Watched the video and very interesting to start learning blender 2.8, I have a bit of experience in modeling with blender already but using this chance to start exploring and learning how to work with blender 2.8
WEEK 4 - Learning more - Dragon head sculpt
Well was a busy week so only had today to work on the homework, since sculpting is what I have less experience when modeling decided to go and try sculpting a mosnter from scratch, originally I planned to do the whole body but was jsut no going to happend, so limited myself to the head, and tried playing around with
a few things.The model is mostly sculpting, but used poly modeling for the tetch the tongue and the little membrane.
I also planned on using particles to make like a feathery mane on the back or put some scales with curves and array but was not happy how it looked, still was nice to try may use them in the future.
The quills/feathers done with particles
I do need more time to get used to sculpting, specially from scratch
Stuff like theeths and spikes, are a lot easier to do on poly modeling, and maybe use multirez to sculpt detail on them later on
WEEK3-SCULPTING MELVING EXCERCISE
Tried my hand at thesculpting homework, sadly there was a ton to do this week and had some problems with my hardware but things working now, sadly there was no time to try the extra, but will try have it done before the stream if I find the time.
For Melvin I decided to sculpt the body but I made the fangs and honrs with poly modeling and positioned them, used blender 2.79 for the sculpt and render
WEEK2-SPIRAL STAIRCASE
I went for a victorian spiral staircase, working a lot with modifiers to try get things done with them as much as possible, I started doing the volumes with more basic shapes to get the overall look and proportions and after that I sketch up the details looking at references, and started putting them in.
Ended up cleaning things a bit, and adding some end cap meshes to close things up, so I can adjust the number of steps and blender will do the work, also adjusted the spiral vertical bars to not use so many polygons.
One thing I made use of was vertex groups, this way I could put objects I had separated before inot a single entity, and add a modifier that only affected a part of these, sadly this does not seems to be working very wellwith the solidify modifier at the moment.
Also went a bit overboard playing with lights and animation to get a nice scene for it.
Here is a Turnaround animation for the spiral staircase, I should have used less frams so its a bit heavy: Spiral Staircase Turnaround
Blender file: Spiral Staircase blender File
Final render of the stairs with the sketchs I used for making the patterns based on references I was looking at.
Different views on a little scene I made to test out EEvEE rendering and the different options, and to get a good look at the ful ldetails on the stairs
Observations:
-The lack of being bale to see the effect of modifiers on edit mode made this much harder thna I expected
-For wirefrime view apartently you can turn on hidden wires on the views menu.
-Wonder if the developers may add the option to use a modifier on a collection, that could be very interesting and save time on several items sharing modifiers, but not all of them, maybe just add a "collection modifier" modifier on each object on the colection and you can change its order on particular objects.
-The end and start cap on the array modifier are a bit weird, I had to put the start cap on the end of the section and the end cap on the start, thats not very intuitive.
-Open GL render to get the turnaround on the viewport worked very quickly and with nice results, also no crashes, but since I have subdivision surface do a extra subdivision on rendering, I did a full render of the turnaround and crashes 3 times in the process, lucky I was rendering the image frames so was not a hugel oss, but its still very unstable atm.
-Added a glass material, and the default option is for it to cast shadow and blocks all the light, had to change the option from opaque to alpha blend in options to get he light trough.
WEEK 1-MORNINGSTAR
So I went wiht somehting simple, a morningstar with primitives, the spikes where done quite simple with cones and cilinders, first selected the sphere and used the cursor to selected to create a cone at the center ofthe spere, then grab it in z to take it to the top, selected this and set the transformation to the 3D cursor, that way I could rotate the spikes around the sphere surface easilly.
I planned to do the chain links with a torus by adjusting the segments but sadly the torus is not working in the current release of 2.8, so I used a cube and a bolean to punch a hole trough it with a smaller cube, after that is only a matter of positioning the links.
things I learn
-The outline option on the shading is quite nice, too bad you can not set the line width
-on evee you have to turn on screen space reflection for glossy materials to reflect things, otherwise it shows no reflection
-the viewport render is now under the view menu -> open gl render
I did open gl render of 3 different matcap settings, flat with blue oulines, comic style matcap with white outlines, and the red metalic matcap (I edited them togheter in clipstudio)
Also did a render on evee using a simple metalic material and a second material non metalic for the handle, for the floor I used a plane and on texture just set checkered and adjusted scale
@n647 That's a real clever use of modifiers, goodness knows how long this'd take without them, looking forward to the finished result!
