Week1 Day3

Today we were still in the machine room, but instead of Maya we were introduced to a new 3D modelling software called Z Brush, which is a much more targeted software, i.e. mostly used for game modelling. Our lecturer has used this software to model and make promos for many famous games.

The interface of the software is a bit complicated so the teacher took us longer to get to know it and familiarise us with it. We spent the whole day working on a project that involved building a model of a seahorse and rendering it, using a picture of a seahorse as a reference. First of all how to import this photo is the first challenge, it requires an operation that is already very complicated. Because our software is in 3D mode by default and the picture is in 2D, we need to first turn the mode to 2D and then import the picture into the library. To put the image into the main modelling screen you need a carrier, and to create the carrier we need to invert the image and then mirror flip it to ensure that the painted material image is positive and not reversed. After this step the canvas needs to be converted to 2.5D in order to continue building the 3D model with it as the background. We then used a number of spherical models overlaid on top of each other to fill in a rough seahorse shape, and finally rendered it. There were also a lot of complicated operations that could easily go wrong and we repeatedly did this for a very long time.