The model that I choose is an Obi Wan character in the Mighty Muggs series, I thought that there will be some kind of reference to help me to prepare myself for the project. However I can’t any similar modeled tutorial online. The research that I found are the more technical kind of modelling .

Most of my research are found in the lab materials on olive and Mr Douglas tutorial on how to create a lego hand.

Here are some links that help me with my modelling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vui5Y92YuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mfjqcE-h2E&feature=related

Bottom

The bottom of the Obi Wan was rather straight forward. I used the sphere polygon to create it by resizing and deleting the faces of the sphere.

Body

The body was a lot easier than the hand component. However at first my impression for the body part not not to create a polygon shape and modify from it, I thought of using the exercise I learn to make the bucket and vase by creating a curve and loft it. This sounds really crazy but that was what I did first.

The image above was done with loft and changing it to a polygon tool,deleting unnecessary edges and extruding using face tool.

After some thought I realise that I can’t use this as my body as there are some black spots showing from the above image and there are extra edges that I can’t delete as the shape will turn out to be weird looking.Below are the images before I delete the edges and the outcome of it.

After some thoughts, I decided to use a sphere to create the body of my obi wan. This is a lot simpler than the loft image above and all I need to do was to resize and delete some edges to the sphere to have the outline of the body.

Next I will move on to the bottom component

Head

The head was tough to do as I can’t use any polygon tool to create it because it’s too difficult for me to do it. So with the advise of Mr Douglas, I had the permission to use the curve tool to create my head.

To change the shape of the object instead of selecting the edges to resize it, I have to use the control vertex to change it.Next I will move on to the body component.

Hand

At first I thought that the item I am modelling was going to be not so complicated, however right now it proves otherwise. I have tried to go through the tutorial guide Mr Douglas post on the extra help section on how to model my Obi Wan’s hand. As I was going through the tutorial, there are some problem that I have faced.

This is one of the problem that I have encounter when I tried modelling my Obi Wan’s hand. As I extrude the left side of the face, the lines and vertices went everywhere as you can see in the above image. After that I tried drawing the cube and curve all over again but this time I tried to snap the the curves to the point.The end result is the image below.

As my Obi Wan’s hand is a rounded shape instead of the square shape I decided to use Boolean-Difference to create the shape.

I realise that after I have posted this Mr Douglas wrote on my blog that it can’t be done this way and that I need to try my best to follow the tutorial that he had uploaded on olive. The reason why I did not try to follow his skip was because it proves to be too difficult, but after seeing Mr Douglas and with his help I manage to have my hand done. When a teacher say that that the hand is tough he/she is right.

This is the final outcome of the hand

*note the left image is the final outcome of the hand and the right image is how it looks like when it is smooth.

After completing this step I was relieve that the hand is finally create. However there will be more problems to come when I need to bend my hand so that it does not look so stiff and to look exactly like my obi wan’s hand image on top of the post.

Having extruded my hand using the drawing the curve and selecting the face and curve to extrude, I apply the same technique to create a curve for my hand. Having tried many times, the outcome looks like the image above; it turn out to be weird looking. I seek advise from Mr Douglas regarding this issue and thanks to him I am able to solve my problem. He sent me a video link to watch how other people extrude their model to allow the curve to appear as how the designer wants them to appear in. I realise my mistake was that I added too little divisions, as a result the outcome will appear to be like the image above. So after referring to the to the video I decided to trail and error to see if it works. I am very pleased and surprise with the result.

Final result after 20 division and deleting the unnecessary edges

*note the left image is the final result of the 20 division and the right image is after some modification; the right is the final curved hand product.

This is the end of the hand section, I will move on to the head component.

Story

The story is about a rat racing around a track on a mousetrap car. As the rat is running for it’s life it notice something at a distance, so it ran even faster to see what was that. Finally as the rat ran closer to object it notice that it is a Obi Wan standing at the track. It seems that he is waiting for the rat to meet it’s own destiny. As the rat came face to face with Obi Wan wave it’s hand and the mousetrap car flew off the track.

Shape

I decided to try using the curve tool to outline the shape of the Obi Wan then try to revolve it like how I did for the bucket exercise however the out come was not what I thought it would be, it turn out quite funny in terms of the hand of the Obi Wan.

Outline Obi Wan

Revolved Obi Wan

Design

Front view

Side view

Back view

Having read the extracts from “Thinking Outside the Traditional 3D Mindset“ by Pete Bandstra, it discusses issues relating to how students multitask using modern technology in their school life. Well I would agree to a certain extent to what Mr. Bandstra have to say but technology never the less plays a vital role in improving the way things are taught in school.

Mr. Bandstra gave an example of a class having a lecture with the laptop used to take notes as well as using it for other purposes that are not related to studies, to proof his point he added that taking a short survey of a class the students learned about the time they wasted on non-productive events. I would agree to this point of what Mr. Bandstra have to say as I believe if I manage to get hold of my laptop during my lecture time, I would have done what he had said. I believe having an adequate amount of time taking down the lecture notes and taking a rest by browsing other sites would reduce the stress and tiredness among the students.

Next I will be talking about an article called  “The Chronicle of Higher Education”.  This article has a similar topic which is about how students are multitasking in school. The article brought up something call an illusion of competence which meant that students today feel that by multitasking; going to text message during lecture, going on facebook, they feel that are great because they can take notes as well as other activities all at once. However it is this heavy multitaskers that are actually worse at multitasking than most people.

A questioned raised by Clifford I. Nass was “One of the deepest questions in this field, is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information”. This I felt would be something that will be debate about amongs the students.

