Hi everyone. This is my first post here at blenderartists. I’m pretty new in Blender, I’ve been learning to use it for about a month. This guitar is the first model I make on my own, without following some tutorial. I will update as I progress. I will be happy to read your comments and suggestions.
Latest version:
Some early modeling:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]466132[/ATTACH]
Some basic textures to begin to see the details:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]466133[/ATTACH]
PS: Sorry if my English is a little weird.
Excellent modeling. I hope(assume) the ‘wires’ are clean also? Just good practice. Now…, 3D models tend too be too ‘sharp’ on all of the edges and give away their CGI origins. Adding a bevel to most edges, as in the ‘real world’ with wood and most materials, adds to the poly count, but goes a long way to make the image more visually engaging. You have done superb work here, I appreciate the effort!
I guess with “wires” you mean the wireframe, right? What do you mean by “clean”?
And yes, I think I’ll work a little bit more on modeling before starting with the textures, to try to improve details like the edges you mention.
Thanks for the comment.
I had seen another guitar that someone was working on, looked fine on screen, until a ‘wireframe’ version got posted, then it looked a mess. ;->)
For a flat surface, it had all kinds of messy tris and loops for the inserts on the electric components.
There are some excellent tutorials online on the issue of topology, but as I say below, not as big an issue unless you are animating.
If you are animating, this is more of an issue, but you stated you are ‘just beginning’ (great work!!) so it is good to get in the habit of having ‘clean’ topology (simplified shapes and clear flow to quad loops, with few tris and no ngons), and ‘wires’ is the only way to evaluate this by someone else, as you can see it on your screen as you are working.
Yes, get as much of the modeling done as possible before texturing, saves a lot of headaches and back tracking later. You can always assign ‘stand-in’ colors for areas to keep better focus on what parts are components of an object.
Just like in my Basic Drawing class, “LOOK” at the subject, my drawing teacher would keep ‘yelling’ at me, until some illumination would go off in my head, like a Zen koan, and then I would “SEE” the subtle aspects of shape. CGI makes it entirely too easy to generate shape edges and the ‘real’ world does have any!! These are all points of growth and development, as you are doing EXCELLENT, so just keep up… ;->)
Oh, I get it. I tried to clean my model as much as I could, but some parts are very difficult. I suppose it will remain as lesson for my next modeling, that I must pay attention to a clean topology from the beginning.
Here some wireframe images:
I became a mess trying to clean this part:
Well done! There are countless different ways to do any model as complex as this.
I am including a ‘red-line’ re-do to help. I am sure others will critique my efforts, but it will all help you. Look up some simple tutorials on punching a round hole in a flat plane, a first task in 3D design school. Keeping the extra geometry (polys) close to the area of intrusion or deformation, and not have super long quads or tris shooting in from the far corners. Notice tho, that my re-do has double the polys that your model does, which is not always better, depending on where they are and the topology. Your neck looks good, but the back of the headstock gets a little bit jumbled and pinched and tris where there could be quads. Keep tris where needed to collapse geometry or expand or areas that can’t be done otherwise.
Thank you so much for all your help. In effect, I need to work on geometry, as these elongated faces are being a problem to place the textures (they make them deform). The guide you gave me will be very helpful, thank you very much.
Here is the corrected topology. I simplified the circle so I did not increase poly counting so much.
Well done! Much better geometry and flow. For good texturing and UVs it helps to have polys of relatively similar size across the larger areas. I have made one small addition to the discussion, with a way to increase the geometry around the circle for a smoother contour. This can be a useful approach anywhere you need more geo without having it all over the place, the only problem is that it doesn’t keep good ‘loop’ flow, if you try to select a ‘loop’ it will cough at these points, as it can’t decide which path to take, but it is a fair trade-off sometimes. Don’t forget those two side cuts (in red) so you won’t have an oddly rendering Ngon on the sides. Check your Stats to see if you have any NGons hiding, or odd single Polys or TwoPoint Polys that you don’t want. They will tend to look okay in the Viewport, but can cough up rendering anomalies (odd black triangular shapes) when rendered, as the render engine makes it’s own choices on how to triangulate the faces for rendering. Much smoother and cleaner. One last step would be to select all of the vertices of the face, and set them to the same value, to make sure that they are ‘flat’ as they can be, as things can happen when modeling. ;->)
Thank you very much for all the tips. That trick in the middle of the circle looks pretty useful, although I think this time I will not use it (subsurf makes it look smooth enough for me).
Regarding side cuts, there really are edges there, but I have subsurf enabled and that causes them to hide.
What do you mean with that?
