Oh, I also made a notion page just to keep track of all my references and sources....

Its been another min since I've used Blender, so I had to refresh my memory by rewatching a tutorial on how to make a can, I followed the tutorial to T and it was going pretty good...

Until, I had to model the lid, since this cake can is supposed to have a fully removable top instead of a regular tabbed one (like most normal soda cans), I had to only partially follow the part where you can create the indent where the soda tab is. The cake can kind of has an indentation on the top but it's totally different than the ones usually found on soda cans (but again this ISNT a soda can, its a cake can be meant to be eaten out of )....

(This is a screenshot from the soda can tutorial)

 

(Here's the top I  was going for, you see what I mean)

Around this point, I scrolled back the camera to see how my mesh was coming along, I downloaded a soda can model from NicoNico/BowlRoll, just to see if my meshing matched up and it was pretty decent, but then again I WASNT making a soda can for soda, but it was still nice to have something to compare my model to this far...

(This model's mesh is a bit more developed than my own model, but then again we're not making a soda can here)

While modeling the tab I accidentally created some doubles that kind of got in the way when I was extruding the mesh to give depth the lower center part of the tab...

 

I was gonna start over, but I had gotten THIS far, so I just deleted the extra faces, and the tab turned out....okay.. it a little wonky, but I feel like the wonky-ness adds character...

After that, I highlighted and assigned parts of the can to different groups, so it would be easier to texture and shade later, I also went back into the top and made the edge of the top a bit more defined..

 

 

Part 2: Cake

The next part to focus on was the cake itself, I modeled the sponge cake, and at first, I was just gonna make a short cylinder shape, but since this version was supposed to be higher poly I decided to add some more detail. When I modeled the cream I wanted to add some details in the modeling, but I wasn't really sure how to do that so I just made it curved a bit to fit better in the can...

(Here's an close up of the cake part in the best detail I could do)

With a little tweaking, all the pieces were able to fit into the can almost perfectly, I was worried about how it would look once it's all stacked and textured, but I'll worry about that when the time comes...

 

For the strawberries, I looked back at one of the videos I used for reference, and after looking a bit closer I noticed that the strawberries where cut thinner than I thought, so I looked up a photo of a thinly cut strawberry for a closer reference.

Part 3: Texturing

Here comes my favorite part of modeling....TEXTURING, I was going to be really ambitious with this project in terms of texture, but after a while, I realized that I STILL need to learn alot about shading n' stuff to make my own textures from jump, so I ended up only texturing the strawberry myself. 

(Personally, I don't think I did that bad of a job but I could do better oof!)

As for the cream and the cake, I just looked up and use a free cake texture (since making the cake texture myself is a daunting task, especially with my limited knowledge of shading stuff), and I realized that the cream didn't really have a complex texture when you look at it from the can, so I just made it white...

I made some more textures for the different "flavors" I wanted to make, I was gonna make a bunch of flavors and variations but after learning from the dreaded ice cream truck (oof NEVER again), I just settled on making 5 simple flavors..

I got the idea for the flavors from looking at the refs from the vending machine pic, and looking at the website of the bakery that sells the cake cans in real life...

For matcha cake, I noticed that there was a chocolate piece added to the top of the can instead of it having a strawberry...

The real life version seems to have some type of animal on it ( a pig or a cow?), but for my version I put Toka Luka since I also used Toka Luka for the logo on the label of the cake, since in the MMD/Voicaoid universe I like to think these cans were made at the Taco Luka Cafe...

*There's  a typo in this version of the label but I updated it so its all good now, yee yee

(Here's the cafe I based it off of btw)

After all the texturing and stuff, I import the models into the Pmx editor, at this point I add the sph and toon files to the model, since I find that easier to do in PMX editor (or more likely I'm more used to adding the textures in pmx editor)..

Here's how the models usually look like when I first load them into PMX editor:

(Oof, looking rough buddy)

Here's how the model looks like after I add the sph and toon files..

(Chef kiss ohh that be lookin' good bby!)

Adding the sph and toon files really shows much better with the can model...

Before

After:

The sph files give the can a metal texture and see-through sheen are 6.png and 10.png, I also lowered the opacity of the can to make it more see-through...

Here's a gif of the sph work in action....

If you wondering about the toon files, those add a colored shadow to the model so it looks like it's shaded from any angle...

(I added toon files to the can too, but it shows up better on the cakes)

 

I textured and added toons to the other models and they turned out pretty good...

