With advanced computing power, and internet speeds, we still need our 3D models is their top shape when used on the web and real-time environments (i.e. gaming).  Dr. Polycount goes over five common problems with my models, and the cures.

3D modelers of all levels can benefit from Dr. Polycount’s advice in this video.

Don’t miss the cameo from Dizzy the Dragon created by Toymaker.

This video details the texturing functions within 3DVIA Shape, but these fundamentals could be used within all 3D modeling applications.

Cliff gets some help in this video from one of our favorite user-submitted (textured) models: Texturesaurus-Rex.

For more detailed Texturing tips using 3DVIA Shape, check out tip numbers:

• #31 – How to Add and Adjust Textures
• #32 – How to Align Textures with Geometry
• #33 – How To Manipulate Similar Textures

Now, let’s hear from you;  Any other texturing tips you want to add?

Special thanks to IsaacMiller1993 for the T-Rex model.

Check out this video, and you are sure to pick up some useful modeling tips:

Be sure to review all the detailed 3DVIA Shape Video Tips and Tricks for more modeling tips.

We want to see your 3D models that you have created from pictures. Reply to this post with your examples.

Remember, we have a large library of 3DVIA Shape tips and tricks.

Any questions? Send those along too.

In my previous blog we talked about individual vehicle design.  In this blog we will explore vehicle design for games. There are a few considerations you must keep in mind when designing vehicles for games, today we’ll cover 3: Mobbing up, Flavor, and Balance.

Mobbing up

No man is an island, in games, no one vehicle can win a game. Sure there are mega/epic units but by themselves they will get over powered and destroyed. Build vehicles that can accomplish their one particular role well.  Don’t add weapons and abilities “just in case”.  You want the player to build all the wonderful units you made and use them all as one cohesive swarm. Each vehicle performs one role well, and all others badly, but in a group, it can’t be defeated.  The best real world examples are Navy Battle Groups. Large formations of ships supporting one another with specific combat roles. 

Flavor

Here is where we get creative.  All games have factions or races, each one with a particular flavor.   You can’t give a vehicle with laser gatling guns to a nomadic faction that cobbles together their technology from various junk piles.  When building for a particular faction, write down their strengths, weaknesses and what makes them unique from the other factions.  Keep this in mind when you create a new vehicle.  That laser gatling gun vehicle could be an excellent anti infantry unit for a techie cyborg based race.

Balance

Here is where we make sure the game play remains fair for each faction.  The main point of balance is to keep the game fun but challenging.  No one likes a game they can’t win, and no one really enjoyes a $50 game they can beat in 15 minutes with 2 units.

Vehicles for each of the armies in the game usually have a direct corresponding vehicle in each of the other armies and a suitable counter vehicle.  In this respect, you see many armies have an anti aircraft vehicle. You use the flavor to make them really different from each other, but they perform the same function, thereby creating balance.
 
A popular balance method is the old Paper-Rock-Scissors. Where class A vehicle defeats class B vehicle – class B defeats class C vehicle – class C defeats class A.  

You’ll find some games that don’t follow these general rules, and go so far as to create units that one faction will have more trouble defeating than another, attempting to create a 3 way faction balance. These games usually give you other alternatives like super weapons/units, or the ability to pair up with another player using diplomacy rules to defeat a stronger army.

Recently some games have allowed you to customize special modular vehicles, allowing you to alter the role of the vehicle to meet your needs. These tend to be a unique vehicle, and allow you to create some real power houses adding an element of unbalance in to gameplay but creating a really fun (albeit unfair) experience as a trade off.

No mater the method you chose for balance, always keep in mind that each vehicle you create has a role within its flavor/faction/race, and it is best supported be an army of specialist vehicles covering each others’ weaknesses.  All working together to defeat the latest evil nasty nameless army that has threatened your people with ever lasting elevator music!

Till next time,
Fight well, honorably and often
-Juan

-Models in the Tittle Image where created for a GI-Joe mod by Brendan Fennimore, Chris McCune, Jonathan Millman, and Juan M. Del Rio.

