Lavey's Blog: Maya Workshop

Dice Project- Week 1

Been great to finally get my hands on Maya and start my first project. Although I have used it before, it's really nice to refresh myself on the basics. Our first project was to model, texture, render some dice. Here's my results.

I made an extra transparancy map from the colour map texture and mapped it to the transparency channel for some interesting affects. I also animated the dice on some frames moving/rotating and fiddled with the 2D motion blur to make it appear as if the dice have been thrown.

Pen, Magnifying glass and Fan - Week 2

Here's some render passes of my pen. I changed the model slightly by modelling a different nib with a ball point. I tried to use a ramp texture mixed with blue and gold to get the effect of ink around the ball. Not very clear, need to light it better?

I modelled the handle of the magnifying glass slightly different to the tutorial. I tried to emphasise the grip for the thumb.

Had alot of fun with the fan. New tip learnt: drawing a curve with CV curve tool: create a polygon cylinder: select cap faces: shift select curve: extrude and adjust offset. Used to create the protective bars. I animated the blades and the head also.

Here's a playblast of a simple animation. I moved the pivot of the head group to the centre of the stand aswell as animating the blades around their axis. I'm going to batch render this when I get Premire Pro or After effects up and running and cycle the animation.

Lighting - Week 3

1 Point lighting

Alan has given us some scene files to practice different lighting techniques:

Front lighting