Door Writeup

1. initial ideas / research

2. design / development

3. unwrap / texturing

4. final thoughts

1. To start with my initial ideas I went onto google and searched for different types of doors, different colors, and from different cultures and places. I also looked at doors from games like Fallout 4 and other sci-fi games and movies. Very industrial type of doors, there was a lot of sci-fi influence at the start of my initial ideas because I liked the idea of moving parts and futuristic looking materials a lot, as well as Concepts like biometric scanners (fingerprint scanners, etc.) I was kind of stuck with the idea of a vertical sliding door. It just seemed interesting and futuristic and it was something I wanted to have a go at. Using a PowerPoint, I threw loads of different pictures onto a slide to see which designs and colorways I liked the most as well as something that was aesthetically pleasing and made sense if made for the real world. I also wanted to challenge myself and use different types of shapes and make them a little bit more geometrical instead of just a simple square or rectangle. As well as sci-fi, I also leaned more towards stone designs and temple doors; something you'd find in an Indiana Jones movie. With vines and moss hanging from the door frame or the frame made from the stone would be irregular, rough, and bumpy. 

2. I started with this design. A simple doorway with its sides pushed out, to make it almost triangular, (pictured below, left). a lot of sci-fi doors make their doors geometrical. I was quite fond of this door design this shape because I feel like it has a lot of potentials especially with a vertical sliding door and pipes, you can add it to the bottom to the doors to give it a sci-fi feel. After a couple more attempts, I decided to keep the original design but I changed the bottom of the door frame (picture below, right) to give it more of a unique look. The shape was easy to replicate within blender. Rotate the bottom faces of the frame about 45 degrees. One way I could easily make the door frame was by making one-half of the frame and then using the mirror modifier to mirror the object on the axis. After applying my modifier I got to work on Dissolving any overlapping vertices, edges, or faces which could cause a problem in the later stages of UV mapping. My first design was very blocky and thick. I remade it to be thinner, therefore looking more suitable as a door frame. I originally intended for a doorstep to be used to enter the door frame but I eventually scrapped it as I believed it was just in the way. It also made the door look a bit more chunky. I also tried experimentation with the sliding door, which I was quite fond of, and I used blender’s built-in animation tools to create it. I used pose to pose instead of straight-ahead action. it made my job easier.

3. In my honest opinion, I believe UV mapping was one of the most challenging and tedious aspects of this project. Even though the design is incredibly simple, I still found it hard to UV map correctly and be proud of it. I added seams to the bottom feet of the door frame. this means they will uv map separately to the door itself. Unfortunately, I cannot grasp UV mapping as well as others at this moment in time; therefore I struggled a lot especially with the inclusion of seams and packing Islands. This is probably one of my biggest takeaways from this project, that I should learn more about UV mapping and how it works so I can fully utilize it when creating and optimizing models for the future. I did eventually manage to UV map my model but I'm not very proud of it because I know it could look so much better. I've also realized texturing is another weak spot of mine, but that may be due to the poor UV mapping. After finishing my UV map, I exported the UV map layout and put it into Photoshop. This was also the moment when I decided to use the temple theme instead of sci-fi as I believed it would have paired well with the vertical sliding door. To make creating the texture a bit easier, I would import the UV layout on one layer then I would make another layer so I can freely edit the texture without worrying about the UV map layout. it is recommended you use a graphics tablet to create your textures. this is because you can have a lot more precision when it comes to drawing than a mouse. if you have a capable graphics tablet, plug it into your computer as Photoshop has full support for graphics tablets.   Unfortunately, due to difficulty and time, I was unable to create the texture like originally planned, which was pretty disappointing considering so much time was spent figuring out my UV map and going over a couple of overhauls in design. After more projects and more practice using UV maps in texturing, I'll be a lot more efficient and my workflow will be a lot easier. once the texture work in Photoshop is finished. i finish exporting the layout back into blender where you would add it to my shape. I also utilized the shading tab and I messed around with a couple of the settings like roughness, metallic, and emission. I also tried the bump map to enhance the texture, but it didn't go very well.

4. All in all, I feel like this has been a very interesting experience as I've learned so many new things which I can apply for future projects. exploring blender was fun. Modifiers, modelling tricks, shortcuts, UV mapping, texturing, using animation tools. I've also learned a bit more about how doors work and how they should function. I've also so found a lot more ideas and themes which I could explore in the future. i have researched and development something and created a new design that is inspired by my research. i now have more experience in blender and i have more ideas which i can incorporate into my future work.