Project 6: Reality and Fantasy

Statement:  The goal of this project was to take objects found in reality and create a duplicate version of it through 3D modeling - in this case google Sketchup.  Two seperate pieces were considered for this project.  The first was a single piece - I used a PS3 Controller.  This little guy is representative of my passion for video games.  I chose the PS3 controller specifically because out of the consoles I have owned over the years, this controller design has stayed faithful over the generations.  It has become a symbol of the newest gaming has to offer while at the same to retaining respect for the games of old. The second piece I chose was a chessboard.  This chessboard sits on a table right outside of my room in my apartment, and I see it almost on a daily basis.  Although I'm not exactly the biggest chess fan, I have always appreciated the look of game and the individual pieces.  I hold added respect of it as it is essentially the ancestor of one of my favorite genres of video games - the strategy genre.

All in all this project was quite enjoyable.  However, I did make the mistake of leaving the objects with the most required contour for last.  I found that each of the individual chess pieces came out especially well, except for the knight.  Where-as the  previous chess pieces were radial for the most part in design, the knight had a lot of weird rounded contour that made it very hard to model as perfectly as I would have liked it too.  Whereas the other pieces were created and modified in a timely manner (about 2 hours each), the knight by itself took at least 5 to get to a point that I was happy with.  The same similar issue happen with the PS3 controller.  Getting the base design and shape down for the controller seemed to be easy, and I didn't quite think the shape of it was anything to hard to deal with.  However, after looking at the back of the controller, I found that the contours and shapes were a lot more difficult than I originally thought.  Additionally, the small details also complicated the piece more than needed.  Also, texturing on round or circular objects is the devil. . .