 Often once you build a vehicle, you want it to do everything well, to handle any obstacle and take on entire countries by itself!  What started out as a troop transport, is now an amphibious Monster Truck with 8 gun turrets, 18 missiles, 40 rocket launchers and 2 miles per gallon that has the seating capacity of a small stadium!  We get carried away in our excitement and lose focus on what the vehicle’s role is.  In this blog we’ll look at some of the things we usually forget when creating a new vehicle, and talk about the design.

Whats Missing?

 Each vehicle is designed and created to play a particular role or fulfill a tactical need: Recon/Scout, Anti Personnel, Anti Armor, Troop Transport, Main Tank, Long range support, Infantry Support, Bombers, Assault.  Keep in mind that your vehicle is not all of these at the same time, but it can be a hybrid of two.  For example a Fighter-Bomber or an Assault-Tank.

Another thing we usually forget are the things that our vehicle needs:  Engines, weapon power sources, ammo drums or compartments, crew space, emergency escapes, armor panels.  Sometimes we stack so many things in a vehicle and then realize we only left space for a AA battery or 2 sleeping quarters in a space ship with a crew of 30.

You may think I’m crazy but all of these details matter.   These are things you may not notice, but you feel something is missing on the model.   Models that are functional, are more exciting than models that make you guess at how many chickens are powering the 2 square foot engine.

Design

Who’s driving the vehicle?  What environment is the vehicle most likely to be in? Whats the daily routine of the vehicle?   The more you know and figure out about your vehicle the more detailed and alive it becomes.  For example, a large cammoflauged tractor with a mini gun might do great against that alien bovine invasion but do nothing for the wheat field the farmer is supposed to be using it in.  Change it to a bright red tractor with an air conditioned cab, a cooler in the back, a shotgun in a golf bag and a large radio antennae on the top and its the farmers dream vehicle.   

Combat vehicles follow the same line of thinking.  You figure out its combat role and give it 2-3 weapon systems that will help it fulfill its role.  Don’t add things “just in case” you run into an aircraft carrier!  If its a troop transport, its main role is to carry infantry safely to  where they can be best used.  Its main armament is actually armor, second would be a machine gun to provide cover fire,  and third maybe smoke launchers to protect itself and its passengers as they disembark.   Another great addition would be to allow the infantry to shoot through gun ports adding to the fire power of the transport.   Its definitely vulnerable to heavy weapons but it has the tools to fulfill its role.

 Look back over some of the vehicle’s you’ve created so far, and see if there is anything you can add to make it more life like and functional.  Use them as a stepping stone and make the next vehicles you make that much better.   In my next blog, we’ll talk about creating units for a game, faction influence and game balancing.

-Juan

Default settings for primitives

One of easiest methods of keeping under the polygon limit is by not using the default settings for primitives like a sphere or a torus.   Normally they are created with 20 subdivisions or more making each one a 400 polygon object!  When your budget for the model is 5000, even a small chandelier ceiling chain will put you over the limit!  Upon creating the torus or sphere, immediately reduce the subdivisions by half, if not more, and smooth the edge normals. In 3DMax put the object in a smoothing group.  You will retain the shape you need and stay under the polygon limit. 

 Removing unseen geometry

Lets face it, we like to put things together quickly and sometimes we don’t pay attention to what we left underneath. Now engineers and designers need to have every part of the model fleshed out, but game artists are paid to make things look good, at a budget.  Review your model for unseen geometry and delete it, or if its part of another piece, remove only what you don’t see. The usual culprits are spheres.  Align them so the center line is flushed with your surface and delete the half of the sphere you don’t see.  Just doing that will dramatically decrease your polygon count.

 Remove Edges that don’t affect geometry

As simple as that.   Usually we get a lot of extra edges when we add geometry to modify only one side of an object.  Essentially anything that doesn’t change the silhouette is extra and not needed.  Keep in mind that you still want to keep a clean look, don’t just grab every edge and delete them.  Find ways to keep the flow of the polygon and remove excess edges.  Here I gave myself 100 polygon limit to make a small space ship.  I noticed some edges that were not needed, and after cleaning up, I freed up almost half of my allotted polygon count!  I can go back now and add an engine, and air intakes or missiles!  

