To Start my low poly model i used one of the premade shapes as a base, I chose to use the cube as it has the lowest amount of polys as well as its a solid base shape for what I wanted to create.
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I didn't want to over complicate my project so I decided to create a basic tentacle without creating the rest of the body of the creature due to my lack of prior usage of maya and my lack of knowledge when it comes to creating stuff in 3D.
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From the basic cube I used to create a base I used the edge loop tool to create the divisions where I wanted them, I started from the side of the cube to make the sections to allow me to create the area that rises up.
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From the loops I used around the the cube I took the one furthest away and extruded it to create the raised lump on the front this is where the main tentacle comes out of. I did this several more times to create the height then I used the move tool to create the sloped ramp shape which would serve as the area where the suckers would be inserted.
To create the suckers I extruded areas I made with the edge loop tool. After i had created the suckers I Increase the the poly count by using the smoothen tool to create a larger area to sculpt. The reason i decided to do this in maya rather then increasing the poly count in mudbox was due to errors I encountered while I was practicing using the software before hand, where the UV's would vanish if If i increased the polycount in mudbox instead. After I smoothened it the edges looked a lot better and with that I was ready to create the UV's for the model.
After that I sent the model over to mudbox to sculpt
it using the sculpt tool to add the lumps and bumps
I wanted the model to have in its finalised form. I
also used the smoothen tool around the edges of
the suckers to make them look more realistic
however, I don't think it achieved the desired look.
The result of the sculpting is the way it is due to time constraints and I don't hate the way it came out. It may not be 100% realistic but since it's my first time properly making a 3D model I can say I am rather happy with the results. All That was left to do was bring it back into maya and texture it using the UV's I made before I sent it to mudbox.
To Create the texture I picked on the "Create PSD Network" button on the UV editor on maya which opened up my photoshop and created the file for my texture map. It took a little bit of getting used to and some experimentation to figure out where the
Different parts of the model where displayed on the UV map. I had to
rearrange a few of the UV's To make it easier to understand while I was
testing where to colour for the parts I wanted to be different coloured.
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For the colours to be displayed on the model I had to make sure it had a
Material assigned to it, I decided to use a Blinn as they are reflective and
when the piece is rendered it will need light. Making the surface reflect
the light means it will look different and less flat when rendered out.
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With the test I used the colours green and brown, this helped me find
which area was what on the model. To get it to show on the model I
updated the PSD network in the UV editor, Doing this over and over
allowed me to line up the stuff correctly for what I wanted it to look like.
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I ended up changing from the green and brown to blue and purple, I
added a light pink background to make it easier to see where was
painted and where I needed to make changes.
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After that all that was left was to produce the renders.
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I have created a Gallery below with all the still renders I created and the videos of the Turntable renders
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To create the lighting for the renders I decided to create 4 spotlights around the model to light it up from all angles so that the model would be visible when viewed from all angles. I put the the intensity to 300 because having it low did not allow the light to be used with the arnold renderer, It wouldn't show up due to it not projecting enough light. However this light is too much to use with the maya hardware renderer.
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To Create the still renders I changed my toolbar to the rendering settings and clicked on the Render tab. In the render tab I clicked render settings and set it up as you can see below.
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For my Turntable render the settings were pretty much the same apart from the frame/animation ext and the renderable camera were diffrent. The render camera was changed to Turntable and the extension was changed to Name.#.ext. The frame range i used was from 1 - 240 for the turntable.
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I used the Jpeg as the image format as it keep the image quality high.
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After all the settings were checked I created the renders, for the stills I clicked Render current frame, which caused the render viewer to open, which shows me exactly what it is rendering. If i like the still image then i clicked file: Save, And then named the file something appropriate.
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The process for rendering the turntable was basically the same, but instead of using render current frame, I clicked Render Sequence and then it rendered the whole sequence out as it was. With the Macs at college there was was no way to cancel the render once it had started, however at home I could cancel them using the Esc key if i didn't like the way it looked.
LIghting fail on a still render
To export the my character model I clicked File / Export selection, making sure
to click the box at the side, I needed to do it this way to be able to choose the
OBJ file type. The reason we want OBJ type for our model to be exported as is
because OBJ Files are the most common ones used so more programs can use it, also because unity likes the file type. OBJ files Still contain the material properties of the model and smoothing of the model.
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For the UV map I Exported that from photoshop as a PNG I chose to export as a PNG as it keeps the image better than a JPEG for instance and the file size is small and readable by most programs. It keeps the colour well and since there is a lot of lines in the UV map itself, the image wouldn't be overly visible if it was a diffrent format. This is why PNG is what I chose to export as.
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Since these are considered the default types to export as most software can read on the main 3 operating systems (windows, Mac and linux)
Overall i'm quite happy with the way my model came out, since its my first time making a proper model from scratch I gained a large amount of information and can likely use them again to create more intricate models. Since I decided to make something basic this time around it let me focus on learning the process rather than making me get super frustrated when I got stuck, so I think my choice of model was good this time around.
My lighting skills need more work and I need to gain more insight to how they all work as my choice of using spot lights may have not been the best choice, but since I didn't know how any of the others ones worked it was my only option this time around.
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My Renders came out well, Next time I should try and render them all from the same angle for the turntable render as this time they didn't all have the same angle which meant they looked a bit messy when compiled into one video, they look fine alone though, with the textured high poly model coming out better then I anticipated.