Given that I came into this class with no knowledge of Maya or 3D modeling in general, I think I've come a long way. When I started my first model, which was the penguin, I never thought that I'd be able to model actual, real-life items. I would see examples in class and pictures on the internet of things people modeled in Maya and be completely blown away. I never thought that I could make anything like what I saw in these examples. But now, even though most of the examples are still way beyond my experience level, I no longer feel totally incompetent. The learning curve was very steep, but I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere.
The first skill we learned that really helped improve my models was how to edit CVs. It took me some time to get used to this, but now I find myself pulling or pushing CVs in pretty much every NURBS model that I make. CV editing is a useful way to shape objects and make them feel organic. The one thing that bothers me about CV editing is that I'm a perfectionist and it's really hard and time consuming to get things to look exactly how I want them to look. One wrong move leaves you with an asymmetric mess and then you have to backtrack. But when used correctly CV editing can be used to makes some really cool models.
The next big breakthrough in my Maya learning experience was how to work with curves and surfaces. I feel that knowledge of curves and surfaces plays a pivotal role in making realistic models. I find the fact that I can revolve a simple curve around an axis and then have a glass or a light bulb to be amazing. Another thing that went well with this was when I learned how to import an image plane. Combining this with my knowledge of curves and surfaces further helped me improve my models. This gave me the ability to trace the general shape of everyday items and then turn that tracing into models that look even more realistic.
Overall, I still have a lot to learn and a lot of room for improvement. My models are getting better but they are nowhere near the professional quality that they would need to be if I chose a career in animation. Maya is such an extensive software, so the learning process is going to be slow and steady. I constantly hit snags along the way, but I'm learning how to fix them. For example, when editing CVs I used to have an issue where I would go to select one CV and 20 would get selected. I now learned that this was because Soft Selection was turned on. Turning Soft Selection off allowed me to be able to select one CV at a time. I also have a tendency to overcomplicate simple processes. For example, when making the faces for the body of my guitar all I had to do was copy the curve on the front, move the duplicated curve to the back, and loft between them. Instead, I projected curves on planes, trimmed them, and did a lot of unnecessary steps. But now I know for the future how to simplify tasks like this.
All of these mistakes are an integral component of the learning process because they help me learn through experience. One of my goals for the second part of the semester, in order to help further facilitate the learning process, is to spend more time outside of class learning with my peers and through online tutorials. I feel that by doing this and more independent work, I can really help improve my animation skills. So in short, even though Pixar isn't knocking down my door and asking me to animate a movie for them, I'm progressing and I'm happy with my progress.
Patrick Star
Another project that I started working on in Maya is creating models of the main characters from SpongeBob SquarePants. The first character that I tried modeling was Patrick Star. All I did for this project was started tracing Patrick with a CV Curve. I was unsure of how to go about completing this project. I was considering trying out some polygon modeling or watching tutorials. This was going to be my final project, but I ultimately abandoned this project and chose something else to work on for my final project.
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| Image of Patrick that I started tracing (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/Patrick_Star.png) |
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| Screenshot from Maya of the initial model of Patrick in progress. |
Guitar [WIP]
A project that I started working on in Maya is a guitar. This project was inspired by the fact that I know a lot of people, including my sister, who play the guitar. I used an image I found online to trace the shape of the guitar and my sister's guitar to estimate the depth of the guitar. I did not get to finish this project since I had to shift focus to my final project, but it is definitely a project that I want to go back to and try to finish.
The neck of the guitar is made from a NURBS rectangle. The body of the guitar is made from a Bezier Curve that I traced from the aforementioned picture that I put in Maya as an image plane. I then extruded the curve. For the front face, I projected the curve onto a NURBS plane and then trimmed the plane to the curve. I copied and pasted this trimmed plane to use for the back face. For the sound hole, I projected a NURBS circle onto the front face of the body and trimmed it. The guitar is colored using Lambert shaders. The scene is lit using an ambient light.
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| Source image that I'm using to trace the shape of the guitar. (TinyURL.com/qhj2nla) |
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| My sister's guitar that I'm using to estimate the depth of the guitar. |
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| A screenshot from Maya that shows the guitar in development. |
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| A rendered image of the guitar in progress. |
Curves and Surfaces Model
For my Curves and Surfaces Model, I made a desk lamp. This was inspired by the desk lamp that I have in my room. As seen in the picture, the original lamp is all gray. I added other colors to my model to make it more interesting.
The base of the lamp is a NURBS sphere that's swept from 0°-180° in order to form a half circle. The shaft of the lamp is made of two NURBS cylinders. By placing a short thick cylinder on top of a long thin one, I was able to replicate the shaft of the original lamp. The rotation mechanism for the lamp is composed of a sphere that fits into the shaft and a cylinder that extends from that sphere into the lampshade holder. The lampshade holder is a revolved surface that originated as a curve. Its shape resembles that of a funnel. The lampshade is made of two parts. The first part is half of a NURBS sphere that forms the round portion at the bottom of the lampshade. The second part is a revolved surface made from a line to form the opening of the lampshade. The light bulb is also a revolved surface that originated as a curve. The lamp shaft and other metallic parts are colored using a Blinn shader. The lampshade and base are colored using a Phong shader. The light bulb is colored using a semi-transparent Phong shader. The scene is lit using an ambient light. There is also a spotlight that points out of the lampshade at the same angle as the bulb to provide light from the lamp.
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| The lamp that inspired this project. |
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| A screenshot from Maya that shows the lamp in development and also includes a view of the shaders and Outliner. |
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| A screenshot from Maya that shows the two different parts of the lampshade. |
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| A rendered image that shows the rotation mechanism and lampshade holder. |
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| A rendered image that shows a side view of the finished lamp. |
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| A rendered image that shows the lamp at an angle with the light bulb. |
NURBS Primitives Model with CV Editing
For my NURBS Primitives Model with CV Editing, I made a pig. I got this idea from the pig coaster that I have in my room. The coaster is a flattened out version of a pig, and this gave me the idea for how I could pull the CVs on a sphere into that shape and create the body of a pig.
The eyes and head are made out of various sized NURBS spheres. The nose is a NURBS cone with two spheres in it to form the nostrils. The mouth is a NURBS torus that is swept from 0°-180° in order to form the half circle shape. I edited the CVs on the torus so that it would wrap around the head. The tail and ears are made from NURBS cones. The cones for the ears are flattened. The body of the pig is made out of a NURBS sphere. I pulled and edited the CVs on the sphere to form body of the pig with the legs. The pig is colored using Lambert shaders. The scene is lit with two ambient lights. The pig's name is George.
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| The pig coaster that inspired this project. |
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| A screenshot from Maya that shows the pig in development. |
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| A rendered image of the pig. |
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