The past two weeks I’ve been paying into some new skill sets. At least 45 minutes a day, I spend working on a project that interests me. It’s supposed to push me in new creative directions and teach me this or that about something or other. Well, In this case, 45 minutes turned out to be … a pretty sever underestimation of the kind of time commitment that would be required to pick up this new skill.
What I’m talking about is 3D Modeling and Rendering using the application Cinema 4D. The fourth dimension is time, just like in real life. But, frankly, the first three dimensions are challenging enough.
I started the endeavor with almost no experience, except for a little tinkering back in high school, and the leftovers of a false start about a year ago. It’s always something that has interested me. So it’s really all kind of a ‘why not?’ thing.
The first thing I did was follow the quick start training on Lynda.com. I have a premium subscription and it’s worth every penny. Anyway, after that, I spent some time with the people at GreyscaleGorilla. Which is a super cool name, so they were an obvious choice.
To be honest, I had dreams of creating hyper realistic scenes. That was, uh, not realistic. So, I started hating the idea of failing my challenge. So I decided I’d just go for something where I couldn’t lose. You know, make something all dark, abstract and symbolic. Then kind of sulk over it when I talk to people about it. But that was kind of bullshit. Instead I set a specific, attainable goal, and did the best I could before I ran out of time (today).
The scene below was based on my desk lamp, and is rendered from almost exactly my current sitting position. I modeled and textured everything myself, then did a little post processing in Photoshop.
The whole scene took about 20 hours to model, “texture” and render. Is that a long time? I don’t know. I’m guess that telling someone it took 20 hours to make might set their expectations just a bit higher than I could possibly deliver.
I really have a pen that looks like this. I bought it at the dollar store because of my poor self control. It didn’t work and now it stares just to my left all day.
It took me about 2 seconds to realize that glass is a lot more than just see through and that computers don’t just get it. You really gotta walk them through it. I wasn’t a great guide.
Next: the googley eyed pen is going to pay off a dry eraser to get his anti-sharpie bill through the senate of office supplies.
This wire took an exceptionally long time to figure out. Now it’s out of focus.
I’ve learned a lot about 3D modeling since I started this endeavor. I’ve learned that the process of modeling and rendering can be extremely tedious. Sometimes things don’t work, just inexplicably, from my angle. I’ve gotten to experience some old school frustration like playing the old NES Flintstones game.
I’m not going to put it down yet. I’m still enjoying exploring this kind of visual art. It really is a very different, but somehow familiar, set of tools. As far as this little set up goes, I’m going to put it away from now. I’m going to try something new, something organic. Maybe some Trees.
I haven’t settled on what I’ll be posting on Thursday or Friday this week. I’m considering a look at the before and after processing of some of my photographs. We’ll see where that goes.
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