I wanted a place to kind of save all my completed projects and write something about them.
To Start, before there was Blender, I dabbled in a lot of programs, lost a lot of my old stuff due to drive failure. I am also going to try to keep all this in order. We will see how this goes.
I have very little old my old art, howere before there was Blender , I also dabbled in CAD which these were made from. Some lego designs
I really hated how much time it took in CAD so I quickly moved to 3D Modeling, eventually found Blender.
Some of the first objects I ever made in Blender.
practice with some simple objects
Then I wanted to make the sword from Bleach anime because I was so excited to make things in Blender.
One of my goals was to compete in the Main contests on the site, so I decided to give it a go. I made my first scene in Blender. It was a train and it was a bit of a mess, but I worked on it non stop. With my hard work I won 3rd place.
(2019)
I had a taste of the competition and there was no stopping, I needed 1st, and I was relentless, and pushed myself in the next contest, it was learning about making different plastics and subD modeling. It was a contest during Alex’s birthday, the contest was make him a gift, with a new version of Blender around the corner, I decided to make a blender because he kept talking about how he couldn’t wait for the new version. To my surprise I got 2nd place.
(2019)
I knew now in the 3rd month, I needed to push myself even harder, learned about nodes more, new modeling techniques, HDRI lighting, even asked for input and critiques from people on the site. I wanted 1st place so bad, The next main contest was “Something Green” I wanted to be clever this time, play on words. Thinking outside the box I came up with making a green electric car, I collected so many pictures to work from. I craved that 1st place spot. A goal I set out to achieve. And with this render I did get that first place spot, I achieved what I set out to do in 3 months.
(2019)
Somewhere after that, I decided to do some practice modeling. Some gears
Then I thought a good practice would be a golf ball. I quickly realized that was harder then I thought, my plan was to make a perfect golf ball, however even people that manufacture it, don’t get it correct, so I became obsessed with making this thing, in the end I made a golf ball 13 different ways in Blender before I was satisfied with a result, Here are some pictures, I don’t have all 13. I didn’t document it all.
Next I tried to make this, a weird shaped shampoo bottle, it turned out to be very complicated as I didn’t know how to control my topology, it was a failed project , no matter what I did it just became worse. Started out good, was a mess in the end. Here is reference and some progress pics. I scrapped the project in the end. I did not have the knowledge to fix it.
after that decided to learn about topology, and how to control it as well as planning a large project.
I was going to do my computer desk with everything on it, push the envelope so to speak.
Started with a kind of block out to get proportions right.
Started with something small like a flash drive, that went pretty well
That turned out well, so decided to step it up with something bigger the keyboard, but with learning about topology after my last failed project, I found reference and was able to create a really nice model.
I told myself , that’s good for now, I didn’t really have any material or texturing knowledge to finish it like it should so figured I would come back to it. So moved onto the mouse next, and that’s where it all crumbled.
This is what I wanted to make.
This is what it turned out as, its was and even to this day I think one of the most difficult things to model.
Here are pics of my struggle.
I was feeling like its going ok until I hit the top of the mouse.
I was so upset I just stopped the whole project, I still didn’t know enough about topology to make the mouse. However I didn’t scrap the project. I just told myself , another day I will come back to it.
So I moved on, decided to break and do some contests while learning topology and realism. one of the contests were something in space i think it was. I tried to make a Borg cube from Star Trek.
(2019)
The next contest I joined was “something in a cup”, I wanted to go all out on this one and practice sculpting, wanted to mess around with particles, so I wanted to do something not usually in a cup. I thought some kind of animal would be grea, checks all the boxes. So I came up with and named it the “Purrfect Cup”. I was going to put a small kitten in a tea cup. There is somethijng I was determined to do, and that was to hit something I dubbed was the “awww effect”. I wanted people to look at this and go Awwwww. and I knew the key to that was the eyes. So very first thing I did, was study and practice making eyes, many many times. I became a little obsessed and getting it right and a little creepy as well. procedural and non procedural.
Then I made this
And turned it into this.
Again a little creepy
I felt like it was good enough to move onto the kitten, so I modeled a rough cup and sculpted a rough kitten, added 6 particle systems for the hair after retopologizing it. Also some test renders in between
Eventually I made a more fancy tea cup and it all came together
(2019)
And so that ended (2019) projects and then went back to practicing. However these (2020) updates may not be in order, for some reason I did not organize this year very well. So I am going to do my best to tell it as best as I can.
At start of 2020, I practiced some sculpting, I made a fish I named Hubert, I still plan on doing something with him , just I pushed it back on the list of stuff I wanted to do. I will eventually get to him again.
Then my next project was creating 4 of my mechanical pencils I use for drawing, I wanted to do something to stand out, and I thought what if I make these precise and modeled to the exact dimensions. so I got a pair of calipers and measured every little piece to model it exact, all 4 pencils, and I did just that. I believe I started with the one with electrical tape around it. Going for as much precision and detail as possible.
Pencil #1
Renders:
Next was going to make the silver one from Japan, its unique because it spins the lead as you use it , so less chance of snapping your lead. and it would be most difficult to make.
Pencil #2
Renders:
The third pencil is just a cheap one, but has a grip on it I like for sketches. I don’t have many pics of progress, I am not sure why, I think it was so easy that I probably didn’t bother at the time. Also there are artifacts at the time because I was working at a small scale and Blender at the time didn’t like that , but you can see in the renders, its just the viewport.
Renders:
Forth pencil was is a little similar to the first , but allows you to set a tag for different lead types.
Pencil #4
Renders:
Then I believe I joined the monthly contest “Red Button” , I kept this one a secret, never told anyone I was working on it, for I was known to have the red button to ban people. With this one I knew what I wanted to do, wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. but I wanted to make a “nuclear football” its called, a case that would control a nuke, decided to target Alex as well for a laugh. This needed 3D as well as 2D elements. Gathered some references. I made a targeting screen and decals in photoshop. Then modeled everything after. I posted it like 10 mins before it was due, was a huge surprise. I won 1st place as well.
Decals:
Hmmmm pencil nurling…so grippy!!
