ANYWAYS!
Our latest project in Maya was yet another combined test of our skills -- by using everything within our (somewhat limited but still pretty good) range of 3D modeling and animation knowledge to make the container of a fictional product, as well as a wraparound label texture.
There were no solid rules here -- we were allowed to make anything we wanted to, as long as it was... well, doable. Examples of labelled products are drink bottles, candy tins, and soup cans. I decided to go a little off the beaten path and make something completely new -- my own brand of instant ground coffee in a cute cookie-jar container, known to the public as Mortis Mocha™!*
Making the jar itself was super simple. All I had to do was construct the basic shape of the jar and lid out of curves, and then revolve them similarly to the goblet I made a few posts back.
Well... I thought it would be simple, but MANY mistakes were made during the modeling process. One of them being the fact that my first revolve was a NURBS surface, and not a polygon. Since NURBS couldn't support rendered textured surfaces, I had to try revolving again, but as a polygon this time. But for some odd reason, every time I tried re-revolving the curves, they ended up with weird dents in the model, resulting in awkward-looking flat spots. This plagued me for a long time, until just a few days ago -- where I tried converting a NURBS version of the revolved curve into a SubDiv (which looked strangely like something from a Nintendo 64 game due to its low-poly appearance), and then into a polygon from there. To my surprise, it worked perfectly and I was finally able to add the label!
The label was a long image made in Photoshop, meant to be wrapped around the body of the product. My label was simple enough -- name of the product, company name, catchy little slogan, fancy typography, an ingredients list, directions, barcode, cute little mascot of a latte-foam ghost in a coffee cup... you know, the usual. Making the logo was super fun (because I like drawing and designing things, especially in Photoshop)! Here I have to give credit where it's due -- a fair amount of the stylistic choices I made were suggested by my next-computer neighbor and e-Comm friend Evan, so big thanks to him. He's awesome.
Shading and texturing aside from the logo was simple. A nice cool-gray (which is the best gray and if you disagree, I respect your opinion because that's the nice thing to do) Phong E was used to shade the jar's metal lid and base, and a transparent slightly-blue Phong E was used on the unlabeled part of the jar to resemble glass. Another thing I made late in the project was a cylinder with a half-sphere (to make a domed shape) that fit inside the jar, and was colored with a coffee-brown bump map to resemble ground coffee inside the jar.
Now comes the fun part -- the label! It wasn't too hard to put on (aside from having to work with an unfamiliar mapping tool), and it ended up looking REALLY nice.
The final part is the same stuff as usual -- pick a background color, make a plane surface, add some lights, render some test images, pump out a motherlode of JPEGs to pile into an After Effects project, render that final movie out, and done!
Similarly to the pen, this project was a great way to teach some new skills while improving on the old ones I still have. The only thing I would do differently would be fixing the lighting so that the final rendered movie doesn't look too dark.
Thanks for reading as always! You're all the best.
See you soon,
-Tate Johnson
*Mortis Mocha is a fictional brand of coffee from a fictional cafe in a fictional city in a fictional universe inhabited by fictional characters that I have created. The death pun was made because the main characters all have died at one point, but were resurrected. I'd stay and explain more, but then we would be here for half an hour and you would all fall asleep while I continue to ramble on about this world I've made.
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