Part 4: Its MORPHIN TIME 

(yeah, I know that meme is dead, but I wanted an excuse to use it at least once)

Okay, so half way through making these models I realized something, usually when I make a morph I do it in PMX editor, and its easier to make morphs in which where parts of the model are disappearing or fading, or doing texture morphs (morphs where the textures change from one texture to another) or color changing. 

Morphs, btw are the models changing from one state to another, they're usually used in models with faces to change facial expressions (i.e happy, sad, mad, surprised, doubt, n' all that jazz), you can use morphs for objects too as a way to show change to that object. In this case, if I wanted to make this model look like it's opened or half-eaten then I add morphs for those, which I'm going do to right now..

With the can model, I wanted a morph where the can looked like it had been open, I went back to some of the reference videos I was using to see how I could replicate the look of an open can...

I went into morph mode and made the lid of the can look bend

I'm actually pretty proud of this model, and I think I did a pretty good job, as for the cake morphs OOOF!

With the cake morphs, I wanted it to look like the cake had been half-eaten, so I started with the cream part of the model since that is the part that takes up the most space, but in PMX editor its kind of hard to have a model part pull inward without accidentally messing up the interior of the model. so this was the best of I could come up with (within PMX editor)...

Yeah,  I wasn't really happy with how it looked, then I remember someone saying somewhere that morphs in Blender are translated to shape keys (basically Blender's version of morphs), so I thought maybe if I load the model in Blender maybe I could fix it

So, I loaded it into Blender, and as I thought the morphs showed up as shape keys....

But the only thing is now that I imported this model from blender into PMX editor BACK INTO blender, blender registers the model as a one whole blob type of thing...

I'm sure there's a way to separate each part of the models, but I have yet to figure it out, so I'm just going to go back to one of the blender files I  saved before I exported the models to PMX editor. This means I'll have to adjust the models to PMX editor and add the toons and sph files but that wasn't really a hard thing to do so...eh..

So, I went back into Blender and made the eaten shape keys (Which was simpler than making them in PMX editor), I also went back in a separated the strawberries and cakes, so they could come apart....

  I imported the files into PMX editor (AGAIN), and added all the toons, sph, and made some disappearing morphs as well, but it was at this point I realized that the cakes and strawberries I separated loaded in as a whole object, and I put them SOOO close together that taking them apart in PMX would be impossible so I just treated them as a whole object..

(These morphs were added to all the models, I just used the strawberry one because that's the first one I clicked on)

 

(I think the Cream Decrease morph I made in Blender looks much better *Chef Kiss*)

After adding the morphs, I loaded in the can that I made and....

I realized that you couldn't see the model through the can if I tried to fuse it together, I started to kind of freak out, but then I remember seeing a tutorial about this issue involving transparent clothes...

(This tutorial is by ReggieandCheese a.k.a RaC as they go by in the MikuMiku Central Discord Server, and if you think my stuff is cool, then check out RAC's stuff because their models SLAP)

So, I followed this tutorial and it fixed the problem, I think with transparent material the transparent material must be set at the WAAAAY bottom....

and...

.......

......

TA-DA!!!

The can is now transparent, but it was at this moment that I realized that I EFFED UP!! While taking in the glow of my success, I realized that the can model didn't have an open morph!

This is when I thought that I must have forgotten to save the open morph once I made it, so I went into a blender (AGAIN) and tried to make an open lid key shape...

Yeah... it didn't turn out too FRESH, I don't know if was me overthinking or what, but it seemed like making the open morph was WAAAY easier in PMX editor, so I went back into PMX editor (AGAIN!), and try to recreate the open morph, but while looking at my saved files I saw that I had TWO can files...

Okay, so YEAH turns out that the second can model I save was the one that not only had the morph, but I also made it where you could remove the lid too (like as a bone). THANK GOD because I really wasn't trying to drive myself insane trying to make a fictional soda can lid move for the THIRD TIME...

AND FINALLY (at these for the cans part ) MY CREATION IS COMPLETED....

 

YES!!!!

Well... Actually

When I loaded the models in MMD it turns out that they were REALLY HUGE, I had forgotten to scale the models against a model base for scale, so I just rescaled the models in PMX editor, but THEN I RAN INTO another problem....

The cream FALLS RIGHT THROUGH the model, I was gonna freak out again, but I remember that I can save morphs as separate models, and copy that morph back into the original model (if you ever made  a face edit in Pmx editor you know what I'm talking about)

(This tutorial bit is from HatsuneDKaname, another MMDer that makes some banger models, they're super cute n' detail so you should check her out her stuff)

So using the morph copying method that HDK demoed I saved the wild crazy morph a little bit less than have way so it looked normal....

