Brushing up on my 3D Modelling (pun intended)
- Violet Regier
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Back in 2021, I learned how to use Autodesk 3D Studio Max through a high school co-op credit. In this class I only really learned hard surface modelling and basic rendering, no texturing or anything like that. Below are two renders I recovered from that period.
I also took several classes in 3D modelling while I attended Sheridan College. There, we were given educational licenses for Autodesk Maya and the Adobe Substance suite. Unfortunately, I did not archive this body of work nearly as well, and nothing of this time survives.
After graduating from Sheridan, I lost access to my educational licenses for those pieces of industry software. I decided to try my hand at Blender to keep my skill set fresh and to learn more accessible software. When deciding what I would practice on first, I decided to choose an object that was in my possession. I picked my 6 string guitar, a Red Epiphone SG Standard.
For reference photos, obviously I just took some of the guitar, various angles and such, to build a moodboard. For the orthographic image plane I found a photo of an SG on the internet that was taken head on. When choosing an art style, I decided to go with a low poly but realistic style, like in Guitar Hero: On Tour for Nintendo DS.
When texturing, I used photos of the wood grain from my guitar, as well as photos of the knobs and other hardware. Having previously used Adobe's Substance suite for texturing, doing everything manually was exciting! I used quite low resolution textures so it was very forgiving as far as seams and stitching go. I also used photos from the guitar to make sure the stickers and band aids (yes, there are band aids on the pick guard of my guitar) were replicated accurately in the model. Placement was a lot of trial and error, luckily in Blender simply saving the PNG allowed it to show immediately in the program, making for quick iteration. In classic retro fashion, I designed the UVs very carefully, making sure to reuse things. The knobs are all the same UV, as are the tuning pegs and pickups.
Details like the bridge and pickups pop out of the geometry of the guitar, but things like the pick guard and 1/4 inch jack were added in texturing. Keeping in mind the limitations of older console hardware, I wanted to keep my polygon count as low as possible. To achieve this I used floating meshes for the pickups, knobs, bridge and pegs. Making it all a single mesh would require more geometry to connect.
For the strings, I made a single sided plane that traveled from the bridge to the tuning pegs, and textured it with transparency. For this model, I did not create any additional maps. No normal map or metallic map, etc. The main reason I chose this was because these maps are difficult to generate by hand without texturing software, and they also aren't required for the art style.
I'm really proud of what I was able to achieve here. This isn't perfect, but it was my first stab at 3D modelling in years, and first time texturing by hand, as well as incorporating real images into my texturing. Contrary to what I've demonstrated here, I'm really not a visual artist. I don't have a very strong mind's eye, and I really can't draw beyond simple doodles. I like photography, but that's a very different skill set as far as visual arts go. All of this to say, 3D modelling is probably not going to play a pivotal role in my career path, but I'm always happy to learn something new and make something cool.
If you're still reading this, I would like to thank you for checking out my blog! This is my first post, and I plan on keeping this updated with new projects, game design and otherwise, so be sure to keep an eye out.
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