Dr. Suess' "The Lorax" External Light Fixture (First Pass)

REFERENCE

Reference for Main Lamp

Reference for side bulbs using  the added style of the tree lights. (as shown below)

Artificial Trees (lights)

How I got my images...
Though there were thousands of light fixture in this movie, they were all extremely similar and unoriginal to one another, and very far away. Getting a good image of a light fixture to use was difficult. So I went with the images of the light fixtures I found to be the least grainy and out of focus and simply attach them together. My end result is a light fixture more similar to the movies', then my other models are. Something I try to avoid, but when required, we do our best.

CONCEPT

Concept for External Light Design using aspects found in the references above.

Side View of External Light

Top View of External Light

RENDER

Model Rendered in 3DS MAX using concept designs as reference (First Pass Front View)

External Light rendered in 3DS MAX (First Pass Side View)



External Light rendered in 3DS MAX (First Pass Top View)





From the concept/reference I created the main lamp shape from a sphere. The bottom half of the sphere's poly's were selected and deleted. A Shell modifier was then added and collapsed into an editable poly. The main light bulb in the middle is a normal 16 sided sphere. The vertices were selected and moved to give the rim of the light fixture a lip. The two smaller lights were created with a cylinder that was put on a path deform and collapsed into an editable poly, attached to an 8 sided sphere and welded into a single primitive. The wall attachment was created by beveling from faces off the main lamp shape and welded down to a curve. The cylindrical wall attachment was created using bevel on local normal.


RENDER(Second Pass)

Low Poly (Right Side)

Low Poly (Top View)

Low Poly (Front View)

In the second week it was required to reduce the number of polys into the models most basic shape. In addition the requirement of creating a single mesh rather than multiple primitives. When approaching in this manner it was easier modeling a good end result knowing the end product would be a low poly. The biggest challenge was attaching cylindrical objects to a four sided poly (in order to create a single mesh object). The solution I came up with is to delete the four sided face in which I would attach the cylindrical object. The grab the edge loop of that deleted face and extrude it out and chamfer all vertices of the extruded edges. Then I target welded the vertices to the object and kept 8 vertices. Sine I reduced the number of edges on my cylinder down to 8 it was a perfect fit. I attached the primitves and target welded them together with my new vertices.

UVW LOW POLY REDUCTION

(From 800 polys to just above 400 polys)

Front View (3DS MAX)

Top View Render (3DS MAX)

Right View Render (3DS MAX)

In order to UV unwrap my object I need to reduce the number of polys even more. The most challenging part was reducing the polys around the beveled handle on the main lamp shape. It was even tougher to keep the objects symmetry and edge loops; however, I was able to reduce the polys from 800 down to 400 polys.

UV UNWRAP SCHEME (Not Flattened)

UV UNWRAP (Flattened)

UV Map for Light Fixture (3DS MAX)

Front view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

Side view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

Top view diffuse map (checkered) with UV Unwrap)

For the first time I unwrapped my light fixture. With the sloping of the main lamp shape and the spheres it was difficult to stitch pieces of the flattened map together and keep the integrity of the texture. In order for me to be able to flatten and stitch and keep the integrity I stitched the the circular polys into a flat rectangular map much like a map of earth. A few places on the object keep a warped or twisted texture, but I will resolve these issues with texture sets. There are few seams that are all on the back end of the light fixture which is good since that is the part facing the wall in real world space. Over all the experience of flattening and stitching was tedious which pushes further the idea of lowering the poly count especially for circular shaped polys.

