After the enormous success of Alonso "amarillospider" Soriano's Animation Boot Camp I have decided to implement a similar training program for modeling.

Like Alonso's program it will be a gentle progression of excersizes, starting simple and moving to more complex objects. Knowledge of the basic rules of splinemanship are neccesary beforehand. Tin Can's tutorials Here, Here, and Here are practically required reading. Though they are slightly out of date, and don't include features stitching, they are, until someone releases a new basic splinemanship tutorial, the best resource out there.

For this week I wanted to do an object that (most) everyone has at home, so you don't have to deal with setting up rotoscopes or modeling from memory, you can just model what's in your hand.

This weeks excercise is to model a fork.

This is a good practice model because it is simple, fast, and allows for practice seemlessly connecting digits. Try to remain as true to life as you can to the real object. Bevel your edges, Run only two splines through each cp, and keep your patch count fairly economical.


Zack

Hey Zack great idea!! Nice obtainable goal, I'll give it a go if I can catch a moment.

-Alonso

Okay I have been messing with this fork for awhile now. Great choice for a project due mostly to the 'finger' joining aspect.

Now that I have started, I will actually finish this one.

Wade

Sweet!
I will try to find time and give it a shot.

Great idea!

I can't wait to see your attempts! I'd love to make one myself, but I've been having a lot of graphics problems with A:M... Maybe later.

Zack

It occurs to me that there could be bootcamps for every major aspect of Hash A:M, depending on the success of such things. This is definitely the way to go. It would've been cool if this had been started a year or two ago when the forum started up.

Okay,

here's my 'simple' fork....didn't really intentionally bevel edges, and it almost looks like a caveman bone fork except for the chrome color

For something mechanical like this, I would snap to grid for the most part if I was to redo it. What I did was simply freehand the top view outline with minimum of splines, then extrude, then close up the holes, and then tweak the side view into the rough fork shape. Found that I needed an extra set of tine-splines for nicer curvature and the middle tines with the hooks would give me fits if I didn't have all the splines on the screen or something....probably a "feature"....maybe I'll research and report it.

I've also put it into a test scene.

forks in action

105 patches, (12) 5-pointers, 16 hooks and (5) 3-point patches.
The 3 pointers are just cause I'm lazy ATM.


eric

Hello, here is my entry. My wife thinks that I am nuts. I spent 2 hours of my vacation day modeling a salad fork.

347 patches.
18 5 point patches.
It is fully beveled.
I think there are about 12 hooks.

One thing I learned: If this fork wasn't going to be subjected to a tight zoom I would never have beveled it. It took way too long to model. Although I do like the result.

Here is the wireframe:

It's true, that if you're working on a prop that will barely be seen you don't need a high level of detail, but as this is an excercise in good modeling, it's worth putting in.

Phil:
Nice job, although i can't really tell what's going on with the far left digit. It looks far more complicated. There're a few places in your screenshot that aren't very clear, probably because of compression, but it looks very good overall.

Reikster:
Nice economical use of patches. Here are a few suggestions:
-I would make those 5 point patches shorter. The closer they are to regular pentagons the nicer they render.
-Hooks. Try not to use more than one per spline segment, you have 3 on one. Keep those running and stop them at intervals.

I'll post my attempt tonight.

Zack

The left most tine has one of those silly notches cut out of it. I have no idea what the use of the notch is, but a lot of salad forks in high-end restaurants have them.

Here is a detail of the tines in wireframe. You can even see the beveling here.

PS: Zack, thanks for putting this bootcamp together. It was really fun.

If I'm not mistaken the notches in the forks are to aid you in prying the top off your Pabst blue ribbon beer...................

Okay this may be overkill. I used this as an opportunity to learn how to connect fingers. Also, mine is a plastic fork. That is all I had close by to use as a reference.

I am getting an error when I try to render a wire if anyone knows what this means please let me know:

Failed InitBoundRenderInfo

Version 10.5r

Hrm. I switched to Direct X and it got past the error and rendered but I got only a blank screen. Oh well. I am sure it has something to do with this laptop. I will just have to wait till I get home and render the wire.

Wade

hey zach!

when's modeling bootcamp 2?

eric

I agree. I am ready for number 2. Baby steps though please. This one is keeping me interested. I am not doing the Animation ones cause I need to up my modelling skills first. So lets move

I think that as they continue they will generate more interest.

