Our assignment in our Common Art class for week 3 is modeling a starfish. A starfish who looks like he's taken the wrong path in life to say the least!
There was a tutorial provided with this model which I followed to make sure I am continuing to develop best practices for modelling.
Results:
Above is my final hard surface model. I had a few tweaks I had to make after the model was complete. I ran into four issues before I could finally complete my model.
Overcoming Problems
1. Merging the verts.
I tried everything in the books, but I could not get the middle verts to merge no matter what I tried. I had a guess that the reason I couldn't was because I didn't combine the model. My assumption was correct and that is how I overcame that issue.
2. Non-deleting edges.
This was the most frustrating thing I had problems with. I ended up cutting each of the non-deleting edges with the multi-cut tool and just merging the verts with ones near them to get rid of them. I never could find out they wouldn't delete.
3. Filling in holes.
This was not necessarily a "problem" as much as it was learning how to the use the tools better. One benefit in Maya is that there are multiple ways to achieve the same goal, so I was introduced to ways to fill holes and gaps in the geo I may have found.
4. Fixing Normals.
Despite following the tutorial, there was still a few normals that I had to go back and make sure were facing the wrong way or to make sure there were no hidden faces.
Final Hard-Surface Wireframe
What I learned:
I want to start introducing a problem and solving section for my future posts. I want to identify what issues I had and what I did to resolve them. I believe that keeping those notes on this blog will help show what I truly went through for this model.
This was a great relatively easy model to get more practice on.
I learned how to check my normals more efficiently. While clicking through on the smoothing, I noticed a few normals facing in weird directions. Most of them were easy fixes by either reversing or deleting the face that somehow managed to get into my model.
My total tri amount was 760 and I'll admit thats probably higher than necessary. There were a few areas I wanted more detail or curvature in to get the shape that I wanted.
Final Smooth-Surface Model -- Total Tri: 760
I enjoyed the starfish and it was really good practice with an organic shape. I love the slight detail and texture that the tutorial implemented to really show off the eyebrow mass and the jawline.
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