TEXTURE (First Pass)


                                                                          Texture Set

Texture Set (Top Left) Diffuse, (Top right) Specular,  (Bottom) Bump

                                                             

   UV Unwrap Texture Set

   

UV Unwrap Texture Set (Top Left) Diffuse, (Top Right) Specular, (Bottom) Bump

Textures:

 

Texturing was done in photoshop. I took my completed flattened UV unwrap and began drawing out my textures. I went to "cgtextures.com" and got a metal rust pictures. I imported it into photoshop as a 512 by 512 photo and copy pasted it it until it filled up my 2048 by 2048 UV unwrap picture. I then made it tilable by offsetting the picture and using the stamp, clone, and patch tool to get rid of repeating patterns and ensure the sides, top, and bottom would match up when tiled in 3DS MAX so that no lines would show up on the textured model. To create the bump map I made my final image in gray scale by using a black and white adjustment layer. The Speculat I used the black and white adjustment layer aswell as the levels layer and curves layer to get rid of the midtones. I saved all three images and applied them to my final model.

                       

 First Pass Model

Front View Render (3DS MAX)

Side View Render (3DS MAX)

Top View Render (3DS MAX)

This weeks progress was easy and difficult. Of course as in all things with modeling the difficulty came with not knowing the "tricks of the trade" and making it look good. The simple and fun part was making the actual textures. I really enjoy working in photo shop and manipulating images; however, getting it to match up well with the object is difficult. I simply to an image of rusty metal and used hue and saturation adjustments to get the purple-blue color that is shared with the reference of the lamp from the movie "The Lorax". I painted on a yellow and used curves to make them a bit lighter. I used burn and dodge to get the gradual color contrast between where the fixture would be exposed to the light from the bulbs. 

FINAL PASS (diffuse, bump, specular color/level, reflection, and refraction maps all applied)

 

3DS MAX RENDERS

(Front View)

(Side View)

(Top View)

(Perspective)

FINAL THOUGHTS


After modeling the helmet I approached not the design of the light fixture but the modeling process with low poly in mind. This made for easier UV unwrapping the final model. Though the model isn't as smooth as a new student would expect, it portrays the art in game art. If it was as easy as just making the model with as many polys we wanted and without a water tight mesh, we may just call it engineering. The end result of this model added a few tricks for me when low poly modeling. One of them as stated above was how to connect a circle to a square poly. By chamfering the veritices and ensuring the cylinder I am attaching is 8 sides, I get a perfect fit that can be attached and welded together. Keeping in mind that this creates triangles it's still a fairly decent method. Un wrapping the light fixture was the most difficult part. this being because the light fixture has so many circular surfaces that when flattened create long border edges. this was solved by laying these polys out like squares and expanding the texture out as the polys area shrinks. Limiting cylindrical shapes will be a fore thought before designing future models.

Dr. Suess' "The Lorax" Helmet 1st,2nd Pass, and 3rd Pass Texture Setup

 REFERENCE

From Helmet Mask Reference (Bird top-left)

Backside Pipe Reference (machine in background)

General Helmet Shape Reference

How I got my images...
This one was the easiest to find to images for, why? because I knew there was a helmet on the main character and it was very iconic for the character. This didnt make designing the helmet weasy though. I needed to make it my own. Simply copying the helmet over didn't make is my design, or oricinal in any way. So to go along with the milieu I continued to find images that went along with the mileiu of the concept. One of these things was the animals, so I began looking for images and parts of the animals that I could attach to the helmet.


CONCEPT 

                                       

                                                Concept Sketch (Side View/Right)

                                       

                                                   Concept Sketch (Front View)

                                                                                                        


      

              Concept Sketch (Top View)







RENDER (First Pass High Poly)




    

        3DS MAX Render (Side View Right)



    

             3DS MAX Render (Perspective)

       

                3DS MAX Render (Front View)

      

              3DS MAX Render (Top View)

