Computer Graphics Project
Muhammad Umar Bari
I decided to make a companion cube. I wanted something tricky to make but good to look at. I also decided to put a TRON Legacy design on it. Looking at it now it looks like it would be in the movie. I used Blender to design the cube. The most tricky and difficult part of designing the cube was learning the commands to make the cube. It took some patience and a lot searching online on how to do something.
I looked up how others made the cube in YouTube. They wanted to put in least amount of effort but have the most result. By that I mean making one side of the corner first, then mirroring it for the other corners. That would result in making one corner of the cube. But to do that I needed an image to make the cube.
So did the same method on making the cube mainly in orthographic view. I created the object mesh on top of the background image to use as reference. Once one corner was done, I just mirrored to make it look like a cube.
Once I made the mesh for 3-side corner, I started to add the faces. Then I started to add the faces for the 2-Side edge on the each side of the cube. Once that’s done, I just needed to add the circle at the center of each side, and add the cube with extrudes toward the cube.
After putting lots of hours into this cube, finally the end result is what I had desired.
After the cube was finished, I decided to modify it by making it sharper, add surface plane to make it look it’s one a table or some kind of surface. I changed some of the surface properties to have the reflective effect, but in a small amount to prevent clear reflection. And did some fine tune adjustments like making sure all the different layers were placed properly. And finally I added different surfaces to make the cube glow and have the TRON Legacy look. That took some time to figure it out, because blender changed the surface properties in areas that I didn’t want it to. But eventually I managed to make it look the way I wanted.
I made three companion cube versions. The only difference between them was the way the color was setup. Personally I like version 1, but I wanted to see what it look like if it was different. All of them turned out to be pretty good. If I was to do this project again, I would pick something more complex because now I have more experience in using a 3D software such as Blender. The hardest part of the assignment was getting used to the commands and knowing when to use them.
Color scheme for TRON Legacy: http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/1406402/Tron_Legacy_2
YouTube tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJicf7-Rv3o