Learning to 3D Model : 6 Days in December

6 Days in December is the steamy paranormal romance zombie... {read more}

...apocalypse rabies-sex movie recently announced by newly united writing trio Christine Feehan, Cecily von Ziegesar and Michael Bay.


A series of mysterious, slow-motion plane crashes in the Rocky Mountains has left thousands of Texas housewives in turn-of-the-century gowns with no oily-chested rogues to screw in the stables, and an army of sex-hungry vampire brides descends on the crash sites where the victims have become baby robot zombies through a chemical interaction with the plane's smoking fuselage.  Meanwhile our hero and his sweetie are mere miles away in an isolated cabin supplied with only the necessary birth control, cakes, and military-grade explosives.


    von Ziegesar: "Basically we've taken Jane Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills, and turned it into something people want to see."
  So you kept the sex.
  "Right.  Plus some vampires, haughty girls, machine guns.  Some kind of plague?  Dunno.  My job was the bitches."


The most intriguing part of 6 Days is the introduction of a new theater technology championed by Michael Bay.  He calls it AntethInc.  We caught up with Mr. Bay at an Adidam colony in Bermuda and he graciously agreed to an interview. {Continued in MOVIES: HILARY HAHN IN THE HILLS} 

_____________________________________________

MODELING THE HUMAN FIGURE

December 6th is my birthday.  This last winter, I gave myself a present.  For the first week of December, I modeled the human body.  Every waking hour.  I rose early, and stayed up into the tiny hours.  Remember to eat.  I slept little.
"Blenederella" is a DVD tutorial by Angela Gannette.   40 hours of screencast are condensed to 8 hours of video with timelapse and voice over.  She models directly from reference images.

I'm not an artist.  I  am learning to see in the reverse order:  surface normal, tension, line, cheek.  I practice seeing, and I will learn to draw.  Angela Guenette's approach was perfect for me: she is a subdivision vert-pusher.


It is not designed to teach anatomy or subdivision modeling.  It is for artists.  I used it to learn anatomy and organic subdivision modeling anyway.  Everything was new.   Time-lapse meant "...and so on," for the knowledgeable artist.  I have no such knowledge; I copied the time-lapse, vert-by-vert.  The video for the hand is 20 minutes long.  I spent over a day with it.  Often, I would advance through a few seconds of footage in an hour.


The DVD includes the finished model.  I examined it three times, for details not clear in the videos.  I did not use it as to place vertices, I borrowed no geometry.   I only corrected  what I could see.

 Thursday, December 1
Friday, December 2

Prepare the reference images: front, side, back, 3/4 profiles.  Align them in Photoshop: match height and body positions.  

Begin with the eyes.  Raccoon mask face, the bridge of the nose, trailing off at the cheeks.  Eyes.  Eyelids.  The socket.  Eyeball.

It took me three days to complete the face.  It was nothing like hard surfaces.   Thursday, on just the eye and socket.  Each new form caused me trouble.  The transition from the eye socket to the forehead is my mortal enemy.  We fight in space.

End of Day 2

Saturday, December 3

The chronology is off.  I must have started on the last day of November.  I spent three days on the head.  And I spent Saturday on the ear.

I was thoroughly vexed three times: the ear, the elbow and the hand.  All Saturday, the ear.  Perhaps sixteen hours. The ear is compact, folded, and thin.  I screwed it up.  Some subdivision mistakes can escalate. I made them.  Fixed it.  Screwed it up again. When I moved verts enough change the shape, my mesh became unruly.  I had made a mess of  the base geometry.  

Irreparable.

No. 

I almost gave up, which made me angry and I reworked the entire ear.  I talked to myself.

Why is it doing that?

Because you're telling it to.  Ask a better question.

Damnit! Okay.  Think.  Describe what is going wrong.  Describe how you want it to change.  Look at your geometry.  What do you need to fix?

Here is a consistent strain.  The most difficult obstacles, which caused me the most doubt and fear have been those of which, when overcome, I am most proud.  Not because I did it.    I look back, and it is my best work.

Sunday, December 4

Now I was worried I wouldn't finish by my birthday.  I  planned it out, set limits for the amount of time I could fiddle with a problem. 

The torso.  Here I learned the most about human form.  After building a rough cage, she added guides along the body.

Guide lines of the body; shaping the shoulders

Orthographic and perspective views

I spent most of my time with two viewports: orthographic on the left, with reference image.  Perspective on the right, shaping the body in space, and adding detail.  The back is shaped with few vertices: Guenette described each adjustment, the bones and muscles she was following.  I want more than ever to learn anatomy; to draw.

This is when I started to understand what can be done with subdivision.   When I removed the guides, I was stunned.  Even my mistaken placement, causing an extra, odd bulge, shows clearly as if the musculature and bone were there.

Monday, December 5

The elbow caused me no end of trouble: I never got it right. To move on, I promised myself a return visit, with pencil, paper, and anatomy books.