Finding a unique design while still conforming to the concept of Dr Suess' the Lorax was difficult. What I ended up with is a helmet that keeps the designs found in the movie with the added element of the game's milieu. The added gas mask in the shape of the bird's bill/beak gives the sense of the setting conditions that all the trees are gone and the air is smoggy, but the added exhaust pipe shows that the setting still requires the use of machines that create smog. The hardest part to model was the bird's bill/beak. At first I tried to approach it using lathe and editing the edge loops by scaling the y axis down to give the broad skinny shape rather than circular, but using lathe created too many polys to work with in a timely manner so I started over using the box modeling while using a image plane for reference. This also created a time consuming problem and left me with too little poly's to use and adding planes by slicing created problems with the moved and scaled vertices. So for the final and most successful attempt I created circle shapes and spread them out. Using cross section to connect them I then scaled and moved the circles around until they had the basic shape of the bill. I then used the surface modifier to create the polys. Very little editing was needed after this to get the bills shape. LAST THOUGH: The shape of the bill is too boxy, but with the three different methods I still stuck to the cross section and surface modifier.

RENDER (Second Pass)

Helmet converted to water tight single mesh object

Front View (new duck mask using shapes and cross sections in 3DS MAX )

Left Side View (Second Pass)

Right side View (Second Pass)

Top View (Second Pass)

On the second pass the welding of vertices was an ugly endeavor. In the first pass it was unknown to me that the model needed to be a single mesh object when it was finalized for texturing. With the many primitives welding warped and flipped the polys, it created penetrating geometry, and got rid of many edge loops. I added the smooth modifier to smooth out the boxy polys on the bill mask.

RENDER (Third Pass/Texture Setup)

Water Tight Single Mesh

Low Poly(Left) and High Poly (Right) Left Side View

Low Poly(Left) and High Poly(Right) Top View

Low Poly(Left) and High Poly(Right) Front View

Low Poly(Left) and High Poly(Right) Right Side View

In the third pass instead of even attempting to save the second pass model for UV unwrapping I started over. Using the second pass as a reference I began the same way by cutting a sphere in half and moving half the vertices apart to created the helmet shape. I also took the original bill, copied its polys and detached the into a new object. I used the shell modifier to give it thickness and the smooth modifier to smooth out the boxy polys. I then selected polys on the under edge of the helmet (sphere) and beveled them out to create the straps. I also used hinge from an edge to give a better transition from the helmet to the angle the strap need to be. I attached the primitives and welded them together. As well instead of making strap rings from toruses and attaching them  I beveled them from the straps and chamfered the edges to make them appear smooth. Finally, instead of creating the exhause pipe from a cylinder on a path deform, I created it from and engon shape and extruded it down into it's shape. I then used turbo smooth to create a high poly from a low poly. The process was not as quick as the first pass since this object was made from 3 primitives rather than 16, but transforming it into an object ready for UV unwrapping is much easier. LAST THOUGHTS: Modeling from low poly to high poly in my personal opinion is more thorough and effective.

UV Low Poly Reduction
(reduced from over 1400 polys to under 500 polys)

Front View Render (3DS MAX)

Left View Render (3DS MAX)

Right View Render (3DS MAX)

Top View Render (3DS MAX)

From the third pass to the low poly reduction was not difficult. It was a matter of removing the edges and the vertices that were not required to maintain the general shape of the helmet. The most difficult part to reduce was the duck bill mask which contained half the polys of the entire object. I removed all internal shells of the bill mask and the helmet and removed all edges on the straps that were not needed to change its direction. No poly reduction was required of the exhaust pipe. Looking back on previous passes I would have used less circles on the cross section of the bill mask so there would be less tie spent on reduction. I would have also not used the shell modifier and only added it if it was absolutely neccesary for the high poly and texturing.

UVW UNWRAP SCHEME (before flattening)

FINAL THOUGHTS

The helmet was quite difficult to make. Partly because it is the first attempt at low poly modeling, and partly because of where the design comes from "The Lorax" and the design itself. It goes to prove that low poly/game modeling take alot of fore thought both during concept and the modeling process. Approaching the model with low poly modeling in mind before opening up any program on the computer creates a more empathetic process when modeling. This proves that modeling without endgons, triangles, and creating border edges, makes for easier unwrapping and easier manipulation.