Final shots - Rob

Stunning levels of detail going on here. Well done Rob!

Sams spaceship design

This is my entry for our competition! Its pretty simple, no textures or advanced rendering- but I like it. In terms of modelling, I think its been sucessful but theres A LOT of room for improvement. Every time I complete one of these competitions I get a little bit better and a little bit more confident with how things are progressing, so bring on the next challenge!!

Robs spaceship design (Part 3)

…some landing gear…. :P

Rear door with some steps….

With windscreen….. proved to be a bugger… but…. Why should that have been any different to the rest of the model ay? :P
There have been a few changes since these pics.. but not a great deal. Had other things going on and its kind of taken a back seat again.

Biggest change is I added a character :P … brought in the old ROB-BOT from my final film. Depending on how things go….maybe not for this particular challenge… but at some point…. Might try animate him in the ship……we will see though…..

Erm… also added a few little bits and bobs in the interior too. Chair etc…. but still working on those bits.
…and that’s where im at with it so far. Would like to get some nice colours on to it and stuff…..but… im not exactly clued up on how to do that…..so not sure how that will turn out….

So far its probably taken…..well, its got to be over 20 hours. With restarts and mistakes and stuff. Far too long anyway… for something so simple…

Robs spaceship design (Part 2)

Another annoyingly awkward bit….making the space in the front for the window.
I didn’t plan any of this very well did i…. well…. I didn’t plan it at all…..anyway… I digress….
Point is…..when I modelled the main part of the craft i forgot to take into account the shape of the window….and….well….. the fact that there would be a window…. What a tit! …..lets just say it meant doing a fair bit of tweaking. Not really happy with it, but….once again….. frustration got the better of me and I just deleted the faces and left it at that. Bloody thing….

Anyway…..mirrored the geometry and merged it to get me ship shape all ship shape…

Did some basic cubey type shapes to create a bit of an interior….(think I changed these slightly since this version of the model…not much mind….but they are slightly different now.) .. oh yeah… theres also a gap there for the door…..that was the only bit that was straight forward :P

The aforementioned door way… with frame!…and… some groovy lil fins on th rear of the craft…

Robs spaceship design (Part 1)

This is the quick crappy sketch I used to model the space craft. Its not very imaginative or interesting….. but…. It proved a bugger to model!

Modelling part 1; tried a few different things to begin with, but finally settled on using a polygon cylinder as the basis for the craft. Manipulated that to get roughly the right shape and then used two poly spheres, deleting half the faces on each, to kind of cap off the cylinder. The wing, again, took several frustrating attempts. I tried extruding from the existing part of the model, which seemed like the obvious choice to start with, but, I just couldn’t get it right. Instead I used a poly cube as the starting point. Keeping the leading side flat, I moved the vertices closest to the main part of the craft to match them to the shape and curve of that with the intention of combining the two parts and then merging the vertices. (does that make sense?). I then extruded from the straight faces to create the wing shape. Not entirely happy with the result, but it was starting to annoy me!

Top view of the stupid bloody thing…..

After joining the wing to the ship I tried to create a kind of, erm, I guess an air intake duct. This also proved problematic. Ended up settling with what you see in the pic after spending far too long on that part…. Bloody thing…..

My Spaceship

Just a very brief WIP post on my spaceship. Both me and Rob have been pulled away from contributing fully but we're both slowly plodding away. I'm not going to say what mine is yet but I expect you'll be able to guess. If not- think of a very famous ship being caricatured!Stay tuned for more updates from both me and Rob!

-Sam

Competition #2

Its time for competition number 2, with this fortnights topic being: Spacecraft. To make it as open ended as possible, I'm leaving the competion title as just that. I'm hoping to see some realistic ships, cartoony space stations and a whole range of styles and themes. Remember, if your interested in signing up then just drop me a PM or e-mail!

Motorcycle helmet

Rob has made a fantastic effort in submitting this motorcycle helmet! See his comments below:

ok.... its done in Maya.... sure you gathered that.

there were severalother started and scraped when modelling wasnt going right and discovered better ways of doing things part way through... so... i think this is like the 3rd or 4th attempt at a model. started out with polygon sphere and...erm....whats it called...? will open maya and have a look... one sec... CYLINDER... dumb fuck...

yeah... started out with polygon sphere and cylinder for the main shell of the helmet. deleted half the faces on the sphere and the top face of the cylinder and then joined the vertices. pissed about with it and stuff till got basic helmet shape. then tweaked
vertices at front in order to get rough shape for the opening......then.. i think i deleted the faces....leaving the opening sort of thing....

erm........ also deleted bottom of the cylinder so i had a sort of basic
shell.
then duplicated it and scaled it down to fit inside existing one so i had two which i would then join together to create a thikness to it. Cant remember what i did with that.....think i may have extruded edges and then merged vertices..... was a couple weeks back now... either way... im sure there would have been a better and quicker way of doing it... but im crap on maya...so... thats what i ended up doing...or something along those lines anyway...