Okay, look.  I knew the hand would be hard.  I had plenty of warning.  Artists tell stories about hands.  And I work with my hands.  About the motion of fingers, I have a very good idea of the difficulties.  I still had no idea how hard it would be to model.

First go at the hand

The first hand.  I didn't like what I was building.  My lines were wrong and I wanted more detail. My tendons looked like metal rods.  So I started again.  Her fingers, I left the same as here.  But I deleted the palm, turned my hand over, and worked it out, using the muscles and creases of skin as guides. 

Tuesday, December 6

I stitched the wrist to the rest of the body on my birthday.

Of all my 3D work, I am most proud of this hand.  

Test render of the final mesh

Follow-Up: Hair, Clothes

Rigging and Animation

I've done the hair and the basic clothes.  I will finish the clothes from the tutorial, which includes boots, to cover her missing feet.  Still have the entire process of rigging a bone system, and beginning to make basic movement.  After that, materials to replace the placeholders shown here.

After that, there is still a lot to do before I have a Snow Queen.  Clothing is altogether a new matter.  What I intend, I have never seen.

A Promise

205 left to go.

 ■

__________________________________

{PARANORMAL ROMANCE cont'd - read more}

R:    How's Adidam treating you?
M.Bay: {grimaces} Too much Bulgar wheat.  Where are the goddamn spaceships?
R:     ...sssspace?
MB:   Astral messiah my ass. The little fat guy over there keeps painting himself like an Asian and trying to pork my wife.
R:    So we've heard rumors about "Six Days in December."
MB:   Well, first of all it's "6" Days in December.  And second, it's the first ever AntethInc movie.
R:    And what exactly is AnteThink?
MB:   It's post-thought.  The evolution of story to its highest form.  In a post-thought world your brain can stop completely.  No message.  Just 102 minutes of Hilary Hahn's bare ass, brainthirsty-
R:    Wait... Hilary Hahn?
MB:   -zombies, and giant robots.   And, yes.
R:    The violinist?
MB:   The what?
R:    Violinist
MB:   Ungaramist!
R:    .... curly hair?
MB:   Vagosaurus!
R:    ...plays Bach like the sky is
MB:   Paleidobak!  BOOM!
R:    -trying to spea-
MB:   AERODROME!
R:    CHACONNE!
MB:   ROBOTS.  Giant fucking robots. Giant robots, fucking.  Bigger-Than-A-House-bots.  Zomboloid Bots.  Talking robots that talk. Talkybots.  They say, 'BOOM', and 'POW', and they run on energy,  but mostly blow things up.  They're made out of babies I mean zombies. They're made out energy fucking zombie babies.  It's cold and they kill shit and the zombies spread rabies by infecting the robots with spores.  It is the greatest thing I have-
R:    Um.   You were saying about AntethInc-?
MB:  ever done.  Yes.  Right.  For one hundred two straight minutes you will not think at all. We're passionate about this goal.  Thinking will cause you pain.  Before, I would have said, No, that's not possible.  But after meeting Ms. von Ziegesar...... well..... she opened my eyes to a whole new world.  102 minutes of ass.
R:    ....Hilary Hahn?
MB:   Yeah.
R:    ...the violinist.
MB:   Flabbelotist?  Magzamanist?  Speak English.  Stop wasting my time.  I order you to stop thinking.
____________
Ed:  ...The Violinist.
Try on the Bach Chaconne.

Learning to 3D Model

Ten months ago, I made my first 3D model.   I have no training or skill at art.  Bust out the crayons and I hold my own with the nine-year-olds.  I don't know perspective.  I can't shade.  I can't make an outline of a head.  But I'm stubborn.  How to explain?

"Giving up makes you angry."

Right!  That's just it.  Thanks, Peter.
Giving up makes me angry.  So I refuse to do it.  I have learned  to 3D model.

Blender

I don't steal software.   It shouldn't have to be said, but it does.

3D Studio is a $3000 application.

Blender is free.  It weighs in at 80MB of hard drive space.  It is a fully functional, workstation-class 3D suite.  It includes a Z-Brush style sculpting interface with full, pressure-sensitive artist tablet support.  IK/FK bone systems, animation.  Blender is only infrequently a compromise.  Compared with 3DStudio Max, there are some things I wish I had.  The biggest oversight, to me, is the lack of N-Gons.  The community is large, and the last year has been spent in a push to consolidate the feature base, integrate new features, including a cleaner, friendlier workspace.  The improvements are impressive.

Did I mention  Blender is a professional, workstation-class 3D suite?  Just download it. http://www.blender.org
Don't worry about hardware.  I do all of my work on a 2-year old Mac Mini.

If you have tried Blender in the past, it is not the same application you used.  I began with version 2.49b, less than a year ago.  The current version is simply a different program.

The next thing to do is watch tutorial videos.  Do not attempt to use the online manual, or you will lose your mind.  You have been warned.

