A Model a Day

25Jun10

I had big plans for my education this summer, but as work and leisure filled up my time I was finding that I was spending less and less time furthering my experience with CG and as a result less and less learning. In order to keep me on track, I decided to commit myself to doing one model every day. Before, I had been setting my sites on larger projects (model and rig an entire character), which can be daunting, and when I only have an hour or two here and there, it doesn’t get accomplished very fast. Soo, I decided I am going to put my one or two hours every day to use with something that I can actually complete. This could mean that one day I model a watch, another day I model a lamp, or other fairly simple things. A couple days ago I modeled my flash drive. Having smaller projects really helps me get things DONE, which in turn gives me something to show for my work, and keeps me working on things.

In addition to doing a model every day, I decided that if need be I am allowing myself to substitute other projects for the model. For example, in order to render out wireframe turnarounds I needed to figure out a good way to display the wireframe for a render. A method that I had used in the past was to enable contour rendering in the render settings. This wasn’t entirely giving me the results I wanted, so I ended up resorting to Toon Shade lines for the wireframe. However, setting up a render layer and creating the toon lines, adjusting settings, and preparing the render takes a while! And usually I don’t feel like doing all that by the time I finish modeling. So, for my “Model a Day” yesterday, I wrote a MEL application that takes care of all that for me. All I have to do is run the App, and it creates the appropriate render layers and adjusts all the settings for me so that I get a color pass and wireframe pass all with one click of a button! Very handy! I’ve still been adjusting the script here and there, but one I finish it maybe I will post it. In any case, that is an example of substitutions I might make for my “Model a Day.” I’ve also thought about spending a day on Camera Mapping, an area that has always interested me but I have never really looked in to.

I’m going to try to post models as I finish them, and there should be a ton on the way, so check back soon for more!

-Pete

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