Later in the article it talks about how students should go back to the old fashioned schooling where all the electronic equipment are out and students should go back to focus on one thing, which is studies; single tasking.  It gives an example of type of students that can fit the profile, which is an artist. As a professional artist, communication is important and the ability to communicate well with other team members is an ongoing struggle.

Having read the two different articles, I felt that it is quite true that students of today is different from students who have not been introduce to technology. As such multitasking by doing alot of non productive event, students tend to forget their real purpose of going to school, which is simply to study; to gain knowledge in their specific field of study. However, like I mention earlier having just focus on study alone will not help student as it will tend lessons will tend to be boring and they will feel tiresome to attend lectures or tutorial so if both can be balanced out, I feel that technology might not be such a bad thing for students after all.

Does multi-tasking give you a real or false sense of having accomplished something?

Personally I can’t multitask so I do not have any real or false sense of having accomplished something. I prefer to do things a step at a time and not rush all the things together so that you can finish the task in a shorter amount of time. I tried multitasking a few times as there are times where many things need to be done at the same period of time. However no matter how hard I tried, I just can’t make out what I was doing and in the end I have to start all over again and do things one at a time.

Learning 3D and design different from learning programming, or is all learning the same? Why?

Learning is a process where people get to understand things that are foreign to them, and in this case learning 3D and programming. However in this case 3D and programming are two different types of learning. Example for 3D you will need to know the basic of how to draw and also learn the use of software, while in programming you will need to learn how to use the codes or programming language to allow something to move or work behind the scene. Having say that,  both 3D and programming are similar in some ways, but the way to learn them is different.

The article states that “Learning is actually a very complex operation for an individual”. Do you agree with this? Do you feel that you approach your learning in the best way – if yes, how, and if no, how can you change your work style?

I agree fully to the last sentence of the extracts namely, ” Learning is actually a very complex operation for an individual”. There are many distraction for an individual to concentrate fully in their studies, and I believe those who could block these distraction would succeeded in their studies as well as to succeed in their future careers.

What are your thoughts about the last paragraph in the extract?

I believe in what the article have to say, “The students for today’s industry have to have talent and the personality to fit in with the team.” When we go out to the society, the company does not see the work of an individual but the work of a team. I feel that communication plays a vital role in terms communicating with other team members  communicating helps people to understand your message and to deliver the task that you assign them to do.

Should your lecturers also focus on your work attitude, or just leave you to sink or swim on your own? Why?

Personally, I feel that work attitude is important. I believe that lecturers should help their students when they are in need of assistance. I’m not saying that lecturers should spoon feed their students, rather they should lend a helping when the students first try out the subject. Give the students some time to digest and try out on their own for a while, if the students are okay with it then the lecturers do not have to help them. However there are sometimes where the students are completely lost, they do not know what the lecturers are talking about and I believe that the lecturer should spot this and help the students.

Reflection

For this exercise, I find it a little challenging as you need to create a lot of cube object before the final product. Once I got lost when I’m not sure which cube I was suppose to be following and ended having to retrace my step.Using the align tool posed a little problem because the steps that the pdf show are not clear so I have to figure out how the alignment should look like. I enjoyed using the special duplicate tool to duplicate my object as it helps to send the duplicate object to the distance that I want.  Overall I have fun making the washing board as I enjoyed seeing the end product.

Reflection

I had a great time doing this exercise as the instructions are straight forward, and I am starting to understand how to create object such as the track images above using a polygon tool. From my bucket and vase experience, tracing the outline of the track was easy and straight forward. The only difference between the curve and polygon tool is that the curve tool does not have definite points for you to click; you are free to have as many vertex you deem fit for object, while for the polygon tool there are points where you need to click in order for the object to have it’s shape. At some point during steps I was confused about the instruction and I have to do a few trail and error to make sure I was on track with the instructions. For example there was this instruction that says “Scale the lines approximately 2.9 apart on the X axis” that took me a while  to understand what it meant and I have to look closely at the given image of the outcome of that step.

One interesting thing different from this exercise and that of my previous exercise was the introduction of trying out the animation set to bend my track to a curve track. I find that changing the curvature setting is alot of fun. The only thing that puzzles is the “Supplimental Math for Fun” part of the pdf file, I have no idea what the math equation is all about, maybe I should clarify with Mr Douglas about this when I get a chance to see him during the lab lesson. Overall I am happy with my end product.

Bucket

Bucket Colour

Vase

Final

Reflection

I felt that this exercise is not easy as it involve a function call revolve. You do not need to draw out the whole object just a side outline of it and when you press the revolve button it will magically transform the the outline to a whole bucket. It is also because of this magic that I find it difficult to visualise what the outcome of the revolve should be like. An example is the handle of the bucket, at first when I draw the curve for the handle, I did not notice that I was suppose to draw only half of the circumference of the curve. So I ended up drawing from one end of the handle to the other end of the handle. As a result when I mirror my handle the outcome turn out quite wrongly. I have to retry the same steps for quite a while before I realise my mistake. After that it was smooth sailing for me.I also added colours to the bucket so that it does not look so dull.

For exercise 2, it took me a while to create the vase as I struggled to understand how to create the curve without having to trace from an image like the bucket example. I went to the internet for help and tried it by looking at the image on the word document. I have to rescale and move the vertex to have the object look as close to the image from the document as possible. Although the end product does not look the same as the image from the word document.  After looking my vase I decided to make additional amendment to refine my vase and I am very satisfied with the result.