Self-Study 1: Starting in Blender (again)

A Brief(ish) Preamble

Well, here we are yet again. I thought that I was done with game design, but once again I am dragged back into the abyss. Oh well, nothing else for it, but to make the most of the opportunity I've been given,

Over the next few weeks, I'll be endeavoring to re-teach myself both the nuances of Blender, a piece of software known for having a learning curve approaching 90 degrees, as well as reinforcing my skills in Unity.

And so, where else to get started, but a staple of all Blender tutorials?

PART I - Barrels-o'-Pain

Ahh, the humble barrel. Containers of goods, and enemy of Swedish YouTubers everywhere. Making a barrel was - for me, at least - a good reintroduction into the various tool that Blender has to offer while both modelling, UV Editing, and Painting Textures. While not nearly as detailed as other examples I've seen, I feel as though I've managed to capture the raw essence of the barrel.Fig. 1 - an incredibly friend-shaped barrel

Thankfully, the Modelling process was easy enough once I knew enough about the tools, and both UV Editing and Texturing were, if nothing else, time-consuming. That said, the only major issue I encountered while completing my barrel is that, during the process, I somehow angered the Machine Spirit that resides within my 8-year-old laptop, which resulted in a Blue-Screens from running out of RAM. Thankfully, this only happened once, and following this, I was able to finish unimpeded.Fig. 2 - Why has the Omnissiah forsaken us?

PART II - A Problem for Future-Me

Now that I have successfully created a barrel with my PC only exploding once, I can turn my attention to the next part of the provided instructions that I have definitely been looking at the whole time instead of skipping ahead in the coursework (stop asking questions). In these instructions, we were told to:

"Model an object you might find at a Tasmanian tourist attraction"

Seems simple enough. Let's get into it!

My chosen object is one of the chairs from Launceston's best-ever tourist attraction (which is definitely not Penny Royal): a chair from the Gorge Basin Chairlift! This is a decision that will absolutely not become an issue in three weeks when I have to model the rest of the building.


Fig. 3 - Yep, its definitely a chair.

Now, while modelling this was a challenge due the significant amount of geometry associated with an object such as this, I (initially) felt that I managed to create something resembling the chair.


Fig. 4 - "Somethings wrong, I can feel it"

Now, for the eagle-eyed among you, you might have already noticed something amiss with the model.
"But Winston," I hear you think aloud to yourself while marking, "That looks nothing like the photo you took!"
And you would be correct. Unfortunately, while working on my model, I ran into a critical error called:
"Too lazy to walk 20 minutes to take a photo, and deciding to model from memory instead"
This issue is, unfortunately, compounded by the fact that, while editing UVs, I stacked as many as they can on top of each other to save time on editing.

Fig. 5 - One of the UV Maps of All Time

And so, for now, it will remain in the "Fix Later" pile. It will be addressed before I need it, but it ain't happening now.

An (actually) Brief Outro

Well, now I have two model, an entire folder full of failed texture files, and immense suffering. Seems like a good spot to leave it for now. Tune in next time to watch me try and import these abominations into Unity!