3D Crates and stuff

This week in the 3D course, we worked with creating three crates in 3 different themes, we chose what themes we wanted to use from five given to us. They were 1) Sci-fi, 2) Urban contemporary, 3) Post-apocalyptic, 4) Medieval, 5) Cartoony.

For my first crate I made a milk crate in a Sci-fi theme

In this theme if you look at other games you see a lot of sharp and beveled edges, and hard surfaces.

Here’s a screenshot from Halo and star wars, they are good examples of the theme because you see a lot of hard surfaces with beveled edges. Especially the crates in the star wars screenshot

This is the milk crate I made

I aimed for a simple milk crate with beveled edges that could fit into one of these games if they would deliver milk like this. I also included a bottle cap design for the bottles that would keep the bottles sealed. This could also be textured with small beveled edges on the sides in patterns to add to the theme.

For my second crate I aimed for the theme cartoony and made a pirate chest.

In a cartoony theme you can use round shapes and have some parts bigger than the other and use exaggerated shapes to make the important details stand out more. Two examples of games that can fit into this theme is Psychonauts and Nintendo land because they have a lot of round shapes. They are different in color, Psychonauts use a more dark tone to make it a more unfriendly environment while Nintendo land use bright colors to make it an environment that looks friendly.

Here is the chest I made, I aim to have round shapes and have the top part bigger than the bottom to get the cartoony feel.

For my third theme is chose Urban contemporary. In this theme it’s very normal to do things that exist the modern world. If you aim to do furniture it’s very popular right now with box shaped things with clean surfaces and sharp edges. There is also tall buildings to make it feel like a big city using vertical and horizontal lines to achieve it. And use diagonal lines for details that make it stand out more.

Two examples for games that fit into this theme is Payday 2 and GTA IV

They are a good fit because they portray a realistic picture of how the modern world looks in the environment. They aim to make it look like you really are in a city and not in a small village.

I made a bookshelf for my “crate” here. I used sharp edges and a lot of horizontal and vertical lines and only diagonal lines for details and here’s some screenshots.

Summary

I think this exercise was really good to make you really see what make the different themes stand out from each other. And with just small details could make it fit into another theme. I think I’m still pretty bad at this and would like to improve more in this. I also worked on making the models as optimized as I could to use as little triangles as I could to improve in that area because you want to get rid of unnecessary polygons when you make models for games. This was a lot of fun and I learned a lot from that because I had not really thought much about that before.

Another thing that was good about the exercise was that you had to make things from 3 different themes which made me go out of my comfort zone, and that is really useful if I want to improve. For example I’m not used to make urban things or realistic looking props that could fit in the real world. I’m more the guy that makes cartoony looking things or distorted reality themes. I would also like to get better at the sci-fi theme because I think it’s a really cool theme to work with and have a lot of interesting vehicles or mech designs that I would like to work with.

I also made some more props that could fit into games. I made a lamppost I think could fit into a dark cartoony theme, it has a lot of edges but uses exaggerated shapes that fit into the theme.

I also made a lantern that I think could fit into a distorted reality/cartoony theme, it has a mix of round shapes with sharp edges and exaggerated details. I actually made this from first making trashcan, I got bored in class and didn’t know what to do for my last theme so I thought making a trashcan would be easy and be fast. But that was a really bad idea, because it didn’t challenge me in any way and I would not have learned anything from it. So instead I changed some details and made the top round and added a handle and it became a lantern instead.

Next week in 3D I will work on a Viking longship instead of the crates. Because I got another assignment that will challenge me more and will teach me a lot more than doing the things that is normal for this beginner course as I’m not a total beginner in 3D modeling. I’m excited for this, because it’s something I have never done before and I expect to learn a lot from it and have a lot of fun.