The Art of 3D Modeling - My Favorite 3D Model Among the Many I've Made

Hello fellow creative Steemians, especially those who want to get into 3D, or are just plain curious about it. 

It's time for my first post about the things I do that I want to share with you. If you stumbled upon this entry from your feed, you may want to check out my introduction post too, to learn more about me.

As a 3D animation artist, one of my tasks is to create any of the various types of objects, known as 3D models, that you see in a 3D animated show. 

Such objects are the characters, creatures, plants, vehicles, props, weapons, and environments for the shows we are working on. 

Working in that capacity, I am known as a 3D modeler, or just modeler, for short.  

Now, this blog entry isn't meant to describe 3D modeling in detail, but to give you an idea of what I can create with my favorite 3D modeling/animation software with my current skillset as a modeler. 

I am adept in both hard-surface and organic modeling, and for this blog entry as well some of my next posts, I will be showing you 3D models that showcase my hard-surface modeling skills.

And so, let me present to you my favorite of all the 3D models I've created. 

Closeup of the Magpul CTR stock.

The idea for this thing began life over beers with friends after an airsoft game back in 2006.  

One of my friends, who was a fellow artist too, talked about these silly-looking phone and gun Photoshop mashups he had seen in the forums, and asked me if I had done any, either in 2D or 3D.  

"Not yet", I told him.  So, the next day as I was having coffee and checking out those images we talked about, I decided to create my own.  I've always thought that those PS mashups were kind of lame, and as a 3D artist I knew I could do better. 

My phone at the time was obviously a Nokia 3310, an iconic design that was already known for its ruggedness and durability.  Those qualities made it the perfect choice for the part. 

As for the gun I thought of using for my mashup, I chose my favorite rifle. It's the one I learned how to shoot in my ROTC days,  and also while hanging out on the range with my Army brat college buddies. It is no other than the American-made beauty, known affectionately as the Black Rifle, the venerable AR-15 and its derivatives.

Putting those two iconic designs together was a no-brainer. I had already modeled an M4A1 receiver, and all I had to do was remove the upper receiver and replace it with the 3310.  

I looked for reference images of the 3310 to use as modeling guides in the software's viewports.  Then, I fired up the  3D modeling/animation package I was using at the time, LightWave 3D,  and  set up the reference images and started modeling. I don't recall how long it took me to model the phone, but all the other parts of the rifle had already been modeled back in 2004.  

After modeling the phone, all I needed to do was put all the parts together, then created simple materials to give the parts the textures that would give them some semblance of the real thing.  

Then I set up the scene and lights, and did some test renders. And here are some of those first renders of what the model originally looked like back in 2006.

Can you believe that these two ugly renders were good enough to get me hired back in 2007?

Yes, they look ugly compared to the renders of the 2013 version. And don't bother sending me a message to that e-mail address on the dog tag. I haven't used it in ages and I don't know if it's still recoverable.  

And what makes this whimsical contraption my favorite out of all of the ones I've created?  It's my lucky charm!

Why?  It's because those first renders of it got me employed in a VFX studio here in 2007. Then in 2012 I applied for a game development job as a 3D artist, and got the job too because of those renders. 

It brought me so much luck that I decided  not  to retire it from my portfolio, and in 2013 I gave it an update to what it looks like now, with the addition of a Magpul CTR stock.  You can bet that I still have plans to update it, by adding more accessories and all kinds of  attachments seen in US/NATO special operations carbine configurations. And for this update all new accessories for it will be modeled in Blender.  I might even decide to change the phone part to the new model of the 3310.  We'll see.  

The model gets a new lease on life in Blender.

So, this concludes this post. I hope you liked it, and that what I've shown here got you interested in learning 3D modeling and animation. 

You can ask me about anything, so don't be shy.  And you'll be seeing more of my works, so stay tuned. I've  got an old hard drive full of WIPs from as far back as 2003, and I intend to pick the best ones among them and post them here someday.