Creation is the kindled flame within one's mind.
3d Modelling -Foundation Year
Follows the development of my foundation year project in 3d Modelling, in which I created a bakery with a loft, dubbed: "The Sweetroll Bakery."
Assignment 1: Moodbaord
Before I began blocking out my plans for the building, I resorted to good old fashioned research. I included an overall layout of my plan, and then a more detailed plan of it below. In my first concept, I had thought of doing a studio loft apartment in a New York style, with a roof made partially of glass (see windows). I wanted to add details to the space, so I added a partition to the bedroom, as a changing screen of sorts.
A more in depth view at overall layout, I plan to use the provided layout with additions labelled in purple and red. I moved the location of the kitchen and living room, then added floor to ceiling windows at the base of the stairs- in short where the camera view is located, is where the windows would be.
Assessment Task 2: Blockout
The first thing I did for this assignment was block out every thing that I could think of in order to make the building.
Unfortunately at the time of making this, I wasn't very skilled with 3DSMax, (not that I am now, but hey I've improved a bit!)
Using quite of a bit of edit poly, rotation tools, scaling, etc. I was able to create a very basic block out of the image. It's not the best work, but it shows how far I've come in just a few weeks.
Formative: Updates on the City Block: The Sweetroll Bakery
Using the idea of a New York Loft apartment meets quaint bakery, I used edit poly to bevel, extrude, smooth objects, and of course edit faces and edges. I ran into several issues while smoothing, and it took up most of my day as I realised I had just created an overlapping face. My biggest issue proved to be splines- something I still struggle with. Throughout my project I have tried to include something learned from each class. At this point, I had intended to keep my slanted glass roof- as seen in the studio apartment. However with the more I modelled the bakery, the more I realised my project was quickly heading in a different direction.
Ultimately, I realised having such a slanted roof on a bakery would look rather ridiculous, and decided to go with a flat roof that complimented the bakery. I still managed to utilise the windows, as I wanted to be able to see inside the studio apartment. Creating windows that appeared to be raised open, I was able to keep the original floor to ceiling windows I had wanted initially, and make them look even better than I thought they would have.
Phase One: Research
Throughout my research, I initially planned to create a Studio apartment city block. I reviewed several examples and selected aspects from each. Before I began blocking out my plans for the building, I resorted to good old fashioned research. I included an overall layout of my plan, and then a more detailed plan of it below. In my first concept, I had thought of doing a studio loft apartment in a New York style, with a roof made partially of glass (see windows). I wanted to add details to the space, so I added a partition to the bedroom, as a changing screen of sorts. However, my design changed as I decided it would be more difficult to focus on the exterior building, and I found myself not liking the design. I pivoted my focus to create an old brick bakery with a studio apartment on top.
Phase 2: Blockout
The first thing I did for this assignment was block out everything that I could think of in order to make the building. I manoeuvred cubes and scaled them to create rectangular shutters and loose bricks. I also scaled them down to make the windows which I bevelled to create texture for a windowsill.
Phase 3 Poly Modelling
I found modelling to be the most fun part about the assignment. I spent so much of my time modelling I didn’t take as many photos as I could have, but I did take some! Personally, all of this was very new to me so I was more focused on accomplishing the actual work as opposed to taking pictures.
Phase 4 Spline Modelling
For this- I have zero pictures. This is because I struggled so much with this part- that I ultimately gave up on using the spline and used other methods. Using the torus, I shaped it into a set of chains and used that to be the chain of my bakery in place of a spline. I believe it still turned out well, and I definitely burnt myself out with this section. To be brief- I despise splines, but I’m going to spend the break reviewing splines and attempting to use them correctly.
Phase 5 Unwrapping
This phase was absolute hell. As seen in the images below, I managed to have a relatively complete unwrap, however issues were seen on the floor.
To fix this, I redid everything, and was very careful and particular about where I stitched everything. However, I later ran into a problem with that new wrap- despite it looking good. Below is the old UVs. You can see that many things, doors, the main building, and windows, are not appropriately scaled so I ran into issues with this build and had to start completely from scratch and scale everything to finish with the third UV Map below.
This UV Map has everything appropriately sized, Doors are not bigger than tiny plants, Windows are adequately sized, and the building is scaled to size as well.
Phase 6: Texturing
Texturing was much more difficult than I had anticipated. Using the multisub material, I followed the slides and examples provided to me yet still managed a plethora of problems. I had to redo my texturing several times, as seen below my model did not turn out properly and my textures greyed out after baking. This resulted in me having to go back to reconstruct my UV map- something that happened several times, and working at it until I managed to find a solution. I still have no idea what went wrong with several parts of it, but I see this as a learning experience as I walked into this with what I am now perceiving as next to no experience using the software in any shape or form.
Featured here is how my textures turned out the first time and second time with material editor for reference
I did realise that one issue I had with this build was the falloff not being switched, as I had black on top and white on bottom. After switching these my falloff appeared much better, however I still had the issue below, that resulted in having to redo my UVs again. After creating the new UV Map, I textured it and put it into the engine. What resulted here is my final textures
Phase 7 Unreal
Putting the project into Unreal after a stressful time of redoing UVs, textures, several times over with less than pretty results, the final product turned out incredible and I was able to apply material and adequate roughness to give the building more texture. I did have several issues where I was working and then suddenly unreal completely froze resulting in closing it with the task manager, so I had to save consistently or take multiple breaks between as the program would freeze and refuse to operate.
Phase 8 Renders
Due to issues with the AO Map the renders failed to come out. Below is the best I was able to get. I worked for four hours attempting to get proper renders, but aside from this I was only met with a black screen.
Phase 9 Final Presentation sheets
Note: Unfortunately due to errors with my AO map the renders turned out black, as in a black screen with nothing on it. I attempted to render on another computer and received the same result. (See Renders section above)
My final product turned out rather well, despite the countless setbacks faced throughout. Compared to the industry standard, it is definitely clear that my work is beginner. However I do firmly believe that had I not experienced so many fatal errors, I could have done much better. I would have included emissives and had the building appear as if it were at nighttime, featuring lit windows, lamp posts, and a single light on the interior of the building to show the apartment. I didn’t get the result I was aiming for, but I did get very close. With all the technical issues I had overall, I think I did very well for a beginner. I put all my time and effort into this, and am praying it paid off. With all the struggles, of getting to the point of putting it into the engine and then having to go all the way back to unwrapping, I think I’ve managed fairly well. A little overtired from hours of trying to get this to look as perfect as it could, but I think it still looks good. I would have liked to make the signs look more like they did in the reference image, as well as add food to the table, however I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. But as satisfied as I am with the results, I find myself slightly disappointed I couldn’t do it exactly as I wanted and had so many setbacks.
