Maya Hard Surface Modeling - Complex Objects with Primitive Shapes

hey everyone today we're going to cover how to use primitive shapes to model complex objects in maya this is my go-to workflow whenever i need to hard surface model complex objects and i'll show you how i applied this workflow to the cyberpunk grenade i recently modeled this tutorial focuses more on the overall workflow of modeling complex objects and is less focused on the step-by-step process we will also cover how to analyze reference and how to break them down into primitive shapes so they are easier to model if you found this video helpful please make sure to like comment subscribe and share every little bit helps this channel grow so with that let's get started alright so here we are in maya and if you saw one of my recent videos i recently did a time lapse on modeling this grenade from beginning to end so make sure to check that out but as i was modeling this grenade you know there was this one underlying theme i realized as i was modeling it and i realized that you know as i was doing these complex shapes i said you know what's the what's one of the best tips i can give people as they're trying to to tackle uh complexity and that's really to break things down into simpler more primitive shapes as you're modeling so you can see here you know i started here with a uh basically a subdivided cube and these uh cutouts here these were basically just kind of stretched out cylinders uh cylinders at the caps and then i use that to to get these shapes there and you'll see that more and more you know as we go to this clip portion over here you can see that i started with a nice simple cylinder piece here that extruded out into multiple uh different cubes right so you know we have another uh switch here and very easily to see that this is a cylinder extruding out into a cube but then we have some a complex shape that i use for for this triangle piece right so this just happened over and over again until you know you get just a nice looking complex shape so one of the pieces that i recently modeled or after the video was kind of this opening here now again i want to make sure to reference that i am referencing the concept art from philippa ubertino who did a fantastic job he is a concept artist at 3d project red and he has a bunch of different grenades here now this can be applied not only to his concept art but to anything at all that's that's uh you know complex in nature so if we go here and we take a look at this shape here what i did was i went ahead and saved out basically the steps or progression that i took in order to create the com that complex shape as you can see here you know looking at the reference this is a you know overall a cylindrical shape with uh cube like extrusions and then there's more kind of uh cylindrical extrusions happening all throughout right so you know the the best route was to obviously start with a cylinder and then i used what i just call guides right i do this all the time where i'll create these guides to kind of help me visualize where my topology is going to work around right so i have these cubes here and then i have this is what i meant by that extruded or elongated cylinder so i just have this cylinder here that's basically just stretched out to create this shape and what i did was also make sure to use 36 segments for for the cylinder i know sometimes i use powers of two but since i was creating something with radio it had six radial symmetry uh here including this i wanted to use a nice easy number and 36 worked well so i can basically uh rotate this six times within 360 degrees right i used ended up using what's called the duplicate special to do that and you'll see that you'll see me use that in the video too but anyways i went ahead and kind of cut out that cube-like shape here and then once i cut that out this is where it might look like a huge jump but really this is all i did right remember what i said about just kind of taking that piece and you can see that basically i have these six segments right so if i include these two right here one two three four five six and that divided easily into um the six radial symmetry uh pieces that we have here now i kept this one blank because that's where we had this last piece uh extruded of you know via the reference so since i had that and i used this nice simple cylinder i was able to duplicate special and rotate around this pivot to create this nice looking shape here all right so just real quick i can actually just show you if i duplicate this and move this up kind of exactly what i'm talking about now if i go ahead and actually um look at this from the top view you'll see that it's already set at the the center of this object so if i go ahead now and use uh the you know edit duplicate special with the settings here you can see that it's going to have my last settings here i'm going to rotate about the uh y axis here 60 degrees so that's 360 degrees divided by six and then remember i use the six segments here with 32 segments so i'm keeping everything kind of nice and even uh and 36 seem to work uh the best and the number of copies five since i already have one and then you basically just go ahead and duplicate that and then there you go and of course i can keep these as instances and i can continue to move and do whatever i need to there so i'll go ahead and just kind of go back a few more steps and then you can see how then i was left with this shape here so that's where you know even though it's starting to increase in complexity i'm still able to clean and keep this very simplified you know the overall shape simplified and it's pretty easy to manage once you get comfortable working with topology like this but remember i'm starting with this nice simple shape here and i'm using this as a guide right probably you know i wouldn't even say challenging but one of the things i just had to make sure of is you know i was able to get these shapes out of this cylindrical topology and you can see how i've done that here alright so with that you know i went ahead and did the last bit of extrusion here and separation to kind of get this this complex shape you know the good thing is you know i have the you know all my holding lines all the topology you know we can take a look at the reference and it's pretty close overall the only thing is i didn't add these last bit of extrusions here but i think that's fine i can easily add those uh later but you can kind of see how everything came together you know i didn't want to go for super sharp uh bevels and chamfers and everything you can see that the things are rounded pretty you know with a decent radius here while still giving it that hard surface look and that's exactly what i was trying to achieve here and i'd say came across really well right so we still have these nice overall rounded corners