Stamp Idea 2 - Goldfish

My second stamp model is going to be a goldfish in a form of underwater scene. I thought that this would be a good challenge to create a goldfish as every fish is different in the real world so I would be able to do myne how i wanted. As in my previous blog post, my final render is at the top here and then a step-by-step guide goign through the process to making it with a bundle of screenshots.

I decided that i was going to create this model a bit differently to the Giraffe. I had seen a lot of people using reference images to actually create the model whereas I just used images to look at for my Giraffe. I thought I would attempt this method and see how it goes. I started off by finding an image that had the kind of shaped goldfish I was looking for. I then created a large plane in the scene, which i added a basic material to. I edited this material by adding the bitmap of my goldfish image as in the picture below.

Once my plane was added, I then created a second plane on top. This was going to be my actual Goldfish model. Its crazy how a finished 3d model was going to appear from starting with just a plane. I placed the plane over the center of the image and then extrude the plane left and right until it covered the whole image. It was important to keep stopping Extruding and then restarting as this would create seperate sections, which would be used for modelling the actual outline as showed later.

After the plane covered the whole body, I edited the vertices of each section so that they fitted over the main body. I chose to make the main body shape first and then work on each of the fins as I believed it would be easier.

I needed to make my body have vertices along the middle of its body so that I would be able to manipulate them in order to create the fatness of the body. To do this I started at the head of the body and selected the "Cut" tool. I then created a line going from the centre of the head to the opposite end of my model. I repeated this a few times above and below this line trying to keep a sort of parrallel line with my edge linees for ease in the future.

I was now ready to give my body a rounded shape. To do this I needed to select all the vertices, stretch them out to side a bit, then deselect a few around the edges and then repeat the process. This would eventually end up with the middle vertices being the furthest out on my fish and the ones around it nearly as far but a bit behind. When the turbosmooth is added this will create a rounded affect.

It was going to be very much a case of trial and error because I was working with one side of the fish. It would not be until I had finished stretching it out I could use the "Symmetry" modifier and see what the overall fish looked like. My first attempt is shown below and as you can see I stretched out a tad too far and ended up with more of a puffer fish.

My second attempt was a lot better and would allow me to move onto the next stage when it was completed.
I was now going to work on the back fin. I used the vertices and lines at the back end of the body and started to extrude them across the fin giving me some more Polygons to work with. I then edited the vertices over the top of the image to get the correct shape.

This was after the back fin was complete.

I wanted to see what my fish looked like with the back fin and the fatness on the body. I re-added the "Symmetry" modifier and moved around the different angles to see the image.

I then continued with making the outline of the fish and moved onto the top fin. I used the same process as the back fin to create the shape. I then moved onto the over two fins in the same way.

I now wanted to create the small fin that is positioned just behind the head. I struggled at first with this part because I was not sure how I was going to create the actual shape extended off of the body. I had a couple of attempts at doing it but unfortunately my vertices and lines kept on overlapping, which created total mayhem when turbosmooth was applied.

The way I eventually worked of doing it was to pick a polygon where I thought was about right for the fin. I then extruded this out away from the body to a suitable distance. I then took the edges of this polygon and extruded them down the body. I repeated this process a few times and now had a rectangle along the side of the body to work with. From this point it was simple as I just modified the positions of the vertices to create the shape. When the turbosmooth was added I checked to make sure nothing had overlapped and all was good.

I was now ready to make my fish into a complete fish and not two seperate halves. i started off by editing the position of the mirror in the "Symmetry" modifier. This allowed me to bring the two halves of the fish together as shown below.

The one problem with this was the as you can see, where I had extruded the fish out earlier, it now had caused a gap on parts of the body and back fin.

To fix this I spent a lot of time going over the fin and pushing the vertices back together making sure they did not overlap. This took a long time but it was a silly error by me that had caused in the first place so I saw it as Karma.

My next problem was that my fish had a seem down the middle of its body where the two sides of the fish had been pushed together. I wasnted to eliminate this and had found on the Internet that the best way to do this was to select all the middle vertices when the fish was put together and weld them together. I had used a simlar process with some of the vertices on the fish where i used the "Target Weld" method.

