Thanks everyone.

Sorry about not posting. For some reason I kept getting either a "page not found" or 500 internal error whenever I tried to access the forums or simplymaya. It was rather annoying..

The base connector that I am modeling I haven't changed much, because I can't make it any thicker without making it not round and cylindrical. So, I left it at the maximum possible width so that it would fill out the bottom of the TV. Unfortunately, it still looks like it's a little bit flimsy. Or maybe not. To me, the base connector on my real TV looks rather flimsy, but it hasn't broken, so I guess it's ok.

Screenshot with wireframe is attached:

Attached Thumbnails

I think you ended up with way more geometry than you need, especially on the base and the screen itself, and I don't think you really need to model ALL those details in there (from those refs) unless its going to be a really close shot :s. Personally, I wouldv'e approached that one of two ways.

Attached Thumbnails

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- Genny
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Yeah. I'm a rather messy new user so far. My method was more like the second method that you showed. Except... it wasn't as awesome.

How do I merge faces together? or edges or something.. to get rid of the excess geometry on flat surfaces such as the screen or the top part of the base?


EDIT: What do you think about the proportions now? Any other comments / criticisms?

Aah! This mouse died while I was typing, great isn't it?! Anyways you could use the select edge loop tool and the delete edge/vertex operation to get rid of some of those (might want to hotkey 'delete edge/vertex' ) The propoprtions look fine to me, its just the corners of the model are whats killing it.

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- Genny
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Ah, I've never had a mouse die on me =p

What do you mean by the corners? Do you mean like.. the corners of the TV itself (not the base or base connector), but the TV? How would I "un-round" those? =p

EDIT: It occurs to me that I do not have the picture of my chair on this computer. I toned down the reflectivity, etc. I'll post it here when I have a chance

Right. Here's a picture of the chair now:

I'm working on the TV.

EDIT: PS- The chair still LOOKS rigid, but it really shouldn't be... I might post a wireframe, but the texture that it has on there really makes it look rigid up at the top. It's not really.

Attached Thumbnails

well the chair certainly looks a lot better with less reflectivity

@GecT, if he was to model the tv the way you pictured then wouldn't he still have to have lines running across the screen when it comes to adding vents and buttons? just to keep to the four-edges-per-face thing?

that's a legit question, as in, i have no idea myself :p

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Hmm... Does anyone know how I can un-round the edges in my TV?

@ Bluethunder

Yes the corners of the TV and not so much the stand (though on second thought, it may be a bit on the thick side) You already smoothed it and I'm guessing you can't undo that now, you can use the select edge loop tool and delete edge/vertex like I said before and make sure the corners are sandwiched by other edge loops (like the the pic I had put up) the closer the edges the sharper the corner will be when you smooth. Personally for something this simple, I'd start again, this time, not smoothing it unless I'm done.


@ Chirone

Across the screen? Nah he shouldn't because it would be a separate piece of geometry than the plastic casing (they're going to have different materials anyway). In that case I wouldn't smooth the screen itself, no need to, in essence its just a plane after all. In both methods in the pic above, the center face was extruded inwards to make that lip area (whatever you wanna call it) then extracted and separted from the cube to make the screen (to avoid having to create a plane, move it into place and scale it to fit, just faster that way) then dupe that face again pull it out a bit, that'll be the transparent reflective part of the screen. Buttons can be separate too, can't see why not, as for vents, you can get real handy with spliting faces or take your chances with booleans I suppose.

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- Genny
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Originally posted by Bluethunder
Hmm... Does anyone know how I can un-round the edges in my TV?

Originally Posted by

Did you delete the history on the TV since you smoothed it?
If not, you can undo that all together.
Method 1 - Find the mesh smooth node on your object and turn the divisions down to 0, and delete the history to clear it off.
Method 2 - Select your object and Open HyperGraph connection window. to do so go to window --> Hypergraph: Connections. In this window you should see a bunch of nodes, find the polySmoothFace node, select it, and delete it. Now your tv SHOULD be unsmoothed.

Let me know how that works for you.

If you've already deleted the objects history, rebuild the tv. Why? Because this time you should be able to do it faster. And if you want to improve some more, delete it, and then build it again.
Trail and error plus practice will make you quicker and more efficient.

Cheers.

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Yes, I think I will redo the TV then. I did delete the history, etc.

This time though, the model won't be as messy as it was. Also, I'm going to take some reference pictures of my TV, and model it after that. I suppose also, I can use some of AlexanderH's awesome pictures as well.

Thank you all.

I'll have the new TV model up soonish.. How do you guys suppose i'd go about doing the vents? Maybe create a small rectangular prism and then use booleans to create the vents?

I'm going to STRONGLY advise against boolean. Why? Because unlike in some other programs it ruins your geometry and renders it useless with any advanced renderers.

I would recommend actually modeling them in. Add divisions to the surface where you want to add the details and then cut out the polys.
I know this may seem a lot more instensive, and frankly I do believe it is, but don't rely on such a silly boolean tool unless you must. If you ever want to animate it can cause some nasty issues too.

But for all intensive purposes, it is up to you.

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Peace, love and Anarchy~~~~~~~
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Oh yeah I knew I forgot something. The chair, the sides of the cushion are too flat, giving it that hard boxy feel, they should probably puff outwards a lil bit.

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- Genny
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Oh, I see. Thanks for both of your comments (alexanderH and GecT)

I don't know how much more work on the chair I'll do though. So it might not get tweaked more.

As for the Booleans... Whats wrong with them? Aren't they innocent? Or are they murdurous evil little functions....? How exactly do they ruin the model? I don't think I'll be animating the TV, but I might eventually you know... put it all into one scene which I might animate. So...

Don't they just change the geometry's look?

depending on what you boolean sometimes the two things just VANISH for no particular reason

i would think that boolean operators to create the vents wouldn't be so bad and it would be quite a quick way of doing it... provided things don't just vanish

however, like alexanderH said, booleans can do annoying things to your geometry

i'm not sure what he had in mind when he said that but if you look at one of Kurt's tutorials (like the free dog tutorial) you'll see why booleans can be a pain in the ass.

sometimes it's just faster to just cut faces up and make the vents yourself

although, you might benefit from trying booleans and then trying extruding the vents

you just have to keep all faces with 4 edges each

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D