 Yeah missiles…

-Juan

Next, we need to be sure that we really know what we’re seeing. If you are drawing an object on a piece of paper, you always know where your lines are – on the paper. You’ll never be surprised that one of the lines you just drew is actually on the back side of the paper, or on its edge, or has just plain disappeared. In 3D space there are all kinds of such surprises.

That’s why being able to confidently move around in 3D space is so important. If I draw a simple rectangle, a line from corner to corner, and then a vertical line without changing my viewpoint – I can end up not knowing where it went. The first image below demonstrates this confusing state of affairs. I can change my model color, as I’ve done in the second image, but that takes time. If I simply change my viewpoint, as in the third image, it’s easy to see where the line is and that it went where I wanted it to go.

If I have a more complicated model, it is even more important to be able to zoom around and in and out to check up on what I’m really creating. In the first image, I think that I’m drawing a line across the gray face of the model. Once I move my viewpoint, I see that my line is heading somewhere else entirely. If I had continued to model without checking, I would have been really surprised later.

The value of knowing where you are is even more apparent when you see the whole crazy asteroid that this is part of:

“What?”; you say, “Of course it’s hard to see – where did all the lines go?” That brings up the importance of knowing about the “Environment” button (or just use F4 and be done with it) to be able to see all of the edges to help guide your modeling.

“Enough already! You’ve convinced me. Now, how do I do all of this amazing rotating and zooming and everything?” I’m glad you asked.  Depending on which part of your brain you like to use, we have multiple tools to help you.

For those who love video presentations with avatars; there are video tutorials created using TVnima.com. (The “Navigation” tutorial is, oddly, at the end of the list, rather than at the beginning.)

If you prefer more traditional tutorials, we’ve got a bunch of those too. (The “Viewing in 3D” section is the first item under the “Using 3DVIA Shape Tools” heading.)

And we have a quick synopsis right here from an excellent and more complete blog post on the subject done by Rodd back in November.

By now, I hope you are ready to find your way around your model in 3D space and avoid some of the more likely surprises. Then again, there is always my favorite button on the screen:

Undo!

P.S. If you have specific questions about this blog post or previous ones, you can ask me directly, now that we have Messaging!

Go to Episode 2!

Go to Episode 1!

As in any endeavor, he had to start at the beginning and learn how to exploit the strengths and work around the foibles of Shape. The available online video tutorials are a start and also a good place to return when you’re frustrated/confused or if you just want to know more about a particular tool. The online documentation is another good place to look.

One very valuable source of help for the Shape modeler is that the program itself is eager to help you as you work. Shape is constantly providing you with onscreen choices to help you quickly get your ideas down. Most things that we want to make as humans have square corners and flat or vertical surfaces. We want our walls to stand up straight and our rooms to have flat floors and doors that work. Shape knows this and tries to help.

The most basic thing we can create in Shape is a line. Seems simple enough, right? Well, sort of…because one simple thing can take away the help that Shape is so eager to give.

In the earliest version of Shape, a line was drawn by selecting the line tool and then left-clicking where you wanted the line to start and then holding the button down while you dragged the line to where you wanted it to end. Then you released the button and you had your line. Shape helped you make sure that your line was flat and square to other parts of your model by providing feedback. The line would change color and show angles as you moved the mouse.

Unfortunately, usability studies showed that that is not the way that most people intuitively used their mouse to draw a line. So, it was changed.

The black line was drawn using the old method and looks parallel with the grid and good to build off, but when you draw your next line, you’ll find that you’re off by 1 degree, which will cause no end of problems throughout the rest of your model.

Now, the method is to select the line tool, then left-click at the start of the line AND THEN RELEASE THE MOUSE BUTTON before you drag your line to where you want it to end – then left-click again to finish the line.

As you move your mouse, you will see the clues that Shape provides. The line turns yellow when it is parallel or perpendicular to surfaces and other parts of your model as well as giving angular measurements and showing you which plane you’re drawing on. If you hold the left button down while dragging, you’ll lose all of those helpful clues.

