Introduction to Maya

Starting this tutorial, i was not only given the insight i needed to begin working in Maya, but from watching the Medieval Character tutorial i was now able to pick out certain things that had been mentioned. The intention of this tutorial was to create a robot creature in maya from start to finish, allowing it to sit within an environment made from an image plane in the background. Although this was into my intention, and the work created in this tutorial would ultimately be useless in this project, i felt the time taken to follow the steps would not only benefit me in this project but ultimately give me a better understanding of what could go into future potential projects.

With explanations of different shape models, tool shelves and the overall creation of geometry i began to follow as the tutorials ran through the steps necessary to create this mechanical structure.

The first steps came with the earlier assumed front and side shots of the image, allowing for a strong 3D mesh to be created. As with the Medieval Characters tutorial, they were laid as planes to work from. Not only were they placed, but through using Maya 2015 i was allowed the opportunity to follow along with the instruction.

Placing these 2 images as the separate side and front orthographic views the creation became little more following these lines.

 

The creation originated with the centre point as a guide. Through the tutorials i began to feel more free with Maya and moved along as a fairly brisk pace. Having been talked through the usefulness of NURBS primitives, they were used as a base to create a polygonal mesh to create the frame.

Matching this all up to the orthographic views became easier over time. The creation may become unnecessary at the end, but my confidence with the tool was becoming more and more.

Through extrusion and edge loops i was able to create something that looked very mechanical from the front and very refined from the back. Even at this early stage i could see the usefulness of these tools in the things i wanted to create.

Smoothing out in Maya is something i may not necessarily have to use when transferring into ZBrush, but thinking long term with the way i want to create Environment assets i think this feature will be very helpful when using Maya as the first and only piece of software to manipulate my designs in.

Using curves allowed for the addition of tubing. Using the NURBS circle to flesh it out, having then converted it to polygons allowed me to see the process of conversion and the necessity it has within this creative environment.

Before conversion, i was slightly confused as to why it was black. Not having covered it in the tutorial i began looking elsewhere. As Maya has a huge online presence, the issue was easily resolved. It turned out the tube had been inverted somehow, showing the inside of the tube on the outside, therefore when rendering the piece out, that piece would not render properly. After tweaking the settings and extruding the circle in the opposite axis, the tube returned to the normal colour.

 After sorting the inversion out, i was able to covert the piece to polygons allowing for the addition of more details through extrusions.

Using bridging to create the shoulder i really felt it was time to move onto my own creation. Although this tutorial had helped me immensely, the tutorial had allowed me to work out the basics i would need to work out the Medieval Character tutorial. With this set and i piece left in the project that i am happy to return to later, i think the 8 hours i spent creating this will set me in good stead to move on.