Week 1

In my first week, I concentrated on learning the basics of Maya, and practicing the techniques that I will use to create the 3D models for my animation.

I started by making a simple steering wheel, as one would find on a ship. First, I created a short cylinder to act as the centre of the wheel. By changing its Subdivisions Axis (the number of sides the cylinder has) to 6, I turned the cylinder into a hexagonal prism (see Fig.1). By setting the resulting prism as a Live Surface, new polygons would automatically snap to its surface rather than snapping to the grid, allowing me to position the spokes of the wheel much easier.

Fig.1

With the addition of the thin torus round the outside, I had created a simple steering wheel. The central cylinder's subdivisions were then increased to restore its cylindrical appearance and enhance the wheel's level of detail (see Fig.2). The outer torus' subdivisions could also be increased, but this would also increase the model's polygon count, which may impact game performance, so for the time being this will be left alone.

Fig.2

The next model I worked on was a house. Unlike the steering wheel, the house was created by manipulating a single 100x50x25 box, and so despite being fairly simple, its creation required more advanced techniques. First of all, by hovering over an object and holding down the right mouse button, the sub-selection menu is brought up (see Fig.3), which allows me to select either individual faces, edges or vertices of that object, or the object as a whole.

Fig.3

Using this menu, I could select and manipulate individual faces of the house. Fig.4 shows how the front of the house was subdivided into three vertical sections, with the outer two then "extruded" (pulled forwards) to create an extension. Fig.5 shows how the right-hand face was further subdivided and extruded in order to create windows. One window has been left unfinished in order to better show the subdivisions used to create the window frame.

Fig.4

Fig.5

Fig.6 is an aerial view of the house, showing how various points on its surface were connected to create additional edges. The highlighted edges were then dragged upwards to create the sloped roof of the house.

Fig.6