06 Finish Mid-Poly Body

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Current Gen 3D Game Prop Production

Michigan State University

Course 3 of 4 in the Art for Games Specialization

In this course you will learn to create a photo-real game prop using modern game art production techniques. You will gather reference, generate a base model, create a high polygon model, bake details onto a low poly model, and then texture and present a final portfolio piece. This course is aimed at students who have some knowledge in 3d and game art and would like to learn more advanced techniques employed in the creation of modern game assets. We will be using Maya, Zbrush, Marmoset, and Substance Painter extensively throughout the course. When you are finished you will have your own model based of of a real-world prop suitable for use in modern game engines.

From the lesson

Week 2: Mid-Poly Block-In Model

In this module you will work to create the form of your model. This mid-poly block-in will not be textured, nor smoothed into a high resolution model. The goal is to create a mesh that is accurate to your reference that can become the starting point for your high and low poly models. This is often the most challenging part of the process.

01 Mid-Poly Objective Lens14:37

02 Mid-Poly Eye Piece Swivel8:32

03 Mid-Poly Eye-Piece Viewer7:29

04 Mid-Poly Body15:52

05 Mid-Poly Battery4:15

06 Finish Mid-Poly Body15:23

07 Mid-Poly Swivel Mount8:39

08 Mid-Poly Strap Mount8:38

Taught By

Andrew Dennis
Professor of Practice

Transcript

In this video, we're going to block in

additional features to the body that

we left out in our last pass.

Making some small adjustments

to just parts of

the model that don't look like it lines up,

you make adjustments on

this kind of thing as you go around.

I'm just looking to see

any areas that feel like it stands out,

or it has an awkward reflection on it.

So now, I'm trying to make the little segment that

represents this mound for the strap on here.

So I'm putting a single edge loop in here,

and I'm using the slide edge tool

to line up in the middle,

and then doing that bevel trick.

I'm going to do the same thing down here on the bottom.

So I start by extruding that overall shape out.

I need one extra edge in here to help

control where it starts from.

Now that I have

the face that I need, I can extrude it out,

use vert selection, and

move it so that it starts lining up the shape.

A modeling is very similar to the ones I did the front,

although the overall shape is different.

What you saw a second ago was

a duplicated one that I'd pulled up here for reference.

But as you can see, I'm using very much the same process.

I can see everything's a little leaned over,

because the way I extruded it.

So I'm just using vert snapping to help me

line the top verts up with the bottom verts,

just along the x and z axes,

not changing anything in the y-axis.

Especially, when I know I'm going to be doing things like

beveling and smoothing on something like this later,

get everything to really line

up at this stage is pretty important.

Now, am just selecting these edges on the sides,

and running that bevel a couple of segments.

I did three here,

and then I can collapse these edges.

Just to make sure everything lines up nice and evenly,

I'm going to do a little vert merge and everything.

I can do a scale on

everything to get it to flatten its form out,

make sure it's nice and planar.

So I start with the first snap

and then I scale everything.

Now, I'm going to duplicate just these faces,

because Maya remodel, this is

a second time when I've already made

one version of it that works just fine.

I'm closing up this face,

because I'm going to need to Boolean an end,

and having a closed object is often

easier for Maya to handle when we do Booleans,

and I want to make sure it has a

nice enough intersecting geometry,

that it becomes obvious what I want it to do.

So I'm making some adjustments to

this Boolean object before I'm ready to attach it.

Before I pull it in, I'm going to duplicate

it because I know what any of that side.

I'm going to Boolean union and then do my cleanup.

At this point in the process,

you've really seen all of the tools and

techniques that I use to solve problems,

and just sort of reusing a lot of

these Boolean operations the way I put in a bevel,

the way I put an extra edge.

Let's scratch all this commentary. It's not important.

So now, I'm ready to Boolean

these objects on the other side.

I want to make sure everything lines up and it intersects

correctly and that everything lines

up to with the objects on the other side.

So I push it a little further away because I don't

want this little extra piece coming out in my vert.

It's going to look weird in my Boolean

if it's going to

affect that little cut end I have for the dial.

So I just made a quick adjustment to

how deep that it was going to go into my body.

One of the difficult parts about

Boolean operations is sometimes they work great,

and sometimes they can be a little unpredictable.

Maya's Boolean tools have come a

long way in the last couple of years.

I'm just trying to make sure I have

enough verts and edges to go with on this whole object.

So in this case instead of Boolean in this one,

I want to actually attach these pieces together manually.

So I'm just making some cuts.

It's like a Boolean but I'm

doing it by hand this time instead.

I don't want to connect that vert into those verts,

because I need a little extra space

in between these two edges.

I don't want them coming together.

