My group theme for my assets is a 1950’s Diner. I’m very happy with this theme as it gives great versatility in the assets I can design. The first asset I created was a bar stool. This was because i felt the model was more complex than some of the model choices but simpler than others. The models i had made in maya pre-assignment were never going to be used for any more than the screenshots in the blog posts, because of this i had developed bad habits which really came back to bite me in this model as you will discover. The first thing i did however, was find a couple of references for my model.

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I really liked the more detailed seat surround in the above image, I like the faux industry styling it gives and will be doing something similar in my own design.

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I liked the use of a backrest in the above design. and i prefer the central cylinder design to the four legs joining approach taken in the first reference. I also like the foot-stand in this design however will be adding a channel through the centre of this stand to add interest to my version. Also i will be making the base much larger and more intricate.

Attempt 1:

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I began by using Nurbs circles and creating a kind of vase shape, (Fig.1a) At this point I had already made my first mistake in that I was copying and pasting the various circles before changing their sizes. As I had not exported or UV’d an asset before I had never paid much attention to my outliner.

I used the loft tool after I had placed my circles, (Fig.2a) as I wanted and here I made my second mistake. When you use the loft tool I have it set to automatically give me the shape as a poly object, this is fine however you have the option to have the shape geometry be made from triangles or quads. I didn’t even notice this option at the time and so left the settings on the default triangles. I’m sure there is some reason for triangles being the default however as I found out in my other assets its much easy to add extrudes to a object if its been made from quads rather than triangles.

After having my object I stretched it with the scaling tool to give me the height of a stool leg, (Fig.3a)

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Once I had my leg the size I wanted I began adding detail. I had to erase cut lines in the geometry to give me a consistent ring to which I could push into the object using the extrude tool, (Fig.4a). This was because as mentioned above I had set my loft tool to give me a poly object with triangular geometry.

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Once I had given the base of the leg more detail I turned my attention to the main shaft of the leg. Again I had to delete lines in the edge tool but after I had done that I had three evenly spaced indents which I repeated at the top of the cylinder, (Fig.7a). I do actually quite like the leg I ended with in this design and think it gave my stool more dynamism than the ones used as references. Another mistake I made at this stage was adding the smoothing cut lines around edges in my model. This made the model a high poly design which meant that I would need to remake the entire asset in low poly.

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Next, I turned my attention to the foot-stand of the design. I began by creating a simple cylinder which I moved to place and stretched to the size I wanted. I copied and pasted this cylinder three more times to give me the four needed (Fig.10a). Again, I learnt the heard way to not use copy and paste with this model.

 

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After I had the different struts in place, I created the piece that surrounds them. I didn’t want the ring to go the full way around the leg as I felt placing a break at the rear of the circle would add interest into the design. There were two ways I could think to make this piece. I could have used a torus, set the radius to a thin decimal and deleted the faces I wanted gone to make a break. Then I would have selected the bare edge and filled the hole. I decided not to use this method though as I thought I might further edit the end faces of this strut and I do not know a way to edit the faces placed by filling a hole.

Instead the method I used was to create a plane poly and draw a three-point curve (Fig.11a). After this I lined the curve up with the centre of the plane and extended the faces of the plane along the curve (Fig.12a). I set this extrude to 10 divisions which when smoothed gave me a nice smooth curve piece. I then simply lined this newly created piece up with the four cylinders previously placed, (Fig.13a)

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I knew I wanted to add a little detail to the curved bar I had made. I did this by selecting the three middle lines of faces along the bar, (Fig.14). I experimented with intruding these faces (Fig.15) before deciding to extrude them, (Fig.16). In hindsight I do think the intruded faces (Fig.15) looks nicer than the extruded design I went with (Fig.16) but that’s simply a matter of personal preference. Either way I feel like this added interest to the footstool than what was found in my references.

