Class:
PIE 1 Art- Modeling

Assignment:
This assignment will focus on hard surface modeling. You will be given a number of shapes in a Maya scene. Recreate those shapes using hard surface modeling techniques. In addition, begin converting your low res Samus redesign model to a hard surface, high res mesh. You are only required to model around 1/4 of the entire body for this assignment so that you can focus on getting the hard surfaces to work and look right. You will ultimately be using this high res model to create a normal map for your low res model. Since this high res model would not actually be used in a game (and we’re just creating it to get a normal map), there is no tri limit.

Description:
Hard surface modeling is essentially making a model more detailed while having both smooth, curved surfaces AND hard, sharp surfaces. Hopefully the first few images will give you an idea of what that looks like. We modeled the practice shapes so we could get a feel of the techniques for hard surface modeling before we started converting our Samus models to high res. Most of it was accomplished by placing edges close to one another so that when the model was smoothed, the curves would be dampened or negated completely, unless we wanted more curved parts in which case less edges were used. I’ve included screenshots of the models both smoothed and unsmoothed, so hopefully looking at both will give a feel for how the geometry controls what the models look like smoothed.

As far as the Samus model, I just took the original top half I modeled for the previous assignments and went to town adding geometry, smoothing things out, and making it more detailed all around.

The “revisions” mentioned in the image descriptions refer to the numbered save files I have for each model. For example, I have four different files, each being more complete than the last, with the fouth being the final model that I turned in.

Tris: 6,284