erm.....added some edges and stuff to get sharper lines round the base and the front opening. think thats about it for the main shell...

then i did the...erm... the bits on the side... cant remember what they are called... but they are the covers on a motor cycle helmet that you sometimes get to cover the mechanism of the visor...they pissed me off...couldnt get the right shap on them...got close and stuck with what i had though. they started off as polygon cubes...did one then mirrored it sort of thing...

then the visor......cant remember how i did that... think it started as a cube also...narrowed it down. manipulated it and so ontill got a close enough shape anyway...canceled or froze transformations onit...something along those lines anyway... and moved the pivot point for the object central to where the opening mechanism would be...so... erm... it opens from the correct place...

hardest part was the muzzel type added nose bit on the front...i was working from a quick sketch...and..well... 2d didnt translate too well to 3d..... (might add the sketches in attachments too actually...see what i worked from...) anyway... the final compramised one i used started off as a cube and sides were extruded from that...took a while and got to the point where settled for what you see on the images.

then...final bit of modelling was the buck teeth that project from the
muzzle at front of helmet... simple shape... started from a cube... simple
as...

muzzle also has the object pivot point moved... bit pointless ... but... when the visor opens and shuts it was passing trough the nose... so... if it was to be animated... when the visor starts to lift up the nose bit moves forward slightly to alow it to open uniterupted. stupid i know. did several shots of helmet...at various stages of openess... if you take a second glane you may notice that the nose is tipped forward in some of the pics...but anyway... not important i guess :P
soooo what else...?

... oh yeah.. i made a hastey search for some online lessons on adding textures
or colours or whatever to the model... first time i tried it and...well...
it wasnt terribly good....as you can see...not sure i did it right and when it
came to the...erm...whats it called...?... UV texture editor...? anyway...
whatever it is... the shapes were all over the place and it was hard to
distinguish what was what part... didnt look how i expected basically...so
struggled to do the photoshop bit... was a bit of guess work involved in
that...so... deffinately something i need to look up further... but
anywho... i digress....

so that was the basic model...
decided to see what it would look like on a character....as i havent got the "bunny-man"
character done.... (just a quick sketch of him from last year sometime)... i used the Moom downloaded character. just a couple of quick examples of the helmet in use... also attached... anyway... bout it i think... oh...erm... time wise...with restarts and trying to work out the texture bit while following instructions on line...think it worked out to something like 8 hours or something stupid... too long though... for such a simple model... just goes to show how little i used maya doesnt it :S

Personally I think he's done an awesome job. Well done Rob!

300 Spartan Helmet

Frustratingly- I haven't had nearly as much time as I wanted to in terms of practicing with Blender for my submission. However, I've cobbled together what I could and will be submitting the image below as my entry!
Its a pretty simple polygon affair which I created using block modelling techniques. I wish I had more time to add in details and the actual model itself isn't very clean. However, I've learnt a lot and can only improve after this!

Scupltris

Just a heads up for the other CGNoobs and anyone following this blog- I've recently stumbled across a really great program called Sculptris, which allows you to 'sculpt' 3D models similar to Mudbox or ZBrush.The best bit is that Sculptris is 100% FREE, and avaliable for download here. Download it, have a play and see what you can do! Attached is a really rough Moria Orc which I modelled in about 20 minutes. Pretty naff but it shows the potential that the software has!

Competition #1

Its time for the first competion between the CGNoobs. To get everyone warmed up, the first task will be to: Design, model and render a helmet! The task is relativly straight forward- you can design absolutly ANYTHING you want providing its worn on the head (and by definition gives some form of protection). You can go medieval, futuristic, steam-punk, anything you like.

The results will be posted in exactly 2 weeks time. The winner will be judged on the quality of the mesh, render, creativity and ambition. Go forth fellow noobs and create!

Orthographic reference

As well as our challenges, the CGNoobs will be also be posting noteworthy news items and links to useful tutorials we stumble across. Some of you visiting this blog may have stumbled across it though my Youtube channel. One comment that I get over and over again is: "Where can I get that reference image you use for your Maya tutorial". Well, for you people, you can find a high resolution image below! Direct link to the higher resolution image can be found here. If anyones interested, I will be continuing my tutorials but in Blender, check my Youtube channel out!

Welcome to CGNoobs

CGNoobs is a blog venture from a group of like minded individuals who are looking to experiment with 3D computer graphics. Whilst we all have some experience in working with 3D/Animation software, none of us are as proficient enough as we would like to be. In light of this, we have established CGNoobs to try and improve ourselves with weekly and bi-weekly challenges in which we compete against each other to produce the best model/animation/render we can!

If you would be interested in becoming a CGNoob, why not leave a comment and join in with the fun?