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I used the same technique to create the base of the stool that I had for the column. I started with a series of nurbs circles which I placed and scaled to a shape I liked, (Fig.17). Then I used the loft tool to give me the shape in a polygon format, (Fig.18). Again, I made the mistake of having triangular faces in this poly object as opposed to the squared faces. This made it inconvenient to edit the base once created. Then I placed the newly made object to the base of the stool leg (Fig.19)

I used the same technique to create the base of the stool that I had for the column. I started with a series of nurbs circles which I placed and scaled to a shape I liked, (Fig.17). Then I used the loft tool to give me the shape in a polygon format, (Fig.18). Again, I made the mistake of having triangular faces in this poly object as opposed to the squared faces. This made it inconvenient to edit the base once created. Then I placed the newly made object to the base of the stool leg (Fig.19)

Next I switched the vertex mode and stitched the column to the opening of the base (Fig.20). Then I intruded different rings into the base to give more interest, (Fig.21). This was another mistake as while I thought the base looked good at the time when I zoomed out it became overly complex. I also didn’t add a thickness to this base before I began intruding and extruding. By the time I remembered to do this I had booleaned the base to the column and adding a thickness messed up the entire design. To get around this I added a plane to the underside of the base however there was always a slight merging of the two objects I couldn’t fix.

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I then turned my attention to where the stand meets the seat. I added a poly cylinder and booleaned that to the stand (Fig.22). Giving me a smoothed cylinder to work with, (Fig.23). One strange practise I had picked up in the weekly activities I had done before this was only using the smooth mesh preview tool for the screenshots. With this model I didn’t realise I had to actually smooth the object once completed for me to take to texturing. This is just a silly mistake, and harmless, but something I feel is worth mentioning. Once I had the cylinder in place I extracted two evenly spaced faces outward using 10 divisions, I then selected the edge division face and extruded up at a ninety degree, giving me two pillars for the seat back cushion (Fig.24)

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With the column done and the seat connector in place I turned my attention to the seat back cushion. At first I tried to use the same method I had for the footrest however when I extruded the tall vertical face along with curved line I got a straight object instead of a curve (Fig.25). I thought at the time that this meant I was using the wrong technique, though I now suspect that If I had increased the amount of divisions for this object it would have followed the curve I wanted.

In the end I copied and pasted the curved line I had made and placed it above the other (Fig.26. I then used the loft tool to create the back rest (Fig.27). It was here I realised I had the option to make the polygon have squared faces instead of triangular ones and as such I used the squared option. (Fig.27) I then placed the newly made object where I wanted it so that it would clear the seat. (Fig.28)

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With the seat base done I moved it into place of the stool object and created a seat cushion. This was simply a cylinder with smoothing edges far into the faces to give a nice soft smooth curve to the edges. I then placed this smooth cylinder into the gap I had created in the top of the seat base. (Fig.30). I recreated this seat faithfully in my redesign, but I do wonder if it would have been better for me to extrude from the seat base rather than have two objects placed on top of one another.

Once I had the seat and base in place my object was roughly done and all I had left to do was housekeeping, (Fig.31) this was where my mistakes became started to become more painful.

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At this point I was under the impression that my asset had to be made into as few separate objects as possible. I now know that this is not the case, but I believed this at the time. In line with this belief I booleaned any object that intersected another to make than one object. I did this with the cylinders into the foot-stand and then had to cut crude lines around the circle in my geometry so that I could merge the vertex together, (Fig.32). As you can see in Fig.33. doing this really damaged my geometry and meant I had to remake this piece in my redesign instead of extracting it across files. I also believed that the backrest had to be one object with the struts formed from the seat column. I did this by adding edge loops to the tops of the struts and then extruding them to intersect with the seat back, which I then booleaned together (Fig.34)

This was unnecessary and another mistake I made was I had my extruding faces filled with 50 divisions. This is not good practice as if I was trying to use this asset in a game the game would have to process a lot of information for one bar stool. Considering you rarely see one bar stool on its own in a scene this adds stress to the game without need and would negatively effect how the game runs.

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Above is my first asset in what I believed to be a finished state. I also didn’t fully understand what was meant by low poly and high poly while I made this model. I was under the impression that low poly had to be the basic poly shapes without any line-work, or details put into them. It was only when I spoke to Tom that he informed me of my mistake. I thought that when baking the parts of the low poly that didn’t line up with the high poly would be deleted. I now know this is not the case and that the low poly has to match the silhouette of the high poly exactly to be used in baking.

I also think this image shows what I was speaking about earlier when I said that the base of the design is too complicated for its own good. While I am annoyed at my mistakes during this model, this was my first model made from scratch on my own with no guidance. I feel like I learnt a lot from this model and as a result my redesign went well and I ran into no real issues. Overall I think while this design looks nice at a glance its not an asset which could be taken into a game.

