Craig Clelland - 3D Object Design

The process of my work:

 3D Object Design  - Craig Clelland      

I will be creating a football boot for the virtual sports video game FIFA 15. I am creating a football boot because I love to watch and play football in my spare time. I have picked FIFA 15 because there is a game mode, where you can pick a particular pair of football boots that you like to ware.. The game mode is called FIFA pro clubs. When I play this game I thought I could design a pair that I like better than the rest, which are there.

I first started this design in my sketchbook where I planned out the shapes colours and how it will look like. In the sketchbook there is my design of the football boots that I want to make. This has the view with a front, side, and bottom view in colour pencil. The pair in the sketchbook that I want to make are Scottish themed mainly because I am Scottish and I really like the colours. These colours are blue and white because it also relates to the football team that I support which is Glasgow Rangers. This pair that I have decided to make was being carried out in 3Ds Max.

In the process of making the model in the software 3Ds Max. I started out with a reference image on to a plane but I stumbled into difficulties. When I wanted to freeze the plane it kept going grey. With a quick search on-line I found out how to freeze it but still keep the image on it. I went to display and clicked remove grey when frozen. From then on I traced the image with a box and then increase the size. In the vertical sense so could put enough segment onto the top, side and bottom shape. Then I imported another reference image for the side view. This helped me greatly with getting the football boots to an exact height. When I was following the side reference image I came into some problems where I forgot to select all the vertices on the top. Because of this it created big problems in the long run. One of the sides of the boot model were taller and smaller than the side that I was facing. This was an easy fix to get the vertices in the right position so it is symmetrical. At this point I had a rough boot model.

 I then started to work on the studs and bottom of the boot. Again I came into many problems with getting the bottom of the boot to match with the boot model. To overcome this issue, I lined up the two parts one on top the other. Moved the vertices of the bottom shape to the boot model. I did over and over again until all the vertices and the shapes looks like it fit perfectly. Then I did the same with the white cross on the bottom part too. Creating the studs was very easy and they fit in with the boot. The white crosses that I have added to the boot are just a design to make it look different and not boring. Plus the white crosses are in my design plans too. Getting the crosses to look like they following the shape of the boot was fairly simple. Created from a box and the vertices were moved into the correct position that I wanted.

Creating the laces for the boot was tricky because at first I could not figure out in my head how to create this particular shape. I was thinking about changing the design a little bit like having a velcro part instead of laces but the process of making that was the same as the laces. I then realised that I can select poly faces on the box and remove them. I did this only for the top of the box. So this would create the area for the laces to fit into. Creating the laces was just in the same process of the white crosses on the boot. I wanted to make it look realistic so I added two laces going into the part where you foot would go. On the last part of the boot was the top of the tongue, this was created with another box shaped to the shape I wanted. Then I moved the vertices of the left and right side down so it will create an arc shape.   

The colours that I used in was fairly limited because of my plan of design before carrying out the task of creating the boot. Also with the theme I gave the boot. Which was a Scottish theme. The colour were ranged by different shades of blue and white and black. I have chosen these colours because the blue and white is in the Scottish national flag. Adding the colours to the particular shape was fairly simple by the process of going to material editor and selecting  a sphere and adding a colour. At this stage I also played around with the lighting on the shape and the softness of the shade of the light.

In class we filled out a questionnaire where it asked if the design was successful and why? How the person could improve the design? The participants basically said that my model was successful because it followed the design very well. They also said that it looks really good too. Plus only one point of improvement is to add material to the actual boot so it isn't too shiny. I agree I could have added a material to the boot. 

To conclude this report on the process of making this Scottish themed football boot for the virtual sports game FIFA 15. The parts that I liked and dislike throughout this whole process are: I really like creating the designs of any object that I am going onto make in the software because it lets me relax and get all my great and bad ideas into my sketchbook before applying the work in the application. If I am being honest I do really like working with the 3Ds software but at time it does test my patience a little. But I push through it and feel great for the model that I have just created. I feel that the model looks good even though some parts could have been better made.