Sept 24 - Gas tank take 3

I think I got it!
I took yesterday's attempt and did some splines over it, adjusted the curves, patched them and finished the gas tank. The visor type cover was all box modeling starting from a cube. Most oldschool method, but worked.

Sept 23 - BMW s1000R gas tank take 2

I found a bunch of new reference for this bike's gas tank, it turns out it's a metal gas canister with plastic fairing over it. This is another failed attempt, I'd say. I think I was trying to do two things at once, understand the form in detail, but also how to model this thing in a sensible way. I'm going to keep revisiting this until I get it. Maybe not tomorrow, but I won't consider myself good at modo unless I nail this. Are really tight automotive forms the hardest thing in 3D, period, or what?
This attempt was using ZBrush to get a rough massout, retopo it in modo, and tweak into shape. So overall a failure with bad surface. I did however get an insight for creating the curves> using 'align all' on a series of verts to get a straight line, then using a linear falloff set to repeat at end, create an even 3D curve. The only problem is, that it's an even curve, and not an accelerating one.
I think the answer is going to be using a spline cages for the main mass, create an even, clean polymesh, and work from there. We'll see. I might even write it up like my hand tutorial. It's very easy to save iterations in layers photoshop style.

Sept 22 - Igarashi Drone Bike study

Hands down one of my top three favorite industrial designers: Yutaka Igarashi
His designs are ENGINEERED, yet sexy! His ability to balance sexy design with true functionality, complexity versus simplicity, is just breathtaking. The craziest thing, is that he models his designs in Maxon's Cinema4D! It looks like CAD geometry, but is really poly modeling! Still not crying? Check out how old some of the models are.


Here's my progress on a study:
Again, I got caught up on details before having the whole design massed out...

Sept 21 - Hand modeling method!

I like how the principle of studying figure drawing/painting to support any kind of 2D design work can be applied to 3D. I've learned a lot about how poly modeling behaves by modeling this hand. I had my left hand as reference, but pushed myself to model a more feminine hand, with stronger gesture.

I was using this video for reference. It's definitely dated (and done in maya), so after a couple tries, here's my updated process:

01
From a primitive cube, make an extruded trapezoid, extrude one side out for the base of the thumb.

02
VERY important! I took this from figure drawing, the fingers are arranged on a curve pointing inward to each other. It's subtle, but can't be ignored. alt+C, divide evenly with three edges. Then, select the center loop and with a soft selection falloff create the curvature (move tool).

03
Extrude the rest of the metacarpals and thumb. Lastly, extrude the fingers at whole length. The length of the middle finger is always roughly the same length as the rest of the hand (from crease at base of middle finger to crease at wrist).

04
Adjust relative length of fingers, cut at each knuckle, edge slide inner furthest edges down.

05
Divide fingers(alt+C) and knuckle joints (select edges and bevel).

06
Shape fingers in a clean fashion by sliding the edges int he same command. First I did all the left side of each finger in one go, then all the right ones, the thumb was last.

07
Using the 'move' sculpting tool set to 100%, and smooth to 20%, right click to adjust size to push around individual vertices or more depending.

08
divide the phalanges to give each finger cushion plane a vertex to push out to give a softness. On the back of the hand, pull out bony protrusions, and tendons on the back of the hand.

09
Divide the bony line with an edge bevel command. Keep shaping with the sculpting move tool and whatever other appropriate moving tool. Look at the video to see how I started with the nails, to shape them to their final form just push the verts around so they retain their shape in regular polys as well as Psub(shift+tab). It's bad practice to shape a low poly mesh in subdivided mode, as verts and edges may cross in regular poly mode and make a mess. As a general rule: if it looks right in regular polys, it will work in Psubs, not the other way round. (Even if the form works in Psubs, you've just made your regular poly mesh impossible to work with.)


10
'6' on the number pad sets GL mode to reflection. These screengrabs are my mesh set at 4 subdivision levels in Psubs (SDS doesn't like verts that have 5 or six polys meeting, and Psubs generally does a better job anyway)

Sept 20 - Female head from scratch (start)

Trying to follow along this video Lots of trickery in the video, but still great to follow. I guess there's an animation of sculpting/smoothing operations to save time and seem more badass?
Ths was a fun exercise I hope to do again once I have some better tools and skillz.

Sept 19 - Wehs de Cahh?

derpmobile - was fun! Wheel done with displacements under a weight map. Once I have a tidy process figured out I'll post it.

Sept 18 - cutting into a cylinder woes

I didn't manage to figure this one out, perhaps after I've slept on it.

Sept 17 - Superbike Day 02

after the second crash that set me back, I decided to call it a night.

Sept 16 - Superbike Day 01

I'm embarking on a big modeling project here... My focus is going to be the automotive forms primarily. Can I find a workflow that works for me in modo?

So far, I've had a very hard time with modeling the gas tank volume. After some drawing over the reference, I figured I would first model the big volumes by pushing vertices around and using falloffs extensively to stick to 'C' or 'S' curvatures. Once the main volume is established, I UV the surfaces that will break up into secondary shapes to sketch the lines on as a background geometry to build on further. I may revisit this process again in the future with spline cages for more accurate surfaces, as right now i'm just eyeballing it and pushing individual verts around in Psub mode to get the desired shape. The Reflection OpenGL mode is very useful for analyzing the surface, though I wish the image map was circular and not square. With RayGL, it's easy to drop in different backgrounds for different reflection types; though I wish modo would give more OpenGL control. (Or I have yet to figure it out)

Sept 15 - little studies

Following along Peter Sammbach on YouTube. He has excellent bite-sized modo demos that are easy to follow along. Some things he does can be done more efficiently, but his pace is nice to follow along to.

(I did these quickly, since I've been having a frustrating day of failure with a more involved modelling project.)