(See, this the morph its current SICKO mode state)

(but if I only push it about less than half way it looks normal..)

I save the morph at its kind of half way state and rename as something else so its easier to find...

Then I edit the "Cream decrease morph and Open the halfway morph in the editing window...

 

I select the reflect button and the morphing problem is fixed...

I also had to fix the lid morph, but I just had to resize it is all its not really that interesting of a process...

So after some morph fixing and resizing.....

(Finally! FOR REAL THIS TIME!!!)

And just to double-check the scaling against one of my base models....

(YES! it all checks, also if you're into feet...well there you go..)

The cans are finished but WE AINT DONE YET!! next is the vending machine, bby!

I went back to one of the ref videos that was showing a clear view of the vending machine, and took some pics and some gifs....

 

I even took a look at one of the vending machine models I had in my mmd folder, to see how a vending machine could be model and morphed for MMD...

(This model has morphs for making some panels and widgets move)

I noticed that some of the panels and widgets on the MMD vending machine looked similar to the IRL vending machine so I took note of that...

I loaded the vending machine model in Blender to get a closer look from the inside because half of me really wasn't trying to really reconstruct the inside semi-complex food machine.  I had a feeling that the inside of the MMD vending machine was empty and I was right....

 It was mostly empty, thank god! I really wasn't trying to make an actual vending machine here, that made me feel WAAAYYY more confident in making this model, yeah bby! Although I'm going to keep the MMD vending machine I loaded in the blender file for scale because I dont want to morphs to start acting weird like last time ooof!

OKAY, so it took me like 4 tries to get the mesh from the vending machine right, I know its just a box, but I started to overthink all the little widget thingys on the IRL vending machine. So, I just went back and looked at the MMD vending machine I downloaded and instead of making an accurate one-to-one vending machine, I was just gonna make a vending machine that kind of looks like the IRL one but just with the mechanism and widgets (idk if im using that word right, but I'mma still go off with it so..) of the MMD vending machine. With that change in mindset, I came up with this mesh...

It's not perfect but it's the best of both worlds (without me going INSANE!!), so I'mma keep it! Now on to texturing, yeah bby! Anyways, after some texturing and some UV altering here is the result....

After doing the texturing, I merged all of the parts together and loaded it into PMX editor, and it came out much bigger than the cans, but I think the scale is okay because a vending machine is supposed to be big...

Okay, so I thought the scaling of this model was a bit sus, so I loaded in a mannequin model with the MMD vending machine, and here's what that scaling looks like....

(Pretty normal, right? just you're average every vending machine size)

and then here's MY vending machine scaling...

YEAHHH, that's what I thought. so looks like I'm gonna have to change the scaling oof....

Yeah, that's much better, now it looks more like your average everyday normal vending machine!

Next, I added the sphs and the toons files as I did with the cans to make the vending machine look REALLL GOOD, after that, I separated the buttons on the button panel and made some texture sliders, so it looks like the buttons are being selected....

To do this, I had to make a copy of all the buttons I separated, and change the texture from the normal non-selected button to the green selected button, then I had to select the colored buttons and change the opacity from 1 to 0 (basically invisible) but in the material morph editing, I make the colored button texture visible (as if it was being selected for real)...

The morphs in action:

After the morphs, I added the bones to the vending machine so that all the moving parts could...well..move, at first I forgot to parent all the bones to the center bones, so when I was moving the whole model to the center the bones DIDNT MOVE OOF....

And now all the bones move when the center bone is moved....

Finally,  I  loaded in ALL of the can models I made, and displayed the cans (almost) in the same way that they were displayed in the ref video...

I opened the model up in MMD itself just to see how it would look (because up until this moment I didn't loaded into MMD), and.....

This weird reflection thingy was happening with window panels, I first I started to freak but then I chilled out and thought it must be something up with the UV (maybe..). But when I looked at the UV in Blender it looked normal....

Then I thought maybe using some shaders on the model would help, but when adding shaders and turning on self-shadowing, I noticed the glitch was gone....

In MMD, each model comes has the ability to turn on and turn off self-shadowing/shading, usually, self-shadowing (at least in my experience) makes the model look weird so most usually turn it off....

But here it seems to be the opposite, go figure

It looks like as long as you keep the self-shadow on, the model looks good, which is fine with me...

So we good here, baby...

Part 5: Preview Making/Misc stuff

The modeling part of the process is done, all that's left is to make a preview for the models for those how what to download it, and I also need to go back and add some descriptions to the model, so it doesn't show up as "Exported by MMD tools" when you load the model in. It's a minor thing but I really enjoy adding flavor texts to my stuff...

