3D object design Brief 3 - Iain Hendren

Work process

The brief asked that we create an original 3D object for the video game Super Mario Bros.

To begin with I had to look at the objects in Mario as I knew nothing about the game once I found a character I liked and wanted to redesign I sketched out some ideas on what the finished object may look like , I got inspiration from real life objects to make the model look different and behave differently in the Mario game. Once I had chosen my design I looked at different colours to help it fit in to the Mario world aesthetic. My design is to take the bob omb character from Mario and  redesign it so it moves differently around the world, some of my designs worked like the Tank Track idea which is what I created but my design with wings didn’t really work to well and looked out of place so I decided not to go on with it. How my designs would affect the game is that the Tank Tracks would allow the character to move around the Mario world by going up walls or going along the roof.

Designing my 3D object in Studio Max was not too difficult. The object is a simple design with mainly spheres for the body and rectangles for the tracks. The most difficult part of the model was the rope at the top of the design I did not know how to create a rope in 3D max. So I looked online to find tutorials on how to accomplish this and I was able to create a rope that looked good.  After putting the model together I render the model in PNG and Targa format and placed the render PNG in an image of Super Mario World which I edited using Photoshop. However once I rendered the model and put it in the image was not happy with the look and changed the colour of the object to make it fit in better with the overall look of Mario. Now I think it looks much better than it did before.

When I finished and render my object we had to fill out a survey for people in the class and review each other’s objects, my design was met with positive reviews from the majority of people who looked at it, and they felt as though I had made a good object that fits in with the overall feel of Mario with only a few minor dislikes one being that the object looks to shiny when placed in with the image of Mario World. And that I could maybe make the colours just a bit brighter rather than having dark colours for the majority of the object.

I think I made a good object and followed the brief when design the Mario object, it worked better than I thought it was going to and it looked very identical to my sketches I had made. My only complaint about it is that I had maybe added a bit more detail in the tracks like a bar to connect the individual rectangles together so that they are not just floating around individually and are one object. Overall from beginning to end I feel as though I did well in making my 3D object and staying true to what the brief and assessment asked us to do, I did not encounter any real difficulties when making my object in 3D max other than the rope. To sum up think my design worked well and I was pleased with how it looked.