Games: Modeling & Texturing

This had to be one of my favorite classes! Not that I have any intention of joining the game industry, but I think it's a good idea to be well-rounded. The teacher of this class is definitely worth mentioning, because he's really *that* awesome! His name is Daniel Burwen, but he goes by Dabu. He's really passionate about what he does and very good at it! He setup this forum called GameStepper that's a great learning tool for his students and anyone else interested.

OK, so we had to build a desk, computer, monitor and keyboard for this class. Here's a close-up view of the top of my desk:

From Jedi's 3D Art

Keep in mind that one of the most important factors of this class is to keep a low polygon count; yet, make it as high quality as you can. That was the challenge. I was the only one who built all the cables that connect the computer and its peripherals together:

From Jedi's 3D Art

To keep a low tri (poly) count, I made the cables in a sort of V shape so they wouldn't disappear at certain angles. That is, I deleted one side of the faces because it wasn't important. You can't tell in silhouette view, which is all that mattered.

Then, we had to put this desk inside of a room. I decided to make a zen-styled bedroom with lots of windows and indirect lighting:

From Jedi's 3D Art

I used way less texture space than my classmates. I kept it really minimal. Keep in mind that these are not renders! They are real-time screenshots directly from Maya's viewport.

My favorite trick of Dabu's was what he liked to call god rays. Notice the atmospheric (volumetric lighting) effect you see coming from the windows:

From Jedi's 3D Art

The class isn't over! For the final, we had to make a character or a vehicle. I was *sick* of making characters, so I decided to make a Ferrari 328 GTS:

From Jedi's 3D Art

This was a really fun project! I went out of my way to make sure the car's side scoop was actual geometry instead of painting a flat surface. I knew it would increase the tri-count, but I'd rather sacrifice it elsewhere. I mean, side scoops are one of my favorite features in a car! I couldn't make it look stupid, right!?

From Jedi's 3D Art

I really spent a lot of time on the tail end of the car because the tail lights are my favorite feature in a Ferrari, for some reason. I wanted to make it look really nice. All my self-imposed experience with airbrushing in Corel PHOTO-PAINT prepared me for this job because, although it doesn't look like it, the tail is pretty flat with respect to geometry. Most of the depth you see is highlights and shadows on a flat surface plane. I'm really happy with the results. Also, notice the highlight I have going across the side of the car to make it look more glossy. Nobody else did that either ;)