Here's what a model that's been made in blender and then exported into PMX editor base text looks like when you load it and no flavor text is added

(Super basic and super boring....)

So, I decided to add some flavor text, I used some kaomojis from cutekaomojis.com to add some EXTRA flavor...

(Ohh...the flavor)

I even added some kaomoji flavor to the rules section...

Here's what the model text looks like when loaded in, now with flavor....

Here's the one for the vending machine model:

Here's the text for one of the can models:

(This flavor text is a lot simpler and shorter than the other one only because I didn't think I could come up with new flavor text for each item, that basically works the same..

.)

After adding flavor text and fixing some minor glitches with the models, it was time to make the preview image, the aesthetic I usually go with for my preview images is an infomercial aesthetic, since I personally find infomercials to be very charming and nostalgic. I first tried out this aesthetic with my bucket hat models and its been one of my go tos' ever since...

With this preview, I was almost going to go all out with the render for the preview and make a Tako Luka Cafe waitress using a Luka base (Luka being the Vocaloid that the Tako Luka character is based on, and the cafe as well), but at the time  I really wasn't up for spending more time in PMX editor so I just went with the Tako Luka model I used before to make the logo for the can. I wanted the render showcasing the can models to look similar to one of the can photos that could be found on the original IRL cafe website...

It's been a minute since I've made a render in MMD, so I spent some time fiddling around with the shaders and the lighting and all that, but I think in terms of compostion and layout the render came out pretty good...

I had to smack the cafe stage on top of another stage so that the cafe didn't look like it was just floating in infinite space, at least when you zoomed in, but when you zoomed out tho'....

(oof! yeah, that's the magic of perspective and optical illusion, bby! )

Here's the model I used for the background

and I used the sky dome from the Bridge City stage

I used model that adds an outside seating area just for Tako Luka  Cafe

 

The Tako Luka take-out bag in the back of the render was something I was going to make myself in Blender, then I remember a long time ago I downloaded some shopping bags and I remember one of those bags had the Tako Luka logo on it and thought that was pretty cool, so I rummaged through my MMD folder and I was able to find it (since I had the bright idea to have the folder be in both Japanese and English). It turns out that the original creator of the Tako Cafe model also made the shopping bag pack I downloaded too (I didn't realize that until today, but I prolly' should have realized that when I downloaded it OOF!)

I added the cake in the near middle of the render just to fill in some empty space and I thought it would convey the whole cake idea, but I didn't want to make it too big to where it stole the show in the render. The cake model I used was made by one of my favorite MMD model makers (especially when it comes to food, and item models) Cabbage Bow/Pot.....

I then made a second render for the vending machine itself I was going to place the vending machine in a city or back alleyway backdrop, but a lot of the city stage in MMD can be MASSIVE and I feel like scrolling through a fictional city to find a spot to put this model in, so I just went with a park model and placed it in a playground....

I had two park stages to use as a backdrop in mind but I went with the second one because I think the colors in the first looked to saturated (but that was more of my fault than the stage's)....

The stage model I used for these render are: 

With the renders done,I take them into a photo editing program to make the previews (I usually I use photoshop, but this time I'm going use Photopea bc photoshop is taking FOR EVA ER to load)

(I could go in-depth with how I made this preview, but I think this pic speaks for itself)

I like making my previews gifs sometimes, so I made to versions of the preview (one showing the can models, and the other showing the vending machine), then I use ez gif's Gif Maker to turn it into gif and here's how it looks...

I loaded the cans and the vending machine individually and used the black background option in MMD so the render came out as a transparent png

With the preview done, I write up the Read Me file, which is basically a file that holds all the rules and extra bits about the model. I made myself a template for mine, but here's what my ReadMe files usually look like...

(As you can see I REALLY like using Kaomojis in my stuff)

Finally, I zip up the model, while also making a backup in case anything weird happens and upload the preview on my DA account and host the download Typepad art blog (this blog)......

(Here's the link to the post)

That's it, that's the whole process that went into making this model, it was a beefy one but I think I did a pretty decent job, if I do say so myself. This model took about 2 weeks to finsh and I worked on it for about 4-8 hours a day, but it was worth it..

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go debate on rather or not to make a small gag comic about raising a stray werewolf, and also debate rather having an interest in that plotline makes me a furry or nah (honestly, I blame this really cute gif comp I found on youtube by a Japanese Twitter artist)....

Oh well, I'm pretty sure if anything DOES come from that idea I'll probably post about it on here or on my other blog...

Until next time, later days~