I’ve already started working on the textures. I tried to make the edge smoother, but I think I used too much bevel. I will try to correct it.
The bridge looks too uniform. My guitars have variation on the grooved part of the bridge.
Here’s a segment of my build of one of mine, showing the bridge structure. (I replaced the texture to make it easier to see. Removed the SSS altogether for illustrative purposes). This is modelled from my RL guitar.
Take a look at some reference: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=guitar+bridge&safe=off&client=firefox-b&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz36DR7qvRAhUrJcAKHW5dA54Q_AUICSgC&biw=1920&bih=1023#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=accoustic+guitar+bridge
You’ve put a lot of effort into the head. You should give the bridge as much love.
Wonderful work. You will find that keeping your extra loops on the edges very close together will help it from looking too overly rounded. Always a trade-off with sub-division surfaces. The texturing is fine. Aesthetically, I would prefer some beveling on the bridge piece components as they look too CGI. The inlay is pretty, but a little bit of the faceting tends to normally show in oblique angle lighting you show. All of this assumes that you are trying for a photo-realistic look, which is a personal choice always. LOOK at a guitar face in angled light like your setup, and all of those facets of the inlay will betray their little variations, which is pleasing to my eye. It is subtle, but it is there. This tends to look more like a decal glued on. It gets kind of complicated to change this without enormous amounts of extra geometry in the inlay itself. If you were to model it separately in a different file, made up of the ‘actual’ inlay pieces, (I know, a lot of work) then you can apply a bit of Randomization to the Vertices, generate a Normal map of the surface, then apply it to your decal to be affected by the lighting. At least this way, you don’t have all of the geo in this model, only the surface normal information to affect the lighting response. (I told you it wouldn’t be ‘easy’)
With regard to your question about my comment of trying to keep planar vertices at the same flat value. I know that I always generate small errors in construction, (stuff happens) so I am including a ‘mock’ guitar face, with excess geo. I looks flat from the surface, but edge on you can see that the vertices of the ‘flat’ plane are not in alignment with the Z. Here is a link that describes a simple way to correct this in Blender, as each 3D program has it’s own way to address this very common problem. I appreciate your fine work.
This has turned into a very useful tutorial spontaneously, thanks!
Keep up the good work on the guitar, perfect practice object. Not bad for one month in Blender, it puts me to shame 
For info, here’s how to get a hole and reduce polygons, whilst maintaining all quads. It’s not the best way I’ve ever done it, but it works, and you reduce polygons in a single step, which means less work to do on the outer edges. The reason that this is not the best way is because it has degenerated quads (i.e. obtuse angles - meaning greater than 180 degrees) around the hole. Blender handles them pretty well, but not all 3D packages manage it quite so well, so usually best avoided.
EDIT: I did a walk through creating a round hole in a sphere at http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/forums/topic/89572-hole-in-sphere/?do=findComment&comment=604316. It’s C4D, but can easily translate to Blender, and the method works just as well on a flat surface.
And with SubD:
For completeness, I did do a post somewhere on how to reduce polygons whilst maintaining non-degenerated quads, but I can’t find it now, so here’s a quick screen grab showing the flow.
Thank you all for your comments.
Roken, those are the bridges of acoustic guitars, and I’m modeling a classical guitar. In fact, I’m trying to reproduce a specific guitar model, the Yamaha C40. This:
Even so, my bridge is not yet finished, it still does not have the textures.
Paulhart2, thanks for all your tips, they are being really useful. I tried the method to align the vertices (really simple, by the way), and I discovered that it did have certain deformations, so thank you very much.
Athanor, thanks for the comment;)
I do appreciate that it’s not an acoustic. Nevertheless, the C40 is not three straight and parallel bridges. The main bridge tapers slightly down and is angled in the direction of the strings, and the ties are not raised to any discernible degree at all.
EDIT: I don’t mean to sound critical, but you have shown so much love to the rest. This small detail can make or break it.
http://feesheh.com/media/product/e7e/yamaha-cx40-full-size-electro-nylon-classical-guitar-e53.jpg
A distinctly simpler way to put some minor variation into the inlay circle is to change the relative reflectance/roughness on each set of colors, as it might help to make it look less like a decal where the whole surface is equally reflectant. Other comments about the bridge are warranted, but as noted above, great work for a month of Blender!!!
Roken, I do not want to sound stubborn, but that’s still not the model I’m copying. Look at the rosette, it’s different. This is the bridge of the C40 that I am modeling, and as you will see, it is quite straight:
Still … I tried to correct the shape a bit, so that it highlights the curve a little more (which is still very subtle). I also already placed the textures. Here it is:
I need to correct the body sides a bit because I put too much bump.
