Maya!

Today was the briefing for another new project: Fundamentals of 3D Modelling and Animation. Basically I have to create a short 3D CGI animation with the title: Little and Large basing it off a simple toy a small child might play with. I will need to take photographs of my object and be creating storyboards and animatics before the modelling stage.

As this was the first time that most of us had used Maya, we had to follow a short tutorial on how to create a truck. I previously bought 'Introducing Autodesk Maya 2012' and had a quick go at one of the tutorials in there; this was helpful as I knew the basics from this and it was a starting point in which I could progress from. On the whole I thought I picked up the main things quite quickly and I didn't have too much trouble with it. The only problem that I came across was the snap command, I didn't really understand it at first, but once it was explained in more detail I got the idea of it. I feel that I will have to practice this technique a few more times to get used to it a bit more.

After I had finished with the truck I decided to try and model a toy train. I just picked an image off the internet for reference - it was very simple and the shapes were almost the pre-made primitives. For some parts I had to cut away part of the shape, so to do this I deleted specific faces on that shape. I'm not sure if this was the correct way, as it left a hole at the bottom so I will have to check out the right way to do this. But for the time being as I am just experimenting and getting to grips with the software, I thought it would be okay to do this.

I'm quite happy with the way it has turned out, however I didn't use the snap command so I think I will go back and try it doing this. I think what I might also try doing is adding some colour onto the train. I learnt how to do this following one of the tutorials from the book; it's basic but it defines each shape from one another - I will do this by applying a Simple Shader on each shape.