Class Practical - Materials Part 1

In this weeks practical, we covered the basics of materials and how to manipulate them for different results.

The first exercise was to create a cube with specular light bouncing of it. In order for the cube to have specular attributes, it needs to use a material which can bounce light, like a blinn in this case. I decided to make my cube a darker colour for the shape and set the specular colour to purple.

In the render, you may notice it is difficult to see, I have done this intentionally to demonstrate the purple tint you can see on the top left of the cube, whereas the rest of the cube is harder to see because it is much darker and blends in with the background.

 

Moving on to the next exercise, applying bitmaps. This exercise involved the simplest form of texturing and demonstrated how certain shapes can react differently when the same texture is applied. The shapes I used were the; CUBE, SPHERE, CYLINDER, TORUS, CONE and PYRAMID polygon primitives. The texture is a simple chess board like image file.

In the image above is an example of how all the shapes reacted. You can physically see how the texture applied on each shape. The cube is absolutely perfect compared to the rest of the shapes. With the torus and sphere, you can see how the central / inner areas have smaller checker pattern and as the shape opens up, the pattern slightly stretches out. The cylinder has a similar but more extreme case, where the flat parts are neat, however, the curves are entirely stretched out. The cone and the pyramid had the most awkward results. They both tended to spiral up towards the point of the object.

The last exercise was to experiment with procedural maps. The procedural maps I experimented with, in order are;  FRACTAL, BROWNIAN, MARBLE, NOISE, GRANITE, CLOUD, CRATER and OCEAN.

These are all projected onto polygon planes. Once I applied these maps, I noticed that the parameters heavily impact the way they are shown, or in some cases rendered.

t-65 x-wing (mark 2)

Continuing from the mark 1 x-wing, I started to work on the engine. Making the engine was a simple process. I used a polygon cylinder and extruded to the scale of the schematic. The outer rim of the propellers is extruded in to make room for the fan itself. I had to improvise the engine propellers as the schematics I used was only for the top and side of the x-wing. In order to make the it I had to use reference images of the ship.

 The propellers of the x-wing has a base to hold them in place, I used a sphere and then used an extruded polygon plane as the propeller itself.

 The wing is rather basic, I used another polygon cube and scaled it to the rectangular shape it is. I then added in a couple of edge loops, where the wing meets the engine and extruded it up in a slanted angle. This gives a smoother look where the wing meets the engine.

The guns are made the same way as the engine, using the schematics to create the shape of the gun. The tip of the gun uses another cube, which I added edge loops to and moved the vertices to give the curved shape it has.
To finish of the model, I grouped the objects together to make it easier to duplicate them to the desired location.

In the Mark 3 version of the x-wing, I will be adding in finer detail to the model.

Class Practical - Modeling Basics 3

In this weeks practical we used the 2D draw tools on Maya to make certain shapes and convert them into a 3D mesh. The main tool we used during the practical was the Bezier tool. The first task was a simple one. I made a 2D arch shape using the bezier tool, Then created a planar surface and played around with the settings. Once the object was filled, I extruded it and make a a dead end tunnel.


The second thing I did was draw half a wine glass shape on the top view. I then used the revolve tool (under surface) and set it to spin 360 degrees on my desired axis. I also had to higher the count value to make it more detailed / rounded.

   

I also looked into Hypershading and was able to find a transparent blinn material to give a glass a little bit more life.

t-65 x-wing (mark 1)

 This is the first draft of a basic x-wing without the engines and wings. I started it using a polygon cube and extruded the basic outline of the x-wing using the schematics as a reference.

Once I had the base shape I got a new cube for the nose of the ship. Again, following the schematics I moved the edges and vertices into place.

At this stage I started adding the extra details of the ship by adding extra edges to give it a smoother shape and extruding indents into it.

Extra Tools 1 (Handy Tools)

This post is to outline the extra tools I have learnt outside of my practical sessions.

