Hey so I have been in vfx for 5 years and oh what an intense 5 years it has been.
I was thinking of doing 5 upcoming blogs over time as sort of a brain dump of everything I have learned working in the film industry. I have covered bits here and there in the past but I thought it would be cool to have it all here in one place. A lot of this stuff I wish I had known when I was self teaching myself before getting in to the industry. It was all mostly learned on the job. Thats the thing, you may have some cool artstation personal projects but working in a production is entirely different.
It will be entirely about the modelling side of production , mostly hard surface. The general gist also applies to characters as well though as far as working in a team etc, just not the specifics.
My 5 so far will cover
1 - Preparation
- Setting up the scene,
- consistent direction facing and positioning in 3d space
- human for scale, checking pre-existing assets
- communication between departments
- finding reference
2 - How to approach Modelling
- Knowing how the asset will be used, what level of detail.
- Poly, SubD (triple edge) or SubD (creasing)
- topology
- Combining objects, when and when not to
- What should be modelled as one object and what can be cheated
3 - Thinking ahead and reuse
- Kitbash
- UV before duplicating
- thinking modular
- Creating high res then down res for background use, sharing UV and texture between assets
4 - Finishing the asset
- Checks and Quality Control
- cleaning the Maya file
- how to adress Materials for checking in
- Positioning exposed things like landing gear.
5 - Making changes to already finished and USED assets
- Making alterations after something is already in the pipeline (common)
- Fixing broken UVs while trying to preserve texture
- cutting and changing geo without breaking UV as much as you can
- Adding pieces to an existing hierarchy, least amount of damage to the rigger
- Communication between departments
Comment below If you have anything specific you would like me to cover in one of the upcoming blogs. Ask away.