Wade

Since Zach has abandoned us, I am going to continue the cutlery selection and make a knife and spoon. If anyone wants to join me, I would be happy to see everyone's effort.

Wade

Ok I am sticking with plastic utensils since that is all I have at work. Not that I would do this at work.

On to the knife

Wade

Ok, after discovering many ways of making AM crash (shift clicking with nothing selected, detach a spline then click again, etc) here is my first attempt at a fork.

I had made it once before but I got a cannot read point such and such at someplace and it wouldn't reload into AM (hmm?).

Anyway, coming from mainly using Max, I have a couple questions.
1. Can you control the in and out magnitudes separately? ie, make a point with a straight line in and a curve out? (I can't find out how, tried shift clicking, control+clicking, etc).

2. If you look near where the handle joins the top I have three hooks that make a line there (not intentional). How can i avoid this?

3. Probably a dumb rendering question. But after I applied one of the pre-built metal materials, why does it look so grainy?

Thanks

Sorry, I've been gone. I'll try and get another one up soon.

First, I think your fork looks great!

I will try to answer your questions as well as I can, maybe some others will chime in with better answers.

1. Can you control the in and out magnitudes separately? ie, make a point with a straight line in and a curve out? (I can't find out how, tried shift clicking, control+clicking, etc).

Have you looked at the bias handles? On the toolbar, it is shown as what looks like a yellow spline with a blue CP in the center. Its default is off. If you click this it will turn the bias handles on and this allows you to control the way the spline enters and exits a CP. If you just manipulate the handles graphically, both in and out change. You can, however, adjust the magnitudes in the properties window individually. I am sure with a specific key/mouse combo you can adjust them graphically individually as well. I just don't know that particualr option.

2. If you look near where the handle joins the top I have three hooks that make a line there (not intentional). How can i avoid this?

It actually took me a couple to see what you were talking about but now that I see it, it is obvious. I believe that I have read somewhere that you should be careful how often you use hooks and that they should be staggered. So that maybe the middle one is carried further up the mesh. That being said, I used hooks on mine and did not get the same effect. However, I used only 2 hooks on the handle side and one hook down each of the tines. (this is for the top, the bottom has the same geometry) Don't know if this helps. I used this joint attachment tutorial for attaching the tines to the body of the fork. I would attach a wire but my laptop won't render a wire and I am currently using my desktop.

3. Probably a dumb rendering question. But after I applied one of the pre-built metal materials, why does it look so grainy?

On this I am clueless. I did notice it right away though. I was wondering why it looked so smooth between the tines and the 'hook line' yet rough everywhere else. I assumed you put this in a Chor to render. Can I suggest doing a render in the modelling window to see if the effects are the same. It could have something to do with the lighting setup although I don't believe that is what it is. I am a materials/lighting idiot so I can't help too much here.

Hope I helped some,

Wade

I was having fun until CP's started jumping all over the place. Fork me, I'm done!!

So, I'm a little late in this, but I wanted to start modeling. I've owned A:M for about two weeks, and in the second week twins arrived. So, I'm getting there slowly.

I did the fork, and it's none-to-good. I'm not worried, but mostly just wanted to figure out what I did wrong. For one thing, why doesn't the material look right where the handle meets the beginning of the forks? Why the inconsistency in the shading?

Keep in mind this is my very first thing I've modeling, besides just messing around while going through the Splinesmanship tutorials and such.

Thanks,
Hans

My laptop will not let me render a wire so I did a screen capture. I could have hooked a couple of the splines going up the handle but did not think it was too important for this particular project. Also, I got some good detail along the edges by not doing so. I hid the bottom half of the model so that the spline layout is easier to see. You have to back up a page to see the finished render.

Hans, it looks like it is more of a geometry issue than a material one. It looks like everything is peaked. Therefore you will not get smooth curves, you will get hard edges. The problem though is that with the way you connected the bottom to the handle, if you smooth those curves you are going to lose the general shape of the model without some serious bias adjustment which is not the best answer. I will not claim that mine is the best but it follows some general digit attaching conventions. Take a look at my wire as well as those in the previous posts and you may see a way to control the flow of the splines better to get the shape you want without having to peak the CP's

Wade