Once this was all done, my fish now had a completely roudned shape and the fin and body were all joined together perfectly. My only problem was now I had a gap at the front of my fish where I needed to put the mouth. I moved some of the vertices around, used the "Target Weld" function to push some together and in general just played about with the vertices to get a form of frontal fish look. I then moved 3 of my edges toether and move the middle one into the body. This then created the effect of the mouth as shown below.

I was now ready to add in the eyes. I did this by extruding a polygon inwards around where I thought the eye would be placed. I then created a seperate object of a small sphere and moved it into this now created hole. I used this method so that the eye did not look seperate to the body and now had a form of eyesocket. I think it worked quite well in the image below.

I had now completely created my 3d fish and I was extremely happy with what I had done. Seeing as it was my 2nd model I though it was superb. I now had the task that was putting materials on to make it look more like a goldfish.

As I mentioned in my Giraffe blog post, many people int he class and on the same course had started to use "UV Unwrap" modifier. This would allow them to build a flat model of their finished model, which could then be exported into Photoshop or such like and have individual materials and colours added. This is a superb method because it allows you to put a range of different affects on each area. So I thought I would give this method a try.

I started off by adding the "UV Unwrap" modifier to my goldfish. I then flattened the map of it out. You now have to move the individual parts of the model together in a flat form so it can be easily modified after. The image below shows my Unwrap and how it had started to be put together. The finished article was then rendered into Photoshop so it could be worked on.

I now was able to add my scales and fins to the goldfish. I was going to use the image I originally used for my plane and as reference to add the scales and fins to my fish. This took hours to do because I wanted to make sure that the person viewing the fish would not be able to see where bits had been placed together. I went through and worked on the main body, the udnerside of the fish, each of the fins individually and then most of the time was spent tidying it up to make it perfect. Conitnuity was key here because as i said earlier I did not want anyone to be able to pick out where I had joined certain image parts together.

I pretty much had now completed my Unwrap and was able to add it to my fish. Ive added this image at this stage below and I think it looks superb even with my original doubts.

Unfortunately this is where the enjoyment stopped for me because I came across a big issue. Where I had flattened my image I was able to see the whole image on 1 level. This was fine for most of the body but when it came to sorting out the head I had a problem. I was able to add the head to the side of the body with no problems but then when i looked at the front, the mouth was in trouble. Due to the way the mouth was created, there was a very large amount of small polygons used on the front. This meant that when it came to unwrapping the model, there were a lot of smaller pieces that really couldn't be attached anywhere because it would ruin the model. I wasn't sure what to do really so I sat about and had a think of how I could fix this.

My plan was to restart the UV Unwrap, push the images together better so I had a much more sensible image to use to edit in Photoshop. So as much as it hurt to do so I did this and went through the same methods as before. I was now going to push the two sides of the fish more together on the UV Unwrap as shown in the image below. I would then place the whole Goldfish iamge on top of the unwrap because I had seen a few other class members using this idea and I thought it would work well. So I spent some time working on this unwrap, putting the fins onto the model etc however I came across a big issue that I STUPIDLY had not thought about.

When I had previously done all of my unwraps, my eyes were still in place so there were some polygons missing from the overall shape to make room for them. When I placed the whole fish image on top of the Unwrap firstly there was going to be a random gap where the polygons had made way for the eye socket and secondly my fish was now going to have 4 eyes, the 2 that i created and the 2 from the image placed on top). I tried going back to the original model and deleting the eyes and eyesocket and returning it to its normal state. Unfortuantely in doing this I had to basically delete my UV Unwrap. When I tried to go backk to my map, it had been reset with the new shape and I was going to have to re-do all of the unwrapping. At this point I had to consider what would be best with the short time I had left.

I decided that I felt my model was superb and the main part of the assignment was the actual model so I decided I was not going to waste too much time going back on the materials. I was disappointed that I did not have anything on the fish so it just looked like The Hulk at the moment. I considered different things I could do and decided that I was going to add the image I used as a reference, as a material. I could then add the material to the model and see how it looked. The image i used for the material is below.

I was very surprised with how this turned out but surprised in a good way. I felt that the material worked well, not brilliant but was still okay BUT my model remained the same, which I think was the strongest part of this model. My final render is shown below.

I enjoyed creating the goldfish and believe the model that I created is one of the best bits of work i've ever done. I gave the UV Unwrap a try but unfortunately in this instance it did not work as well as I had hoped but hey, at least I gave it a try. I will definitely be trying it again in my 3rd model.