So I just needed enough little faces so there's

enough room between where the dials groove is,

and this object is.

So I'm hitting three on my keyboard

just to give it a quick test.

So now, it's time to start working on

this little top piece where the buttons are.

This is an interesting shape because it

has its own curvature to it.

But what I'm going be doing is building

out of pretty simple shapes that start with,

using all the same techniques I've shown you already.

Just trying to round all these edges

to get at the same time.

You can see I need something here that's going to

be flat at the back,

it's got a couple of buttons out of it

and it ends up having more curvature towards the middle,

sort of leans up a little bit.

I need to make sure all of those features are modeled in,

that you can see right there.

So I'm going to take this face,

set its pivot back here and rotate it up a little bit,

just to get that sense of

one part of it lifts up more than the other part.

So we're going to do a little scale

in to give it a little bit

of a bevel kind of a chamber to the edge here.

So I use an extrude offset edge to help me get

the exact chamfer that's even across all the sides.

Then I can snap this face into

here and rotate it up just a here,

so I can see that it's higher up

on that right side than on the left side.

Always checking back to my reference

to make some adjustments.

Now I'm going to pull up these little button areas.

So as you would expect,

I'm going to need to make some cuts through here in

order to make the edge that

those buttons are going to sit into.

Making an extra connection

here and a couple of spots so that I

have enough edges to work

with for the shape to come out of.

So right about there should be pretty good to start with.

Then this edge is going to come

out of that corner right there.

We take the whole thing, we extrude it out.

Let's get rid of those extroverts I ended up not needing.

Extrude the whole thing out,

flatten it, and just like everything else,

we can make a rough approximation

before we start smoothing out the corners.

So I'm hiding the body here to get it out of my way,

so I don't have those verts that I'm looking at.

Using bevel to smooth out this edge.

Just wanting to make sure

everything's distributed pretty evenly.

Do a connect components to

get this little corner in here,

and then I can bevel this outside edge

and make some adjustments to it just manually.

Make bevel to the inside edge before again

making edits to it manually to adjust its position,

its size, and how it's going to come around the form.

So, seems like everything's lined up pretty well,

a couple adjustments is always to make.

I'm doing all of this through the orthographic top view

because I don't have to worry about heights of anything,

I already worked that out.

Okay. This is looking pretty solid.

Time to put in these buttons.

So as you'd expect to knock in a couple of cylinders,

and I want them to fit to this outside shape.

I'm going to line this up on the bottom here,

I don't want any caps on anything.

I want to just sitting right on top of

the form and coming up just high enough that

it's going to intersect

with the top face of the rest of this piece.

So I'm going to do a little extrusion in

here to help me get enough edges I can,

to help me define the button,

and the bevel, and the angle of all of this.

Doing these really one a time.

Well, I'll separate the button from the little object,

the buttons sits in later.

I'm modeling this all in together

because it's just going to be easier

to handle at this moment.

Often on low poly models,

we have to exaggerate how

much an angle is beveled or smooth

because it will read better in a game

ready model than it would in something in reality.

I'm ready to duplicate this button

and pull this out to the side,

and now that means I'm ready to

Boolean all these objects together.

I start by doing a quick merge versed everything,

and this button has a little knob on the end of it,

so I want to model that out.

I waited until I duplicated the

other one though before I did that.

I'm doing a quick check to see

where I have good and bad geometry.

It looks like that one face ran the whole way

across and it didn't have any verts to connect

these top pieces together so I'm going to

delete this whole face and then just put

it all back together manually by bridging up

the edges that I know I

want connected together, together.

But of course that leaves this edge,

this little vert here unconnected, which I don't want.

So I need to use my Connect tool,

and now I have enough verts

to put this whole thing together.

Welding up any extra verts that I might not need.

Doing a quick test and soft select and I can

see some of the edges

that I'm having a hard time controlling.

Because it's such a bad end gun,

it's creating this really awful pitch and everything.

I like end guns for this blackout stage but I do need to

throw a couple of edges in

here just to help my control it better,

and it gives it a sense of exactly what I'm looking

for so I try to go to the corners as much as I can.

You can see areas where it is

struggling to figure the shape I want.

But sometimes just a couple little edges

like that really makes sense.

Then I fill the hole in the top,

and I'm ready to line everything up.

Keeping in mind the surface of this is curved,

so it curves over,

I want to make some adjustments to that.

Often when we're judging

these things relative to each other,

sometimes these things can be

difficult to tell exactly what's happening.

So some of these edges don't exactly,

was getting a little gap in here,

so I just took some of the extra

edges and extrude them out

along that axis and it

gave me a little extra stuff to deal with,

and now I can just get rid of

that extra edge loop that I created.

All right. That's looking pretty good.

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