3D I, Week 3, Part 1: Crate Cleanup

This week in 3D we went through cleaning up construction errors in a model. In this blog, I’ll recap and reflect on the Wednesday workshop, where we passed our crate models from last week around for other people in class to clean up.

First I had a look at my cartoon crate from last week.

My cartoon crate, before cleanup.

This crate is incredibly simple. I made it just by creating a box, making extrusions in the center, then moving and resizing the edges.

I had a look at the crate through the various options under xView, and did a selection to look for polygons with too many edges. None of these things turned up any errors, no overlapping faces, edges, or anything.

Still, I wanted to do something with the model, so I had a look at it. All the three models I created last week were thrown together sort of haphazardly. I knew we would be doing cleanup this week, so I just shaped my models however I wanted, paying no attention to polycount and the like. So, I made some changes to this crate.

My cartoon crate, after cleanup.

While creating the model, I just randomly added edges around the box to make shaping the silhouette as smooth as possible. Looking at it afterwards, and studying how each vertex affected the curve of the sides, it really didn’t need that many edges. I went through and deleted nearly half of the edge rows around the model, and the silhouette was barely affected at all. This knocked the polycount down by about 140 tris. Not a big deal with how simple the model already was, but a surprisingly big number with just the removal of some edges.

Next, Jenny Grip was tasked with cleaning up my sci-fi crate in class.

My scifi crate, before cleanup.

Jenny had a look at my model and she had much the same experience that I had with my cartoony crate. No overlaps, no polygons with too many edges, nothing. So, she took a similar approach with this crate.

My scifi crate, after cleanup.

Jenny removed every unnecessary line on the sides of the box for me, making the model much less cluttered. I was already aware of the excess of edges on this model, again since I created it without regard for polycount, but this cleanup knocked the numbers down from 1740 to 1212. Despite how simple this design looks, it has a lot of edges because of the rounded corners of the crate.

Lastly, Måns Löf cleaned up my post-apocalyptic crate.

My post-apocalyptic crate, before cleanup.

This crate was the only one of my models to have clear construction issues.

The lid was just a part of the rest of the crate I’d split off with a swift loop and rotated. Because of that, the edges of the lid were still connected with the top of the box, making the planes of the box stretch over the ends.

I’d been planning to clean this model by simply fixing these stretched planes, attaching them to the edge of the box and keeping the lid merged with the rest of the crate. Måns offered an alternate solution in his cleanup.

My post-apocalyptic crate, after cleanup.

Måns decided to split off the lid from the model, and hollowed out the inside of the crate. I really didn’t expect him to go this far and was pleasantly surprised. However, when I got home I noticed he’d forgotten some things.

The inside of the crate and underside of the lid were simply hollow, showing the backsides of the outer polygons. This would make it so a player could see through the crate if they were to look inside it.

Thankfully, this is an easy fix Nataska went through in one of our first lessons. I simply created a box, removed the top plane, put it inside the crate and bridged it to the sides to create a proper inside to the box. For the lid, I just had to bridge the edges over the hole.

The final post-apocalyptic crate.

This leaves me with a much more versatile crate than I originally anticipated. With a detachable lid and visible inside to the box, this model could be opened by a character to have them look inside. The model could’ve been left as it was with the lid fused to the top, but in that case it would’ve only been good as a background prop.

While my models didn’t have any huge problems, this was a very useful exercise for me. One of the models I had to work with during class had decorations sticking out that were simple one-sided planes. I had to extrude several edges and then bridge them after cleaning up all the vertexes to not make the decoration see-through. Having to manually close up a model piece by piece shows that you need to consider every angle the model could be viewed from when building it, even if it’s just a small detail.