Introduction:

The Asset pack brief states that i must create at least 3 models in various detail to describe a scene that has some semblance of reality; going through this page you will see my minds journey to find what location and the assets themselves being made. My deadline for this is before the Christmas break.

The Mind Maps:

To Start, I had to get some ideas and used mind maps for this; just quick lists of a couple locations and objects I could create. This was swift as it was just planting my ideas onto the page:

The locations had to be in some grounded sense of reality so we could get references easily, and the general location had to be small enough so I wasn't making a million objects. The choice of objects was sparked ideas of my mind and I was still in the ideas page.

I chose 4 different locations: A Wild West Bank, A Forest (with a hint of whimsicality), A Japanese Ramen Bar and a American Diner Bar. I chose these locations as they were small enough so I wasn't making a ton of assets but large enough for my creativity to run wild.

The Bank idea inspiration came from games like red dead redemption and movies like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. with its harsh realism and comically overemphasized areas, such as the banks, the taverns and the hospitality. I didn't choose this idea for the asset pack, as I liked my other choices more.

This area is inspired from my own imagination and is a scene where it is a vacant forest, but leaves the person with questions on what happened, small mushroom homes, an underplayed harp and the remnants of something bigger. I didn't end up using this, as the idea is too far-fetched and the asset pack would be massive

This idea was inspired by actual ramen bars from Asian countries, and the assets chosen were based on that, all these assets looked cool and fun to make so i chose to continue with this idea

The American Diner was an idea that was too ambitious given the time period, listing off all the assets would've doubled the page shown and would've been impossible. a compromise I made was to just do the bar side, which shrinks the required assets down significantly, without dumbing down the idea. For that reason, I chose to continue with this pack.

The Mood Board:

After Finishing the mind maps, I had to make the decision on which ones to continue to the next step. this was hard as all the ideas I had were thing I have a passion for and I struggled a lot to make a decision. I ended up settling on the American Diner (bar) as I think this would look great in comparison to the others

The Asset List:

After deciding to continue with the American diner, as it had more creativity, I created an Asset lists: Asset Lists Are used in the industry either by the employee to separate their time into sections: showing which asset is higher or lower priority, level of detail and estimated time taken. Which I think is the most important, when given a deadline this will allow me to split my time up accordingly; knowing this I created the asset list shown below:

After completing the asset list I had finally completed the ideas section of the task, and have got a grounded idea on what I'm doing, all that was left was to create the models.

Maya:

Setting up Maya consisted of making a project and filling the folder with references of my assets. and creating a grid that is closer to real life sized. Then I got to work on my first asset

After Going onto my UVs: I encountered an issue where the planted UVs were stretching and I fixed this issue by using the unfold tool

back to references

my texturing process:

add background colour

add base colours for each thing (mostly alumininum silver/ dark grey)

experimented with greys:

 

Second Asset: milkshakes

This asset is lower poly and will be small enough as to add depth and aesthetics to the scenes

For the milkshake design I first have to make the glass and to do this I used the curve and revolve tools:

i created a curve using the CV curve tool and ran that along my glass. Then used the revolve tool found in surfaces to make it into a symmetrical model. This then created the NURB model seen below

seen as this model is using nurbs, not polygons, i then selected the NURBS to polygons tool to change the model into polys still keeping the quality of the model.

 

as you can see in this screenshot, most of the polys are tris and this makes the model look a little sharp and its reflection to light makes it look off. so i used to retopologize tool to change a lot of the tris to quads and it left me with this more basic shape

Creating the Base:

I double clicked on the edge on the bottom to select the lines

I then saw that the bottom of my glass was missing a base so I didn't use the fill tool and decided to use a different method that gives me a better topology

From then I would extrude the lines and continue with filling in the base
however I encountered a problem where every time I made a change, it would retopologize the whole model. taking about 5 seconds to do so.

To fix this I did a bit of research on different forums to see why this was occurring, I found out that the history of the model can affect the present stage of it. and to fix it I had to reset the history: to do this I had to go to edit, delete by type then history

After extruding I could use the method of using the offset as the directions of the normals are facing inwards, so what i did was use the scaling tool instead to scale it into the middle, this seals the hole and finishes the base. however this doesnt seal it all the way.

I converted the lines selected to vertexes and then use the merge to centre tool to make sure there were no holes

 

i realized the small base didnt look thick enough so i selected the faces and extruded them to increase the thickness

i then beveled the edge and it made the model look more aligned with the glass, as it would in real life

For this specific section of the milkshake I will need it to be a glass texture, however a shortcoming I have encountered is that the Arnold renderer does not work and I will have to improvise to create a glass texture with the available tools in Maya; if I were to do this project again I would assign time to come into college and use the Arnold texturing tools to increase the quality of the asset.

My compromise was to use the opacity tools and the phong texture to create a cloudy glass feel that you would see in cartoonish diners.

The cream:

I selected a sphere for my cream as I have found that, through experimentation, it is very versatile and easy to manipulate smaller details within it

I then made the shape less symmetrical as the cream in the reference also didn't have it; so I created some random variation within the shape to help it look more natural

In the material I assigned it to be less reflective as cream in real life is more dull. I altered the specular shading of the material to dim it down

The Extras:

The extras include a straw a cherry and a cookie all within the milkshake!

To do the straw I simply created a cylinder and hollowed it out

For the cherry I added a circle and extruded one face to create the stem

I made the cookie with one object and extruded it using offset and a cylinder shape. this made it quite easy to get the basic shape, the detail will come in the texturing.

 

With all the extras done the base of the model is finished; now to move onto the UV unwrapping

Jukebox

I first created a cylinder. flipped it, and changed the tris to quads for ease of use when I come to editing the z axis and also when I start to texture.

I then fixed the top half in preperation for editing the z axis

I then did the same for the rest of the model

had an issue during this. and fixed it with the bridge tool.

Then i moved onto editing the z axis and creating shape into a shape i want. This would add overall depth and dimension to the moadel

I then used the bevel tool to create softer edges on my model.

The base of the model is finished.

UVs

To create the UVs I needed to think about what I would like the aesthetic of the diner to be like, the colours are ambitious and so dulling it down was necessary

A mistake I didn't notice while editing the UVs was the stretched squares shown at the top, fortunately when rendering this mistake isn't seen, however if I could do this project again I would fix it

Final renders of the model, I'm happy with the results and considering this is my first serious 3d project, I'm extremely happy with the progress I made.

An evaluation of this project:

This project being my first in 3d, I really struggled with the process of learning such a complex software. Thankfully throughout this project, I've been able to learn the basics as well as some advanced methods. If I were to do this project again I would give myself a longer time on the actually creation rather than the preproduction. There were some shortcomings in this such as the Arnold renderer, however I think these shortcomings and the way I persisted is a mindset I should use In other area