One of my goals this year is to make 12 Blender renders, and this is my first one. If you’re unfamiliar with the first Jak and Daxter game, the goal is to collect all of the power cells scattered throughout the levels. I always liked the look of these, and they seemed like a simple enough beginner project to practice modelling.

This took me about a week of working on and off during the evenings. I spent a bit longer on it than I would have liked and the results aren’t exactly what I hoped for. The hardest part was getting the model correct for the orbiting parts. I was able to setup the top one and use the same modelling data for the other three, so I wouldn’t have to duplicate my work. But as you can see below, I went through a few iterations before I could settle on a topology that worked.

I’m happy with how the model itself turned out, but I didn’t get much of a chance to add VFX, tweak materials and polish the animation to what I envisioned at the start of the project. In the future I think I’ll work on projects that focus on specific facets of 3D art. Such as a project with a simple model but complicated VFX, or a complicated photorealistic material.