Week 3 Revolve Technique and Curves

Week 3  Revolve Technique and Curves

Using Curves to create 3d shapes - exercise one the mailbox....Failure :(

This week we learnt how to outline the shape of an object with the Curve tools and then apply modifiers to transform the 2D shape to a 3D object. During the lab sessions i was able to use the Bezier Curve tool to outline the shape of a mailbox and then fill in that shape to create a plane, of which i could extrude into the shape of a mail box. Unfortunately i was unable to save my work. Bring it home it home due to a problem with the machine i was using. Not to worry i though, i would just simply repeat the task at home. This however proved very difficult. i followed the exact same instructions and as far as i could tell matched the processes i carried out at home to turn the  curve into a polygonal planar were exactly the same. I was unable however to finish this exercise but none the less feel that i understood the methods involved in using curves to create 3d  objects.

Thoughts

I  can see how using curves to create 3d objects would be very useful, it would make it fairly easy to transform 2d sketches into 3d objects. I however didn't really enjoy this exercise very much i haven't used Photoshop much in the past and therefore found using the Bezier curve tool quite annoying and frustrating it took me a long time to draw out a simple shape. I can see myself using it in the future though i just need some more practise.

 Exercise 2 & 3 Revolve technique

The Next exercise was to use the Bezier curve tool again to sketch out half  a wine glass and then use the revolve tool to rotate that cure round 360 degree's through the  Y axis. I quite enjoyed doing this exercise is was quite fun to see a quite simple 2d shape become  cool 3d object, that would have otherwise been quite difficult to model using the other techniques i have learnt so far.

The finished result, looked quite good in y opinion however some of the normals towards the bottom were reversed, i don't know why this happened . however for the second exercise that we  used the revolve tool, in which we drew around an image of a chess pawn that had been inserted into the view field, I was able to successfully use the revolve tool to create a really nice looking 3d model of that chess piece.

3-view virtual studio environment

By inserting a set of three images into the three respective view windows i was able to create a "blueprint" for the model i was going to create in the case if this exercise it was  an aeroplane.
Once the images were  in each view window and aligned correctly, the perspective view pretty much creates the shape of the model for you. You now just need to model and scale polygons to fit within these "blueprints".

To do this i used the x-ray function that turns the polygon's transparent, so that i can see the underlying Image and scale the various polygons to match that image.

what i found useful about this is that by extruding the polygon to fit within the image you end up with a model that is just one mesh, where as previously i have created models buy using the make live tool and inserting polygons on top of polygons this was entirely one mesh, and started out as a cylinder. I do not know if this is beneficial in anyway i just like how, for me at least the model was not as complex as previous ones i had created that had been constructed out of loads of different shapes put together.

The finished result, a somewhat messy aeroplane. Although i really enjoyed this exercise  and can see how using the 3 view studio layout can be really useful i think i would get better on just simply having the images on a second monitor next to my work environment, and i think when i come to create my star wars models i wont use the 3d studio environment.