@theluthier thecabbagedetective Thanks, my goal here was to do modifier heavy work to get used to them see the changes and see how far could go with them in 2.8 at the moment.
Sadly no spiral curve atm and could not convert a spiral I did to curve for the handrail so could not use that, the model there with mods was specially good to set up the volumes I was going to use and the position, and then worked o nthe detail, going to update the first post with the current update
n647 Wow, this is awesome! I really love the details, it probably took a very long time to make them. Fantastic work so far!! 👏
bbsdwerbeagentur Thanks, the thing that took longer was doing the pattern on the step, the rest was quicker, still it was mroe time than what I had planned, but te result I think is worth it
ssmurfmier1985 Thanks, I m glad the planning and skethcing worked well, the array helps a lot to adjust things on the fly, since I could do adjust to a single mesh, if I had o do a change and then copy it by hand it would be so much more work.
n647 I think you are smart with using all these modifiers, learning a lot by reading about your process 😊
wow this is beautifull did you modeled the partern by keep extruding from just a square or is there a modifier that could make that easier ? I really wish i could saw you model this would loved to watch it :D trully amazing work here
ssmurfmier1985 Thanks I m glad if this has been of any help to you, part of my goal was to make examples on how to use the different modifiers and stack them, but also note the part of first planing, I blocked out the main shape withouth detail, then I sketched up the detail I wanted, and then I started modeling that out.
yyukinoh1989 I m very glad to hear that, I looked at several references to try emulate a victorian style that is in my opinion looked very nice for this project, it seems I managed to emulate it properly, as for the modeling of the patern, it was done by extruding edges on a plane, and scaling and rotating these, a solidify modifier was used then to give it volume, no modifier to do the pattern for you, but you could do something similar with curves and defining a cross section and a taper.
question do you mind explaining how you did that with the simple deform to get that column ?
like what object did you start how did you approached it ect to get that in its final shape ?
tryed to figure it out but i cant xD
n647 Wow that is absolutely brilliant in that victorian style, it is a very effective presentation of the power of modifiers
yyukinoh1989 sure, its a bit convoluted so I do not blame you
First we start with a cube, and ersa both the top and bottom faces
We create a empty that will be our point of reference of the modifier on the origin of the cube, and apply a subdivision surface [simple not cammul clark], to make sure we have enough geometry to work with.
Then we can add the simple deform modifier for the twist using the empty as origin and selecting the proper axis, in this case Z
But you will notice that if you try to add an array now with the default 45 degrees, the faces will not coincide, so, we will add an array modifier BEFORE, the simple deform, and adjust the lenght with this array, and set the angle of the simple defomr to 90 degrees, then we will add a second array, and this time the faces will coincide, remember to check merge on the array modifier and set the merge distance if needed
After that we add a subdivision surface and object->shade smoth, and we get the twist.
This is a bit more convoluted than needed really, you can jsut add an array to the cube to get the height you want, then add the simple deform->twist modifier and jsut set the angle to get the desired twist, I jsut happend to do an extra step there.
n647 HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG THAT DETAIL THOUGH
Seriously, amazing use of modifiers. Time to model an entire manor with this level of detail. Should only take you the rest of your life.
n647 thank you for the explenation. i gonna try it and let you know if it Works. if not ill let you know where i run into the problem
yyukinoh1989 Sure no problem if you have any doubt I can help you with just ask.
Also updated the first post with the final version of the model and some extra info
n647 I'm hyped about this. I was hyped before you added the victorian details and now...it's just a game-set-match example of modifier power. I hope you don't mind, but I intend to explore your scene during the stream tomorrow to analyze your modifier setup in detail. Anyhoo, it's an A++ in my book.
PS: Very interesting idea about a "Collections Modifier" function. I can see how that would be useful. If you're up for it, while it's fresh, it'd be a great time to pass that idea over to the Blender devs. Who knows - maybe that will cause it to become a thing.