In addition, I found this thread at Polycount (about Subdivision modeling) to be a self-contained course in 3D modeling in general.


Andrew Price Tutorials
{Blender Guru website}
Andrew Price taught me to 3D model.  He is funny.  He works quickly and efficiently.  His work is professional.  The final renders for most of his tutorials look like photographs.  He opens each video with a screenshot of the scene to be built, talks about it, and then does something wonderful.  He closes the final project, opens a brand new, empty scene, and builds it again.
And at the end of a one-hour video, although it may take me six hours to complete, I have built the same scene.  He covers all aspects of the 3D process: modeling, lighting, textures and materials, rendering, compositing; rigging, animation, simulations.
I do not know how to thank you enough, Mr. Andrew Price.

I. Subway Tunnel

Final Render, Composited

I learned a lot about modeling and modifiers from the Subway scene.  He works very quickly, making efficient use of arrays and paths.  Vague outlines of objects become the correct shape like magic, with a SubD modifier.   There will be a train in the heart of the Asteroid, but I still needed to adapt the scene a bit...

I have only made a few changes.  My goal was to prepare the assets for a game engine.  Utility tunnel systems will ramify throughout the Asteroid Museum, and I sought an aesthetic which would translate well to a game engine.  in this case, a design where unnatural, hard shadows are an integral and descriptive part of the world.  The reflections still have to go, but  mostly I need the sheen, and a sliver of light, which can be faked in the floor material.  The important issue here is that these lights can be dynamic, without compromising the lighting quality.  The geometry is extremely simple, and enclosed, allowing more complex and dynamic lights.

II.  Asteroid

This was a fascinating tutorial.  If you know how to 3D model, you can guess just how easy this was to make.  Modern 3D programs are incredible.  The smaller rocks are a particle system; they are animated in time.  In Blender, the scene looks like this:

The black box in the upper left corner is the camera.
As time passes, the rocks fly past the camera.  I have not rendered an animation, but it is as simple as pushing a button.  The dispersion camera effect is done after the scene is rendered, in the Compositor.

III.  Bullets! 

Final Render - Composited

Another astonishingly easy, eye-opening tutorial.  This is all texturing.  And the textures are not from bullets.  A grungy wall texture, some dirty concrete, and an image of deep scratches in some uknown material.  The actual modeling of the bullet takes 2 minutes.  The camera effects are all done in the compositing stage.

IV. Architecture - Modern Korean Kitchen:

Here, I have done a lot of my own work.  I made my own toaster, knife, utensils, bottles, oven, which are not covered in the tutorial.  The red pot, and the cute little Sorapot below are both from scratch, from reference images.  For a game environment, I modeled the inside of cabinets and drawers so they can be opened.  I also added surrounding hallways and rooms, a window. This room will live in a full house, in the game world.  

The tutorial moves on to a physically-based renderer.  All the materials are simple, and rely upon accurate lighting and reflection.  None of this will do for a game engine, so I stuck with Blender's internal renderer, and changed the setting.  In the following images, I am weaning myself off reflections, and toward soft, white moonlight and specular highlights.

    What to do about reflections?                   ...Soft moonlight to the rescue!

              

I have not completed the transition, but I think the approach is clear.

IV. Realistic Earth

Sometimes you just have to be done.  I am used to freely manipulating shader nodes in UDK, and I kept trying things Blender's aging  (and now replaced) renderer was not equipped to do.

So I'm done.  I will work out an approach to 3D starscapes when I finish modeling Saturn's Ice Queen moon, Helene.  The Cassini Orbiter's public image library is now sufficient to construct a full, 3 dimensional model.  Incredible.

V. Fluid Simulation

Meet Blender's new render engine, Cycles:

Now, these are meshes.  The water is a fluid simulation/animation, stopped at a particular frame, and rendered.  It is a series of solid objects.  Andrew has a clever approach to modeling ice cubes.

VI.  Rendering with Cycles

The tutorial is an introduction to lighting and materials with Blender's new render engine, Cycles.  He spends no time on modeling; this is the only time I have used the reference meshes, which weigh in at a total of just over 1600 vertices.  Tiny.

To me, this scene is an advertisement for Cycles.  I don't have the hardware to explore Cycles in depth, and  time spent this way is of little practical value for game engines.

I have three uses for such work.  First, the more I know about real lighting, the better  I can manipulate shader code to fake it.  Physically accurate render engines are that good.  I can ask it questions about light, and it will show me answers.
Second, I will be ferrying light from place to place in the Asteroid using natural and artificial prisms and vault lights, liquids, scattering over distances and through different media.  I can build concept art in Cycles to help guide me, and test the physical behaviors to construct the materials and scenes.

Third, Cycles allows direct manipulation of node-based shader materials, in a physically accurate environment.  This is an excellent way to learn about the capabilities of graphics hardware and languages.

More to come...