CSCI 140 Desk Gallery

3-D Computer Modeling 
CSCI 140 Spring 2003

Rogers, Chris

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Chris RogersDesk Scene
Deluxe Desk
 
Inspiration:

The inspiration for this desk scene came from the desk I use in my apartment.  My real desk is nothing more than a large clipboard.  This board isn't much bigger than the desks you see in most classrooms.  Needless to say, my work area gets cluttered very easily.  The only place I can sit in my apartment is on the couch.  While I work on my homework, my girlfriend watches TV.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on physics when American Idol is blasting?  The only other options are to lie on my bed, or sit on the toilet.  Let's face it, these aren't options at all.

When I got the opportunity to create my own desk scene, I wanted to make it as large as realistically possible.  I also wanted to put the desk in a quiet environment.  So I put a large desk in a room with a window.  The blinds are there to shut out any outside disturbances.  The books are from my collection of programming books.  The name plaque is just to show whose desk it is.  I wanted to put in more than one chair, to make sure there is plenty of seating in my desk scene. All these elements add up to the exact opposite of my real work area.
 
 
 
Objects:DeskChris Rogers
 GlassChris Rogers
 PencilChris Rogers
 PlaqueChris Rogers
 WallsChris Rogers
 ChairChris Rogers
 FloorChris Rogers
 BlindsChris Rogers
 RoofChris Rogers
 LampChris Rogers
 WindowChris Rogers
 BooksChris Rogers
   
Textures:CarpetChris Rogers
 Books EndChris Rogers
 Books PagesChris Rogers
 Books SideChris Rogers
 Carpet BumpChris Rogers
 
Techniques:

When creating the wood for the desk, I chose to go with a procedural wood texture.  The trick with the procedural wood is to stretch it in one direction using the size parameters.  This way the grain runs in a direction like real wood.  Then you mess with the other parameters, until you get the desired result.  I just cranked up the reflectivity of the material to give it a glossy wood look.

When I made the blinds, I modeled one of the blades first.  When I got it how I wanted it, I hit c to copy the blade.  Then I moved it up a little. Then I hit v to paste the old one back in. This left me with two blades.  Then I copied these two, moved them up, and pasted again.  This left four blades.  I repeated this until I had the amount of blinds I wanted.

To make the desk, I used only Boolean operations.  This is mainly because I was done with it's basic shape before we learned about extrude and bevel.

Problems:

I ran into some problems while making the name plaque.  The drill tool was not giving me what I wanted, so I used the Boolean tool.  To do this, I just created the text with the text tool, then extruded it.  This gave me an object I could subtract out of the face of the plaque.  I just had to make sure the plaque had enough polygons on the face to handle the Boolean operation.
I couldn't get my glass to cast shadows.  I figured it was because the glass was too transparent, so I turned this value down.  This made the glass look fake.  My final solution was to move the glass out of the light!  Who says graphics is hard?

I had a problem putting textures on objects.  They would always look black and white.  The problem was I was putting the textures in the diffuse channel.  This is the way many other modelers do it, but not lightwave.  To fix the problem, I just copied the textures to the color channel.

The biggest problem I ran into, was the size and placement of my objects.  When I modeled them, I didn't worry about how big they were, or if they were centered on the origin.  This caused all kinds of problems.  My books were 20 miles long at one point!  I couldn't even zoom out far enough to see them.  To solve this problem, I recreated the objects that were ridiculously out of proportion, and resolved to pay more attention to this problem next assignment.