R2D2 Progress Diary #2: Details

Details

With the primitives complete, I started to to add the many surface details of R2D2. It became apparent there would be many different shapes and edits to do and for each I decided the best solution based on past experience with exercises.

Head

The main detail on R2's head are the blue panels. Having decided to use a sphere for quite a lot of detail, this proved beneficial in having ows of columns following the natural curvature of his head. Cloning the appropriate polygons, scaling them in and cutting out the different panels was made easier by the swift loop and connect tools for adding more edges. While it may have been easier to inset and extrude the appropriate panels, having the panels as a separate object allowed them to stick out more and meant the sphere could keep it's neat polygon structure.

Unlike the head panels, most of R2's body details shown in white made more sense to be modeled on the body object. By combining the inset and extrude tools all the panels catch the light more clearly - similar to the slight outline between beveled keys on a keyboard. As covered in one of the earlier video tutorials, the bend tool proved useful for the complex blue panels at the top. While it doesn't perfectly match the curve of the body, bending the shape before cutting into the object left a better impression and allowed the subsequent extruded object shape to stand out more. Simple multi/sub object texturing helps discern each object but will be improved upon for the second assignment. 

An incredibly useful technique covered in the lectures sped up the process of making the cables for the feet significantly. While initially I may have tried to edit a sliced torus, using a thickened, rendered spline and editing in all 3 axis' created the perfect effect that was easily manipulated. When scaling out the connecting silver socket it did however require the tools of an editable poly which lost the easy and neat manipulation of the cable. Moving and rotating the end face allowed me to do this, but with less freedom than the previous method. 

While the legs and feet were modeled as separate objects, towards the end I noticed they needed some form of connection. After researching many images from different angles, I concluded that a rhombus shape is cut into and uses a half a cylinder to pivot the foots rotation on. Adding this shape in later proved more difficult with aligning but was still possible, and created a more realistic and accurate appearance. 

The two most useful tools for creating the leg were boolean subtraction and extruding splines. Using the reference image, the top hinge was quickly created by combing an arc and a line with the fuse and weld vertex tools. While shapes like this can add a number of polygons, efficiency in other areas such as removing height segments or less sides on a smaller cylinder makes up for this. Boolean subtraction allowed the central tubes to appear they were coming out of the blue panel by cutting it half way down.

Good parts:

•  Where possible, unnecessary polygons have been removed to allow for necessary detail in other places
• Parts such as the cabling show unique shapes and tools not used in previous exercises 
• Most details of R2D2 have been modeled, including some not obvious in the reference image
• Use of reference images for keeping proportions and positioning of details as much as possible

Improvements:

•  Appearance in viewports sometime supersedes the reference image e.g. the angle of the eyes on the head. Could benefit from a better reference image with a top view
• High poly count from some necessary details. If exporting for use in a game the model would benefit from less detail in areas that won't often be seen in game play such as the sides