Attempt 2:

While a lot of my redesign was more of a refinement I Then a redesign there were two parts that I was making major changes two. I wanted to change the base from my first attempt to something that was interesting but not so complicated to make the overall design confused. I found a lovely example of a base which I will try to replicate in my redesign, (Shpock,2018)

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Shpock, 2018. [Product]: [Auctioned, sold]. [Accessed 25/10/2020]

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I started with the base of the chair. I used a basic poly sphere and laid it thin and wide, then I cut lines along the top face ninety percent of the way along the edges generated. I extended this new face and then repeated the steps again to give me a three-tier stepped design (Fig.1b). This was after I had a conversation with Tom about what a low poly model should look like and as such, I made both models simultaneously as I went. Even this approach of making both models at the same time isn’t what I believe to be the easiest however, and in my other models I took the approach of making the low poly version and then duplicating and adding supporting cuts to craft the high poly version.

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Next, I used the same multi cut technique to cut a circle ninety percent of the way in the top face of the base. This new, small face I extended to give the height of the stool leg, (Fig.2b) Next I added four cut lines around the side of this leg which gave me one cylinder at the bottom and one at the top. I then extended them so as to make the stool look like its adjustable. (Fig.3b). I feel like this was a nice compromise between the plain designs of my references and the overly complex design of my first design.

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After this I turned my attention to the seat base. I used a multi cut to craft a cylinder out of the top of the leg and extended to give me the width I wanted (Fig.4b). This ensure that my geometry of the stool leg and base remained clean and consistent with each other. After this I used the extrude tool in the same way I had in my first attempt. Ending with me having two struts formed out of the same cylinder as the base and the leg (Fig.5b)

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Then I made the backrest for the chair. I sued the same loft tool technique as I did in my first attempt and gave it a thickness I liked (Fig.6b). Unlike with the seat the back-rest cushion and the metal surrounding it are one piece. To do this I began by bevelling the edge of the newly made poly shape, (Fig.7b), and then extruding the flat faces of the geometry that led to the bevel line (Fig.8b). This gave me a nice looking backrest which after asking Tom about if I needed to join it to the struts or not I decided not to join together.

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For the seat I used the same method I had done in my first attempt. The only difference being I cut the extruded parts of the design where it would meet the struts, which I thought gave a nice effect (Fig.11b)

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With the foot rest I started constructing it in the same way I did previously , using the extrude along a curve technique, (Fig.12b). However, decided against that motion and instead used a torus which I used to make a more traditional fully encapsulating ring, (Fig.13b). This was to help differentiate this model to my previous, which I aided by changing the one extruded line of the first to using two thin intruding grooves in this design.

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This brought me to my finished second attempt. I feel much more positive about this design than I do the first. I have a clean, organized outliner which I can take into UV and texturing. I feel like I have struck a nice balance between having a design complicated enough to be visually interest but no so complicated to become confusing.

UV:

During the UV the auto feature did a pretty good job of giving me a usable poly. I did have a slight issue with the topmost lip of the cushion (UV.Fig.4) however with I asked Tom for help and just had to move that faces location in the UV Skeleton. At this point I did not know that you had to use the layout tool to make sure each part of the UV stood separate from the rest. I had some overlaying others which caused an issue in substance painter.

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When I lay out my UV skeleton correctly the two models baked together well and gave me a result I am happy with.

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Texturing

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Out of all my assets I think this is perhaps the one that baked the best. Only on the very edges can you see any black dead space. These are where the smoothed edges of the high poly model don’t quite match the sharp edges of the silhouette perfectly. I believe this is perfectly normal from a baked model and not something I could change.

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The small details of the screws and the scratched around the foot rest and chair back I think really finish the model well

Final Renders of my asset can be seen here.

References:

Lamboro Retro Bar Stool. simplybarstools.co.uk [Product]. Available at: https://www.simplybarstools.co.uk/retro-bar-stool-red/ (Red) https://www.simplybarstools.co.uk/retro-bar-stool-black/ (Black) [20/10/2020]

Retro Diner Soda Fountain Bar Stools with Footring & Backrest [Product]. Available at: https://www.wotever.co.uk/diner_stools_bs27cb_fr.php [accessed 20/10/2020]

Shpock, 2018. [Product]: [Auctioned, sold]. Listing available online: https://www.shpock.com/en-gb/i/Wy6yFsvH8SFwC_A-/2x-original-1950s-diner-bar-stools-eggshell [Accessed 25/10/2020]