More 3D Modeling Fun: This time a Synth.

[Raziaar]

I know very little about Synths. I'm sort of a music noob.

But a while back, you may or may not remember that vegeta posted a thread of his development of his own little synth soundboard... whatever the hell it is.

This is a smaller version of the image he posted, and I used the larger version of it to base my work off of.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/5261/vegetasynth.jpg


Well, I'm not the most experience modeler. But I decided to tackle this. It's not exactly difficult per say, but to me it seemed daunting because of all the order and chaos in the spacing of all the parts and stuff. I didn't know where to begin, on how to make the mesh flow through cleanly.

But Krynn had a suggestion that I sort of patch it together, and that has worked brilliantly so far.

Up to this point, I have managed to get a huge amount of the top plate finished... basically all I have to go by. There are a few things I have still to do on it. I need to put in all the LEDS, the screws... as well as some other areas I think that need done. There are no sides or bottom to this piece at the moment... just the top plate.

It's subdivided heavily for the smooth edges and shit... this certainly isn't supposed to be a low poly model. I have many places I could probably cut polygons, but haven't bothered with that right now.

It's almost half a million polygons after being subdivided. And I'm modeling it on a Geforce 3 since my x1950 is crapped out. lol

So anyway... here are some more pictures of the thing. Some of these images are quite large, so apologies.

Here are two different top down images of it. And another two images showing the sheer density of the mesh.

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/8163/vegetawholeboard.png

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5483/vegetatestrender3.jpg

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4541/tmp31btmp.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3254/tmp326tmp.jpg

When I was first working on making the knobs, I made this version that had really tiny ridges... didn't realize I made them too small and too many. It looked cool but was a tedius bitch to flow the vertices down along the edge there.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/4887/tmp32btmp.jpg

This is the same knob as before... shorter and with fewer, larger ridges.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9483/knobfewer.jpg

When I was making the slider, I didn't have much to go on other than vegeta's top down image. I made the shape up myself mostly, since I couldn't tell what the rest of it was supposed to look like. I basically looked at some other synth pics and made a rounded version of those sorts, which ended up top down looking just like vegeta's image.

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/4554/tmp32atmp.jpg

Here's some more images of the various sized and shaped knobs.

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6092/tmp328tmp.jpg

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6724/tmp329tmp.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/1262/tmp327tmp.jpg


And finally, here are some terrible renders of the thing. I don't know how to do renders. this is just something using default lighting and some raytracing reflections. No shadows.

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/2606/vegetatestrender1.jpg

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/8818/vegetatestrender2.jpg

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5636/vegetatestrender4.jpg




Anyway... this is what I have so far. It's still a work in progress. There are some discrepencies in the image, mostly minor. The only major one I need to correct is the height of one of the buttons that is supposed to be the same as another, but for some reason when i was doing it, it didn't end up that way. A couple of the buttons I need to tweak the shape on, that don't look quite right.

If you have any suggestions or questions or critiques, please post. :D

[Sir Phoenixx]

Looks good. The only thing I can think of is it really needs a lot of optimization, there's an insane amount of unecessary polygons/segments that aren't needed to keep the structure and look of the model. You'll have a lot of work when you get around to that... ;)

[Raziaar]

Looks good. The only thing I can think of is it really needs a lot of optimization, there's an insane amount of unecessary polygons/segments that aren't needed to keep the structure and look of the model. You'll have a lot of work when you get around to that... ;)

Yeah... <wipes brow> I have a lot to learn still about subdivided modeling. So much of that extra polygon count comes from all the edges running tight against edges and stuff to maintain the shape.

One thing I didn't even do at all, which I probably should have... was incorporate creasing. Creasing completely slipped my mind. I don't know much about creasing though, but I'm sure it could have helped a ton.

This is what the board and buttons look like before the smoothing. The knobs aren't smoothed at all. Most of their polygon counts from the actual modeled ridges on them.

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7148/tmp357tmp.jpg

[Danimal]

You rule the school, s0n. :thumbs:

[CrazyHarij]

the design of the knobs are all wrong and the buttons need to stand out more

look up photos

and next time do a real synth, not a god damn groovebox ;)

[Raziaar]

the design of the knobs are all wrong and the buttons need to stand out more

look up photos

and next time do a real synth, not a god damn groovebox ;)

I don't know what the difference between them are. I know little about music hardware.


What exactly do you mean the buttons need to stand out more? Right now everything just has basic materials applied to them so it's not all matte gray.


I did look at reference images that Vegeta had given me for the knobs. I thought I matched them well enough, though obviously not 100% exact.. but well enough.

Can you elaborate please on what is wrong with them?

Here are some reference images of the type of knobs I was trying to create. I didn't have any images that get closer to this, so I couldn't really do much more than what I can see on these images.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/422/tmp33tmp.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2632215837_2024af7861.jpg?v=0
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8242/tmp36tmp.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/j635vq.jpg
http://i38.tinypic.com/wlokn5.jpg

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

I was expecting "synths" from half life 2 ...I'm disappointed :(

[Barnz]

Got any organics?

[SamuraiKenji]

I was expecting "synths" from half life 2 ...I'm disappointed :(

I was too, but this is pretty damn cool

[No Limit]

Very nice.

[Vegeta897]

and next time do a real synth, not a god damn groovebox ;)

And why's that?

[Viperidae]

Vegeta and I both own electribes. They're not wrong. They're not perfect, but not wrong.

Also Harij didn't you sell your 606? Software's better right?

[Dodo]

I was expecting "synths" from half life 2 ...I'm disappointed :(
lol me to!
Render it with white materials only and dont forget to apply ambient occlusion!

-dodo