Week 3

Week 3

In my third week, I was asked to start working on a  rim for a car wheel. We are developing 3 different cars at the moment, so we aim to do different wheels for each one of them. The tyre was given to me, ready made, so all I had to produce was a rim to fit in it. It was a very interesting project, as this was the first time I have worked on anything like that.

Of course, I have started with researching, finding the appropriate design, to match the type of car, concepting, after which I began the modelling phase.

For this phase, I have started with a cylinder, and by cutting edges to create more polygons for detail, I have initially put in the big "brush strokes" first, meaning that I have tried to create the basic design, after which, I have split the wheel in 5 equal divisions ( my initial cylinder had 20 sides - so I have divided it into 5 areas x 4 "spokes" each). This was done with final optimisation in mind. One thing I have forgotten to mention in my previous two posts, was that, optimisation refers to the texturing, as well as modelling. And by this, I mean that in order to offer more texture space, we are breaking models into identical divisions in order to be able to overlap their texture.

So, in the wheel's case, by breaking it into 5 equal and identical divisions, I have only modelled one fifth of the wheel to the detail required, after which, I have copied and rotated it, to obtain the final wheel. This way, I have only created a texture for one fifth of the wheel, and after applying the UVW map to the model, I have used the "break" tool in the UVW window, to break the UVW map in exactly the same places as it was when created initially. I have overlapped the 5 pieces on top of each other, making sure the corresponding vertices were all on top of each other, after which, I have used the texture created previously in Photoshop for one fifth of the wheel, and applied it on top of the 5 overlapped UVW maps. 

This way, I have given my model more texture space, meaning that the resolution of the texture will be higher, projecting more detail/quality onto my model.

I found this method very useful, especially when creating assets for platforms such as iPhone, iPad or android, but, by giving more detail, it can be used anywhere. 

For more organic models (characters), it will probably be more difficult to apply it, however, when texturing shoes, or other identical items of clothing, it will probably be very useful.

Images of the rims created are shown below:

Rim for Aston Martin designed and built by me. I have tried to keep to the Aston Martin traditional design, but cartoonify it somehow. 

And here is how it looks inside the tire and onto the actual car model:

Wheel rim as appearing in the actual game onto the Aston Martin complete model.