Week 9 Post

Monday (2 Hours of work):

Today I worked on finding the right gold texture for all of the gold hardware on the guitar. I first started with a gold texture that had a slight gradient to it. This didn't work so well because there were dark parts and light part coming through on the object. So then I had to retexture the objects with a part of the gold texture that I cropped to make it all the same color. I pretty much just cropped the shadows out of the gold. I then have to do some re-uving to make things fit correctly and it came out like I wanted it. There are still a couple seems that I can't figure out how to get rid of.

Tuesday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked on perfecting the gold texture and I think its coming out really well so far. It has that nice chromatic shine to it. I worked on applying texturing to the string turners. Then I played with the eccentricity, reflectivity, and the specular color. Then I moved down the guitar and applied the texture to the springs. I had to lighten it up a little bit because the springs weren't standing out enough. Then I started working on the screws and so far they are coming out ok but I have to adjust the UV's a lot. Its starting to finally come together. 

Friday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked on reUVing every single screw and adding the texture to it. It was very time consuming but I got it halfway done. I still have another pick guard of bolts to work on though. So almost there.

Week 8 Post

Monday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked on looking around the internet for some nice mahogany textures. I need to find a good deep mahogany texture for the body of the guitar and the tuning head of the guitar. I found some great textures which I will get later today. I finally got the textures I was looking for and they turned out to be the wrong wood for me. So tomorrow I will be looking for more fine wood textures.

Tuesday (1 Hour of work):

I finally figured out how to use the text tool and found out that the brush script came closest to the Fender logo. So I first typed that into the text tool option window and it came out flat. Then I checked the box for bevel and it came out to thick. I had to mess around with the tool for a bit until I finally got what I was looking for.

Thursday (2 Hours of work):

Today I took some time and watched some of the Lynda.com series called Maya Essentials 4: Creating Textures and Materials with George Maestri. Its really helping me wrap my head a little bit more around texturing. I'm trying to figure out how to add some more realistic textures to this amp and guitar. I know that the body of the guitar is going to be a nice shiny mahogany but there is a outline of a lighter shinier material that I will somehow have to paint into the UV snapshot in Photoshop. These videos also showed me how to use specular roll off and eccentricity to a shiny material to make it look like a metal texture.

Friday (3 Hours of work):

Today I continued to look at some more videos about texturing and finally began texturing. I found a really good fine wood texture and then played with the levels and curves inside of Photoshop. I turned it into more of a red mahogany color and it matches pretty close with the reference photo now. I'm trying to make a little but more shiny but so far I am liking how it is turning out. I also started to texture the pickups and I found a really great color for the first pickup. Its a nice deep gold color and it has the perfect amount of reflectivity.

Week 7 Blog

Monday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked on adding more detail to the amp itself. I added all of the knobs and switches that it needed. I'm actually pretty happy with the result of this. The next things I'am going to work on is added the metal pieces around the edges of the amp and adding the handle. Then after that I will be able to finally start texturing everything.

Thursday (2 Hours of work):

I worked on fixing the bevels around the edges of the amp. I tried to get them a little bit rounder to get that nice soft edge. I also had to fix some ngons after doing that. Then I added the metal bumpers around the bottom of the amp. I also added a handle to the top of the amp. After that I UVed the entire amp to get it ready for texturing. Next I will try to add text to the front of amp with the text tool.

Friday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked mostly on cleaning up the scene. I renamed everything of how the knobs are going to be placed. I'm still trying to figure out that text tool but next I will be working on adding texture to this amp. 

Week 5 Post

Friday (1 hour of work):

Today I worked on deleted all of those weird points there were around the split of the neck and the head of the guitar. I added some harder edges to the top of the neck to make it looks more like a flat fret board. I also extruded out the top of the neck right by the head because that is where the strings lay between the neck and the head. I added some edge loops to the body as well to make it look less cartoon-like and more realistic. I have my own guitar here now as well so I now have a perfect source to work off of for this project.

Monday (2 Hours of work):

Today I worked on making the edges a little harder on the neck and head of the guitar. I also added all of the frets and the tuning knobs as well. I added some bumps on the head as well because that is where the strings wind around to be tuned by the tuning knobs. Then I started to uv the neck and head of the guitar.

Tuesday (1 Hour of work):

Today I worked on adding the bolts to the body of the guitar. I had to line them up with the strings, which was a little bit of a challenge. I also added some more pickups as well and started to polish up the modeling. Next up is UVing and texturing after I get all of the strings in place.

Thursday (2 Hours of work):
I worked on adding the finishing touches of modeling to my guitar and began uving all of it. I uved everything I could possibly think of. It came out better then I thought it would and I'm really starting to get much more comfortable with UVing. 2015 has also made it much easier and much faster to lay everything out flat. Adding the checkerboard pattern onto the object also makes it very easy to figure out if anything is being stretched out. It won't let me upload the UV snapshots on here for some reason but I have finished them for the guitar. Sense I am done UVing this I will move onto modeling the amp. 

Friday (2 Hours of work):
Today I worked on finishing all the UV's on the guitar. I had to add some thickness to the edges and save them all as jpg's instead of targa. I also started on modeling the amp as well and took the reference pictures into photoshop and converted them to png files. Then I got the basic shape of the amp out and started working on the plug ins and switches.