3D Modeling Project 1

Okay, so this week we had our first "small" project assigned in my 3D Modeling class.  We're learning Autodesk 3D S Max.  After the professor gave us an introductory lesson on the program we were to take what we learned home with us and build a 3D model of a robot.  I quickly remembered a little bot I sketched way back in 2002 and thought she'd be a fine subject for this project.  It is with this in mind that I unleash upon an unsuspecting Mankind...

Kathy Killbot

Remembering what we'd learned about orthographic drawings, I hacked out a front and a side view of my planned robot for this project.  I never got around to a top or a 3/4 view.  The semi orthographic picture came out thusly:

I (correctly) figured a droid floating on an anti-grav sphere would be easier to model than one on two, or more, articulated legs.  The finger joints alone were a project unto themselves.  Even without modeling legs on my little murderdroid I had no idea of the difficulty I was in for.

This project started off with what 3D artists call "primitives".  "Primitives" are your basic building blocks for all shapes, no matter how complex they eventually become.  These are your spheres, boxes, pyramids, cylinders, tubes, cones, what have you. By starting with these basic shapes you can morph, stretch, chop, bend, squeeze,  and squash out anything you can imagine.  At least in theory.

I started out with a box for the torso, sphere for the head, tube for the neck, a shorter tube for the "belt", and a cone for the "skirt".  At this point it's worth noting that if you want to learn 3DS Max it is well worth finding a teacher who can sit with you while you work on your first few projects.  I tried using the introductory vids, my memories of the class lecture (I'll take more notes next time), a 500 page visual quickstart book, and a YouTube tutorial that looked promising.  Problem is the program is enormous and incredibly, incredibly, counter-intuitive.  It's very easy to miss a tiny detail that can drag your project to a halt.  Almost everything you do will have such a show-stopping detail or ten, and it's hard to find answers to such small but critical problems.  After, literally, hours of frustration, anger, confusion, and blind luck, I managed to create and modify my basic "primitive" objects into something close to what I wanted.

I got the torso bent and tapered pretty close to how I envisioned it.  I converted my torso to an "editable mesh" and then modified it.  I should've added more segements and vertices first, though.  I'd though I would have little hemispherical indentations where the arms would go and some detail on the chest resembling a jumper or an apron (see concept sketches above).  Once the torso object was turned into an "editable mesh" I never could figure out how to add more vertices.  It took so long to modify the object I had, I wasn't about to scrap it and start over.  I learned my lesson and added vertices to the bottom of the cone so that I could stretch it out into the point you see there and added my anti-gravity ball to the bottom.  I would like to have added more detail to that ball but even the simplest things were hard work.  Maybe next project.

Next I created an arm using a ball for the shoulder, two thin boxes for the upper arm, a disk for the elbow, box for the forearm, ball for the palm, tiny balls where the fingers join the palms, tiny boxes and disks for the finger joints, and wickedly curved and pointy pyramids for the fingertips.  I then duplicated these arms and mirrored them to get a distinct left and right.  I thought I'd be clever and group the arm structures.  Once grouped I couldn't figure out how to open and close the group in a selective way that would be useful to me.  That turned out to be time wasted.  I ended up just selecting whole structures and moving them around the way I wanted.  I used tubes, disks, and a "capsule" shape to make a minigun for the left forearm.  I used a box and pointy pyramid for the extendable blade on the right.  The blade was a case of "close enough is good enough". and I jammed the wonky part far enough into the box shape to hide it.  From a distance, though, I think it looks pretty good.+

I spent a few hours after work (I get home from work around 11:30pm) for several nights on this and 8 hours straight the day before class.  I'm sure one day I'll be able to crank something like this out in an hour.  That day, however, is not today.  I managed, after a spirited battle, to create a sunken area for the eyes and a tiny, anime-like, nose.   I added a bowl hair helmet with a pony tail and a big red bow to finish everything off.

Couldn't figure out how to add color to the eyes or a pair of pouty lips so she can blow a sarcastic kiss to her dying victims.  Maybe someday I'll revisit this project armed with a host of polished skills.  I might start a whole series of Kathy Killbot cartoons.  I already have some titles ready.  Kathy Killbot's Hardware Store Adventure.  Kathy Killbot's New Best Friend.  Kathy Killbot's Holiday Massacre.  Kathy Killbot: Radical Surgery.  Kathy Killbot in Suffer the Children.  Kathy's Shallow Grave Boyfriend.  Pain Threshold: A Kathy Killbot Graphic Novel, and many others.

Why don't I hear you laughing, friend?

 Nothing like a big red bow to make a digital death machine feel pretty and feminine.

If I ever have a daughter, I swear I'm dressing her up like this one halloween.

Overall this was the most miserable experience I've had doing homework since high school.  I am a grown-ass man and I felt like crying and throwing stuff at times during this project.  Thing is, I actually learned from this ordeal.  I learned to take more notes during the lecture.  I learned that I need to seek out my friends who have used this program for more immediate assistance.  I learned that hitting ctrl+X when you meant to hit ctrl+S or Z orC will make your toolbar vanish.  Hitting it again will restore your toolbar. (It took restarting the program a couple of times before I figured out what I'd been doing to lose my toolbar).  Finally, I suspect that, for the computer graphics world, learning 3DS Max is like some kind of crazy boot camp.  It's unnecessarily difficult, you think you'll never cut it, and you question the wisdom of ever starting on this path.  After it's over, though, I'll probably feel like an unstoppable 3D modeling juggernaut ready to chew on red-hot polygons and ask for seconds.

Personally, I think a forced march in full-pack might have been easier.