My attempt at 3D modelling

[Campaigner]

EDIT; Sorry bout the page stretch

 

Hello, I'm an aspiring artist, and I've been good in photoshop for a long time. However, a while back, I took up Blender to try my hand at making weapons and such since there's plenty of things that could be made. However, I learned quickly that Blender is not a cake walk like Photoshop, and have been studying off and on how do use it. One of the requests I made for an item in the file request forum was a wrench. I went afk for a bit after posting it, and when I got back, I went through some files to find something, and I found this sitting among the stuff I was after. I had already attempted making a wrench! Now, I'm not gonna pull back my request simply because I have a model made, oh no. My model is horrible and unrefined. It smells of newbie. I would be embarrassed to use it for anything other than screenshots and criticism requests at this point.

 

So, to get to the point; What can I do to improve the overall appearance, how do I give it a simple UV map (all the tutorials lead to empty UV map screens), and how do I know if I have it angled right so it is held properly?

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v104/Campaigner/sofarwrench.png

[ub3rman123]

For the angling thing, you can import another model that uses the same weapon type. For example, if you intend it to be a 1h mace, import a 1h mace and match its angle.

[Campaigner]

Feeling a bit lucky here. I imported an axe, and saw that the wrench's head is facing the same way as the axe head. I opened a sword model when I did this back a few days ago for the reference too lol. Although it was already facing the right way surprisingly, thanks for that tip. I'll try to remember not to always use a sword as the base from now on.

[ub3rman123]

Here's a link to a UV mapping tutorial I used. It worked, although I'm new to learning to texture myself. Still dunno how Bethesda makes high quality UV maps.

 

YOu might also want to look into the set smooth function. It has the ability to smooth certain places, so you can round out the tube parts and keep the edges sharp.

 

You can also look at the model's real life counterparts to see if there's more details you can add, like this one.

http://www.thaneeya.com/3s400-daily-painting-a-day.jpg

[Campaigner]

Uh...Only problem with that is that it says something about seams, and I can't do that with my model. There's no middle vertices anywhere except on the two spheres on the handle and the cylinder things :(

[mcole254]

You should be able to apply a subdivide function or use a cut tool, either way it will give you more points to work with to give you a better shape. The key with 3D modeling is like everything else, practice. I always found that looking through tutorials (even if it was kinda irrelevant to what I wanted) gave me new ideas or knowledge of tools/techniques I didn't know before. Best of luck either way.

 

Matt

[ub3rman123]

For seams, a seam is just the spot where the texture breaks off. Try a spot where you'd expect the texture of an actual object to change, like along the edges of the handle and right angles on it.

[Campaigner]

Ah hell, I realize a dumb mistake I did.

 

The handle and the shaft of the wrench are one part, and I can't figure out how to separate them into two different objects.

[ub3rman123]

What wrong with that? In any case, you can separete them with.. Umm. P, I think.

[Grumpf_be]

Also, don't limit your research to blender tutorial. You will find plenty of useful general 3D modeling tutorials/tips & tricks on the web. Even start looking for other softwares tutorials if it looks like it does something you want to learn, sometimes it's very easy to repeat the same steps with one program for another. At least in the begining, a sphere is sphere. Now if you very advanced then you need program specific ones...