If you use the new method, Shape will help you by showing the line in yellow when it really is parallel with the grid. So, when you put your next line in it will be a true 90 degree angle and you can continue modelling with confidence that everything will be square.

So, remember to click and release to start and end a line and you’ll be square (in a good way, I mean).

Go to Episode 1!

Go to Episode 3!

Without trying, he has exemplified what 3DVIA is all about – trying to help 3D become an enjoyable part of people’s lives – in the way that they want it to be.

He has employed his substantial creativity and imagination to use Shape in ways that few users have. In particular, his use of curves as a central part of his models is very sophisticated.

BBD Class Star Fighter                                         TD Class Star Fighter

 And it’s not just a couple of starships…it’s a whole slew of them!

Now we get to the humble pie part. I tried to recreate just one of his models in order to encourage more curvy modeling in a post – and I couldn’t figure it out. Wah! So, rather than crying in the corner, I flat-out asked him how he did it and he most generously provided over 100 pages of how-to tutorials (with lots of pictures for slow learners like me).

This whole series of blog posts will be based on that mega-doc from m2morgan64, with his permission and consultation as needed. I’ll also be adding in some other basic tips that I find from experience, learn from other users (feel free to send additions, corrections, and improvements) and from re-visiting the available online tutorials. We’ll also follow his game development process as it evolves.

m2morgan64 realizes that his game is quite an endeavor for one person, so he’s hoping others will check out his blog about his plans and contribute models if you want to. There’s a group discussion thread where he outlines what he’s looking for.

So, fasten your zero-gravity belts and stay tuned as we head for piracy in the heavens!

Go to Episode 2!

Go to Episode 3!

D is for Dimension.

You may notice after you start creating in your favorite 3D Application, that you start encountering odd behavior or pinching when you smooth, bevel, or even while still modeling! This is due to the way the vertice’s and edges are arranged to create the model. The following images show a pair of letter D’s.  One is created automatically by Maya and the other is a duplicate of the first, but I’ve redone the Polygonal Flow.

You can see how the interior edges on the right D follow along the curve of the geometry in a natural motion.  The left D, has the same shape when rendered but as you continue editing, you will find that its poly flow will cause a lot of problems.  Also notice how the top left corner is held up by one edge on the right D, this will be come important in the next image, the Bevel.

Beveling.

It is said that in nature there are no hard edges, when looked closely enough even a sharp pin’s tip looks like a ball point pen.  You don’t go around life constantly worrying if you are going to cut yourself on that ridiculously sharp counter edge.  When reproducing real objects in 3D, it becomes necessary to bevel the edges to create a realistic feel and reflection of light.  The Bevel Function takes the selected edges and replaces them with  number of edges in a 90 degree arc, creating a smooth edge look.

Here we start seeing the benefits of a good poly flow.  You notice the pinching and bad corners on the left D,  while the right D looks nice and smooth.  The pinching is created by multiple edges converging on the same point, or multiple vertices too close together.  The bad corners are created when the corner vertex is not “anchored” by an edge. The benefits become more pronounced on the next step: Poly Smooth.

Smoothing.

Smoothing is something we 3D guys love to do, no matter how many polygons it creates.  Its a function by which the 3D application exponentially increases the polygon count, interpolating the distances between vertices and edges.   It usually takes a low poly object and makes it look really refined and smoothed if you have good poly flow.

Ach!  It looks like someone hit the left D with an ugly stick!  The uneven poly flow becomes difficult to smooth because of the uneven distances of the vertices.  This creates bunching, flat surfaces and pinching.  The right D smoothed nicely into a cylinder shape.  Notice how evenly the edges are on the right D.   Its sooo pretty!  You can find some nicely done models through our model search on 3DVIA.

Keep this in mind when you model, or create something from an image and extrude.  Take a few minutes to go back and fix the poly flow of your models;  make sure there aren’t multiple edges coming into one point. Remove any edges that don’t affect the shape of the model and you’ll end up with professional and efficient models.

-Juan