here and we still have these nice sharp corners of that uh initial cutout and everything works well you know we have nice clean topology if i wanted to kind of step back and redo something you can see that all of this topology flows together pretty well and i can easily remove uh and cut cut things out all right so and this you know i made sure to just match this this overall topology here all right so that was kind of that initial walkthrough of kind of how to start with a primitive shape and build up and using guides to help you right and what i also recommend is for you to take a look at you know real world reference and concept art if we take a look here at uh at art station you can see that you can basically go here and switch the channels to hard surface modeling and you can take a look at all sorts of different models here that are on the the front page right i already went ahead and grabbed a couple pieces here but you can see you know this is from uh dimitri t here here you know the same exact thing is can be done i obviously have a very simple cylindrical shape and then you can you're just going to add these objects right and that's where things like having these guides is going to be helpful to help visualize topology we're breaking things down into much simpler primitive shapes because you take a step back and you look at that you're like holy crap that's a lot of complexity here right even something like this you're like wow that's got all sorts of details but if you break it down into a piece by piece and then you're just continuing to build up um it it becomes much much more manageable right so you can see these are just examples of just some really good um hard surface models by these guys that i found these guys and girls that i found online uh on art station and i would say you know i grabbed this one from vlad uh sandberg here and i really like this model because it's very similar you know uh you can apply the workflow here right and what i did was you know just go ahead and drop this image into photoshop right or whatever you know graphic tool that you have and you can see i do this a lot and this is something that i have my students do even before they start modeling is you know let's take a look at these complex shapes let's break them down into simpler primitives and then it becomes much much easier to model so you can see i have the main blue body which is going to be kind of that extruded beveled cylinder here and i have this red shape here which is another cylinder and then i have another cube like green one so you're just kind of building up remember just like just like here right you're building up and then you're going to be adding that complexity and then you eventually get a much much more complex looking piece right so it's just a very nice exercise you can see yeah you have you know if my little sloppy um circle here but i was just using a mouse to quickly kind of illustrate what what i'm talking about here but again you can see a nice simple cylinder shape a nice cube like shape and then again a cylinder being extruded from the side right so here you can see the same thing this is actually very similar to one of the shapes that i've already modeled you'll start with a cylinder and then extrude and then connect to different you know different varying height widths of of cubes right so if we jump back to the grenade here again you can see that this is done all throughout the model right and again my time lapse will show you exactly kind of what i'm talking about and you can see how you know i'll start with a cube and then bridge these across and create another cube and we have a cylinder here to create this shape and then we have something like this as well and we're able to luck out you know on these flat surfaces and that's kind of actually something i wanted to quickly bring up is that since we are on this flat surface there are no artifacts at all right that's the one thing about heart surface modeling is you can get away with having triangles without without any issues right so you have these triangles here and it doesn't cause any any subdivision issues i'd still recommend staying away from n-gons but you can see i pretty much have just triangles and just um just some quads here and some occasional kite quads right so don't be deterred by hat you know having that on your model i remember this these are hard surface models so you can get away with having triangles and a lot more kite quads because they don't um soft body deform right so again here's kind of how everything's kind of looking like when it's open and again i probably have a couple things that i want to clean up on this model before i go through and do the texture process and that texture process is going to include you know taking all of this high poly detail and baking it down to a low poly model so i hope this this video you found helpful give me any feedback any tips as well you know what do you guys do what does everyone do to kind of create these complex shapes um you know do you also try to use primitive shapes and i hope you do again it makes things much more manageable and then before you know it as you're adding and building up with these complex or excuse me these primitive shapes you'll find that you're going to have nice complex shapes and then you just kind of build build and build and all of a sudden you're left with you know you're going to have very very detailed looking models so remember keep things modular keep things separate model them exactly how things are made in the real life in the real world right that's also what i tell students a lot of time they they try to keep things combined as one object i'm like that is not that is not necessary right you know if you look at reference and you you kind of look at how things are manufactured and build um and whatnot you can see all of these things are going to be separate i mean separate materials are going to be fabricated like such so that also makes your your life a lot easier so you know keep things modular where you can uh and when where you can't you know you'll just still combine things using the primitives all right so this was a nice uh short sweet one today i hope again this uh this format helped to at least understand this overall workflow um to create complex shapes so with that as always um thanks for watching um like comment subscribe share if you found this helpful and let me know down below uh what your tips are and what you're hopefully looking forward to seeing next all right so with that everyone take care i'll see you guys around

Channel: On Mars 3D

Views: 21,982

Keywords: 3D, modeling, 3d art, autodesk, maya, topology, edgeflow, hardsurface, hard, surface, tips, workflow, speed, improve, best, primitive, complex, complexity, simple

Id: dPhHsf3I1uc

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021