End of Marking Period 1 Blogpost

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas: Throughout this year, I want to work on things that give away to my emotions, experiences, and thoughts. To do this, I will mainly be modeling and making renders, but I also want to make gifs and animations. This marking period, I focused on adults asserting dominance on the youth, which seems to be something I feel often(probably because I am a teenager). Because of this, I turned to the game, Persona 5 which really lives up to this idea. For this marking period I was planning on just taking a character from a game I like and just making a symbolic piece around her. For this, I chose Futaba Sakura because, throughout her life, she has been deceived by the adults around her, but was finally able to fight back when she found the truth among the lies.

Planning: To create this piece, I focused on how I was going to model her, and how I was going to make that model look good. I also saw a video that used metaballs for modeling that motivated me to want to use metaballs to model something complicated like the body. I saw another video that transformed a regular object into something I could only imagine doing by using nodes for the materials. With the regular cycles materials tab, you can get some good materials, but using nodes makes the possibilities endless, so I wanted to experiment with nodes and learn more about them.

Producing:
When making the model, I began to experiment with sculpting, which, I found to be an effective method for me. I found that sculpting gave me more freedom when creating the model, which produced better results than if I were to model it, in my opinion.


I also focused on using metaballs when making the body because, like sculpting, it gave me freedom, and I got to spend less time making the body since the metaballs provided me a base mesh to work with.


For nodes, I learned some basic stuff. I learned that you can basically mix materials endlessly, which helped me make materials look nicer. Also, learned how to layer bump maps although it is very annoying to do it and does not look nice all the time.

Evaluating:
When it comes to modeling, this is a method that I have found to be very effective for me and I will definitely use it for modeling everything else throughout this year. Some things I could improve upon, however, was modeling the parts separately. I watched videos that will model a separate part of the body and then fuse it with the rest of the model. Metaballs overall worked very well and I got great results from it. However, I would like to find ways to fix the topology of the metaballs so it would work nicely if I would want to animate the model later. For nodes, it was good and I learned some new things about shaders and how to use them, but I reached some setbacks because I am very inexperienced with them and still need to learn how to use them efficiently and receive the results I want.

Integrating: For the next marking periods, I want to continue to use the same method of sculpting and using metaballs for modeling. I believe this method was very efficient and created good results. I also do want to continue doing research on nodes and various things I can do with them since I feel as though I did not really do much with them in this piece. Lastly, I liked the effects I added while editing my piece and would definitely continue to do this and learn more about various effects I can add to make my works look better.

Work Log:
Monday:Worked on Coat and Top Material
Tuesday:Worked on Coat Material
Wednesday:Fixed Materials and Camera
Thursday:Fixed Materials and Lighting
Friday:Worked on this blogpost

Nodes

This week, I finished the modeling part of my project. Because of this, I began to search for various methods of texturing to look for a good method for me. This resulted in the discovery of a video by YanSculpts where he quickly turned his model of a carrot into this with nodes,
Starting with this:

 And Transforming it to this:

 Currently, I am definitely at the beginning part, but I definitely want to learn how to use nodes to make the model look more realistic and better. Rather than typing everything about nodes, I will paste the link to Blender Guru’s encyclopedia to nodes since I cannot put it into simpler words.

The Cycles Input Encyclopedia:

https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-input-encyclopedia

 Expectations for Materials/Textures:

Skin: For skin, I also want to base this off of YanSculpt’s method of texturing. His textures include pores, scratches, and acne to make a more realistic appearance. However, I do not think I will go this in depth for my work because I feel like it should not be too realistic. For the skin, I know that YanSculpts uses a mixture of a subdivision surface and a glossy material to get that shiny, but soft look to the skin.


Hair: I really do not like the simplicity of YanScuplts hair to the skin, but I also do not want the hair of my model to be too realistic. Because of this, I am thinking of going to my roots and trying to texture hair similar to an mmd model. However, I do want to do a mix shader and add some bump mapping to add detail to it.



Eyes: There are two methods I am going to try in order to make the eyes look nice. The first method is a method I see a lot. This method has two separate meshes for the eye. One mesh has a glass texture to achieve the glassy look of the eye while the other has the actual texture of the eye. However, I want to see if I could get the same effect with a mix shader.

Clothes: To start off, I want a similar texture for the pants and the coat/cardigan. For both of these, I want a velvety look to it. However, I do not plan on using only the velvet texture on them because I do not want them to fully be velvet, but to have I softer look to them.

My ultimate goal for the pants

For the shirt, however, I want it to be to be more like cotton similar to this sweatshirt. I’ve been looking at tutorials that achieve this cotton-like effect with a bump map or using sounds.

Work Log:
Monday: No School
Tuesday: Modeling Coat
Wednesday: Absent
Thursday: Modeling Coat Sleeves
Friday: Readjusting Model to Liking

Metaballs

In general, metaballs are objects that will begin to merge together when they are close to one another. For blender, these metaballs come in spheres, capsules, planes, and cubes. These objects are pretty straightforward to use, but if one wants to edit the mesh of metaballs they have to convert them into a mesh by pressing alt+c. This is because, like curves, metaballs do not have a defined mesh, but once converted the mesh is easier to work with than a curve.


Usually, when I draw I do not strictly follow a reference and work off of feeling and general reference pictures on anatomy. Because of this, I began to sculpt, with some modeling, to create models. With metaballs, I will be able to continue sculpting rather than follow a reference and model. With research, I have noticed that metaballs are generally used to create a basis for sculpting like the arm below:


Since I have already sculpted the face for my model, I will be using metaballs to work on the body. To start off, I tried to work off general shapes of the body and limbs on references. With these shapes, I will hopefully be able to find similar shapes with the selection of metaballs.

The Base Mesh Created From the References

The Body After Sculpting(That Arm Still Needs Help Though)

Metaball Hints: 

Converting into a Mesh: By pressing Alt C one can take the basic structure they created for modeling and make a mesh to continue working on it in edit mode.

Stiffness: In edit mode, the inner ring of metaballs will turn green. This, when adjusted in size, will change the amount of influence of the metaball. The smaller the green ring, the less stiffness there is.

Negative Influence: Rather than metaballs attaching to one another, the metaballs will repel. This can be changed in edit mode in the active element section of the metaball tab.

One Positive and One Negative Influence

Two Negative Influences

Two Positive Influences

Hiding the Metaball: This would be used if you want to use metaballs, but do not want them to be present. This can be found under negative in the active element section of the metaball tab.


Work Log:
Monday: Creating a Metaball Mesh
Tuesday: Sculpting Body and Clothes
Wednesday: Sculpting Arms and Legs
Thursday: Modeling Hair
Friday: No School