Basics of Blender

Blender is an incredibly powerful but difficult to learn piece of software. It can render and create anything from full length movies to a barrel in the corner of a game scene and appropriately that's where I've started.

Barrel

This was the first project I had undertaken in Blender, I found it incredibly difficult but quite fun and rewarding. I followed a video by SirPinkBeard that not only taught me how to use a lot of the basic tools but walked me through creating the barrel. 

Im very happy with the way my barrel came out, it has a very cartoony style which gives it a certain character that I quite enjoy. I found the modelling tools weren't too difficult to get a grasp of and was quite fun!  I found texturing to be very difficult, UV maps were painful to set up and as my artistic skills are severely lacking I found drawing on the barrels to be challenging. Overall modelling and texturing the barrels was difficult but very fun.

Shot Tower

For my second model in Blender I had to model a Tourist attraction and I chose the Shot Tower. Its a Tower in Kingston that has become a very popular location to visit as there is a gift shop and cafe next door. 

In this state I'm not 100% happy with my results as there is a lot to improve as this version feels like a quick mock up and not a final product.

Firstly, I would have liked to tidied up the vertices properly as there is some really messy parts of the model and I know it could have been done a lot better. 

Secondly, I would have really liked to texture it properly as I've just got solid colours at the moment instead of drawing a brick pattern that would repeat. This would have involved a lot of organising on my behalf to line up and tidy up faces so the repeating pattern could be drawn on easily. I would have also liked to do more with the roof colouring as there is a lot of detail in the shillings and a lot of change in colouring that would have been interesting to properly capture. 

Lastly, the "Road" I've added to make it look less out of place looks really bad and I would love to change that with a road that is more like the Channel Highway that the Shot tower is actually on.

Takeaways

Even if my Tourist attraction is not the best Model, I feel like I've learn a lot and it has made me want to learn more about Blender and get more familiar with modelling, texturing and many other features that blender has to offer.

Links

Barrel Blender file (Attached)

Shot tower Blender file (Attached)

Barrel Youtube video