in acts of attack,  and in acts of war. With this, the MMO slowly turned from an otherwise uninteresting corporation to one of the most powerful military forces the solar system knew. With it’s piercing red glare sweeping the battlefield before it, it bestowed nothing but fear and despair into its enemies, knowing that there will be no escape…”

Well that was… probably unnecessary  but there you are! English class wasn’t my strong point…

So here we have the AIT, completely retopologized and somewhat shaded. Again, disappointed with the materials I had but I think I did the best I could with what I had. Also regret taking a break ’cause there were quite a few other things I had planned to do, such had mesh model an interior, but hey, who’s not to say I can’t work on this more after the class is done?

Here’s one more well lit without the fancy effects:

And here is the retopoed version alongside the original sculpted version:

Went from a whopping 5.1 million verts to a somewhat less but still whopping 1.6 million verts, not animation ready yet but I’m sure I could make it so in time.

This week was a lot of firsts. First proper sculpting project. First time ever retopo-ing. First time actually doing something significant in the compositor. First time (badly) writing pointless lore. It was damn enjoyable, if I do say so myself. Even my topology, which was… well, *good* isn’t the right word, but it’s definitely my best so far!

Sketchfab link goes here. No, wait… here. This was also a first of attempting to apply materials to a Sketchfab model and whilst it’s not as accurate to the original it looks close enough for me.

Dunno about you guys but this was by far the most experimental week for me, minus a few frustrations and growing pains it was a lot of fun. Been doing this whole Blender thing for about 5 months now so I’m really excited to see what I can learn by my anniversary. Looking forward to the stream tomorrow (today?) and if everything is to be reviewed I hope I made it in time! Good day to you all and I’m incredibly tired so goodnight… morning? Whichever suits you I suppose.

[silentheart00]

@freddie82 Yeah, watch as many videos as you can.  From what I understand about shaders is they contain algorithms that calculate how light interacts with the object.  So, when I was first learning about shaders, there were 3 ways light would interact: lambert, blinn, and phong shaders.  A lambert is a very diffused surface; no highlights.  So, something like flat or matte paint.  Blinn has a soft highlight, something like the fake wood appearance on a cheap desk.  Phong is a strong highlight, like a glass bottle.  Now, shaders have gotten more complex and can do a lot of cool things.

According to Wikipedia, “…a shader is a type of computer program that was originally used for shading (the production of appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color within an image) but which now performs a variety of specialized functions in various fields of computer graphics special effects or does video post-processing unrelated to shading, or even functions unrelated to graphics at all.”  So, at the base level, it’s a program that describes how something should look when rendered.  Hope this helps, and feel free to ask any follow up questions.

[Bauke Post]

@thecabbagedetective That looks cool, very interesting concept!

[Darren McBain]

@thecabbagedetective Man thats some brilliant work.  love how you took the time to go all in with every aspect from retopo to lighting and compositing and the background story to top it all off 🙂
very nice….!

[Author]

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