Week 11 - Stylised Trees Project & Life Drawing

Stylised Trees Project - Modelling

Tree 1 progress

Tree 2 progress

This week I moved onto modelling. For that I used a previously learned technique of applying my concept (as a texture) to a flat plane and modelling in front of it (in Orthographic view mode). This way it was like a form of a guide, to help me get my proportions as closely to the concept as possible.

The shape of the tree was created mainly by creating a loft from shape, along a spline. At this point, I applied my tiled bark texture, so it wraps around the loft shape, along the spline. Then by extruding different faces, along newly added splines to create the branches. Textures were applied using Spline Mapping, along the same splines as the branches were modelled from. The additional branches with leaves were simply alphas applied to a flat, squared plane which I multiplied and moved around the main branches, to give the tree more volume.

The process of lofting the tree trunks for both models, strongly relied on a good tiled texture. This was a problem I encountered with my first tree and I struggled to overcome it at the start of my first tree. The way I drew the texture, caused it to look way too stretched in areas where the bark bent. The only way around it was to either adjust my unwrap; what seemed very difficult since the geometry of my tree seemed too complex, or to redraw the texture in a way that would help it keep most of its proportions when stretched.

Extruding some of the tree polygon faces, along splines caused me a lot of problems too, like the branch not having the same shape as the spline I made and also some branches seeming quite flat (instead of being round). Most of these issues I have fixed by moving around some of the vertices in each branch, but some of those I could have fixed by doing more experiments with spline modelling. Something I found out later as well, was that some of these deformations were simply caused by the vertices on my splines, being too close to each other. I simply needed to create less complex splines to avoid these deformations.

Tree 1 wireframe

Tree 2 wireframe

Lastly I have failed to manage my time for the project correctly, like giving myself the right amount of time for each stage of the process. I underestimated how much time I would have needed to arrange my textured branches; each tree required at least a few hours, because each tree required roughly 100 branches/planes to get to the right shape and I’ve only left myself around 2 hours to do this task. I needed to arrange all of these and rotate them to fit in on the main branches. This has resulted in me partly rushing through my work, just in order to complete it on time.

Tree 1 close-up

Tree 2 close-up

I will try to manage my time in such projects more carefully now. I kept on spending too much time on drawing my silhouettes/concepts, or I didn’t focus well enough and came up with terrible designs which I needed to go back, and redo. This caused me to lose precious time that I could have saved up for modelling in 3DS Max.

Tree 1 textures

Tree 2 textures

Life Drawing

First 2 sets of smaller studies/sketches

For the last week the life drawing session was slightly different, as we drew our model clothed this time. We warmed up by drawing some basic sketches. The 4 initial ones were just continuous line drawings. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with these, as the body appeared too short on the first 2. The other next 2 drawings aren’t defined enough, it’s hard to tell the pose of the model in those.

Eventually the model moved onto longer, roughly 2 minute long poses. In these drawings I started to mark down more definition of her body. My timing was quite bad here and I didn’t manage to finish drawing the whole body on most of these. I think my accuracy was much better at least and the model appeared more defined since I could see in which direction she leaned, and how her torso and legs weren’t floating anymore. She actually seemed to have some mass and depth now too. I could now tell that the model was in a resting position from looking at my drawings.

During this session I had slightly more time and I managed to complete an additional page of studies (5 minute long poses) before moving onto the final drawing. I timed myself better on these, as I managed to mark down majority of the poses. My marking of proportions was quite bad on the third drawing though, as I marked down the head correctly and the upper body; then I forgot to compare my proportions more as I moved further on what resulted in her legs looking too large, and the arms being too long. My following drawing was the strongest; the foreshortening of the legs facing me looked very accurate. This foreshortening was also the reason for which I sacrificed extra time, just to plan out that part, as front poses tend to be fairly tricky and difficult to draw.

In my final drawing I managed to keep the proportions the most accurate, compared to the previous studies this one had the most resemblance to the model and I have even managed to get some rendering in place on this one. I think I described some of the fabric folds/creases well. I can partly tell how some of them fold and how the shirt slightly hangs down from the body around at the back. It is also fairly easy to tell from my drawing, that the model was wearing jeans what I am also really happy about. Although I went so far with this study, I still went ahead to drawing too early, as I have yet again not managed to draw the whole body.