Category: Maya

3D Maya Works

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Maya – Week 1 Desk modelling progress

I’ve started to learn the basics of Maya for around 2 weeks now and wanted to show off some of the progress that i’ve made. I’ve previously worked with Cinema4D, Blender and Unity but never used maya more the creating simple block objects and moving them around so after Years of hearing great things about Maya i’m glad to finally be able to start using it.

So far i’m just starting off with a simple cube, elongated into a rectangle with no texture as a starting point to make the table.
If i’m going to be honest, my knowledge of UV’s is still fairly shaky and while i understand the basic concepts, it definitely is the main thing that i was not taught when using other 3D Programs like Blender and Cinema4D. I learned a very small amount when previously using Cinema4D, but Maya is my first true introduction to it. After separating which portions of the UV That would need to be resized as to not look stretched out, i used both the add divisions tool and add edge loop tool to add more vertex points for use in sculpting.

I’d previously been taught 3D in Cinema4D in which we were mainly taught things like how to make geometric shapes like robots, architecture or similar items for use in either implementation in a scene or as a standalone render, so the difficulty i’ve always had with 3d Modeling is making organic shapes. Using the sculpting tools in Maya, I used the pushing and pulling vertex tools, pushing surface tools and other sculpting options to push and pull apart the mesh to add small little imperfections like raised segments on the sides, little circled holes in the woods and slightly raised areas to make the wood feel like it had been cut from a piece of driftwood and feel rustic. I also added a wood texture and a bumpmap to give the table more texture.

After this it was a matter of going through and duplicating the first piece of wood and moving it into equal distances apart from each-other. Afterwards i went in and used some more sculpting to try and make the planks feel a slight bit different from each-other as well.

After that it was a simple task of resizing planks and repurposing them for the frame and legs to build out the table, then added a light source and plane for the table to make shadows on and rendered it out.

This was the final result for now, though i plan and want to go back in and add a couple little smaller imperfections using the sculpting tools once i feel a little bit more comfortable with them.

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Maya – Week 1 Hotkeys review, interface and texturing

Learned about a lot of the hotkeys and features associated with maya, Like scaling, Rotating, Moving objects, basic grabbing of object faces or vertices and simple extrusions and learned about the history of objects. Also learned about shelves and tool settings.

Went into a simple scene next and created a sphere, adding default textures on to them and rendering it out using Maya’s rendering. Learned about also using the different viewing options in Maya’s viewport such as enabling and disabling wireframes and switching between viewing (Ie. enabling wireframe and smooth shading modes)

Then experimented with attaching different textures on the sphere using the attribute editor. Afterwards Added a colour number pattern as a file.

Then worked with using the UV Editor to space out the Texture lines to match the Object’s wireframe lines.

Next we used a buddah statue and matched it with a background image, then using the hypershade editor to add a bump map and to make the statue have more realistic surfaces through adding dents and nicks in the actual stone.