• Pivot Point

The pivot point can be changed using two methods. The first method is holding the 'D' key and moving it to the desired location. The second method is to press the 'INSERT' key instead. The pivot point is crucial in speeding up the modelling process. It can be great for mirroring objects, as it would mirror form the pivot point. It is also great for animation as you would want to set joints as a pivot point. 

• Center Pivot

Center pivot is a useful tool when playing around with the pivot point. It can also be used when combining or separating objects because more often then not, the pivot point won't be in the center. Essentially what the tool does is set the pivot point to 0,0,0 of the selected object. 

• Duplicate Special

duplicate special is a tool which allows you duplicate an object a certain amount of times. I specifically used this tool for making a staircase. The process is rather simple, when you select your object and go on the duplicate special settings, you can alter the amount it will duplicate and the axis you want to duplicate on. 

• Hypershade

Hyper shading is where all my materials are stored, from this screen I can make new materials and apply them to my objects.

Class Practical - Modeling basics 2

This weeks practical consisted of two small tasks which demonstrated the use of booleans, grouping and alignment.

In order to show the use of booleans, I made an industrial fan. To do this I got a polygon cube and scaled to to the desired attributes. After the cube was scaled, I got a polygon sphere and placed it (overlapping the cube) were the actual fan would be. To make the actual gap between the cube, I selected the object and then shift-selected the sphere. In the 'mesh' menu I went to the booleans drop down menu and selected difference. This tool then used the sphere to cut out the shape into the cube.

I then made the actual plates of the fan using an appropriately scaled polygon cylinder and used the same pivot and duplicate method as I did for the ship wheel handles in the 'Modeling basics' post. In and actual fan the plates are not entirely vertical, they usually tend to be at a slight tilt. Rather than rotating each plate individually, I grouped them together. This allowed me to rotate them simultaneously without moving them out of place.      

The next task was to align basic shapes together. I got various different polygon meshes such as the; cylinder, cone and a sphere. In order to do this, I selected the object I wished to be aligned and shift-selected the next object and hit the 'align tool' which can be found on the modify menu. Once this was done, I could select a set of handles which allowed me to change the alignment axis.

   

As an extra task I had to showcase the tools I have obtained and make a small derelict village. I decided to use the skills using an abandoned building. As you can see this building shows of the tools in a simple manor. 

 

Abandoned Building

Star Wars Storyboard

Class Practical - Modeling basics

Here are two simple 3D models made on Maya demonstrating some of the basic tools which are  at our disposal.

Tools used;

• Extrude
• Insert edge loop
• Merge
• Center pivot
• Duplicate
• Delete Vertices    

Model 1: Basic House

The basic house was made using one polygon cube. I used the extrude tool to make the base shape of the house before adding any such detail. Once I had the basic shapes I started to add in edge loops around the model for extra details such as the door, the windows and the roof. Once the edge loops were in place, the door and roof were extruded out, and the windows were extruded in. To finish off I simply deleted the extra edges and vertices to clean up the object as well as lower the poly count. 

Model 2: Basic Ship Wheel

The ship wheel is made out of two shapes as a pose to one. The center of the object is made of a Cylinder as well as the handles, the outer rim is made using a Torus. The base and the outer were very simple to recreate, it was just a matter of scaling and rotating them into the desired location.

To make the handle, I used one polygon cylinder and added all my detail to the one handle. The rounded ends of the handle were made of several extrusions. Once the handle was done, I moved it into my desired location and changed the pivot point of the object to the bottom (where the handle would attach to the base). I could then easily use the duplicate tool and easily rotate the copies around the base, without having to make extra tweaks to it.  

Star Wars Moodboard

Stars Wars Moodboard

          Below is a rough moodboard of what my animation may consist off. It is broken into four main           aspects;

• Main backgrounds
• Background ships
• Main ships
• Battle scene

     In this moodboard I show four different types of ships. The first ship I chose is the t-65 x-wing purely because I find the way it is built fascinating. The second ship I chose is the Imperial shuttle because of it's unique wing animations compared to other star wars ships. The other two ships (millennium falcon and star destroyer) were picked for cosmetic purposes, as they are slightly bigger ships and can fill the landscape.