Maya Modelling: Do It Yourself!

For the second half of the brief I was presented with, I was to create another object using Maya. I didn't want to choose a subject that was going to be too complicated, but I did want it to be more complex than the trucks I first created to try and put my new skills to the test. I decided I would make a boat, as this was a more interesting shape and it would allow me to create features such as windows.

I got started by creating the general shape of the boat. I was able to do this much quicker than my truck project, as I already knew what the tools did, and I could easily adjust the anchor point of the object. However, I did struggle with a couple of components, especially the windows. I wanted them to have an extruding edge for the window frame, but I couldn't figure out how to make a circle in the centre of the cylinder to"push in" and act as the glass and leave behind a frame.

Window Attempt

I played around with the tools, and in the end I got pretty close to what I wanted (above). This would have been fine, but it had edges pointing to the centre, and I couldn't seem to remove them all. I messed around with this for a good half an hour before I realised I could just create a polygon pipe. which I created in about a second, if that. The problem with the pipe was that there was no "glass" as it was hollow, but this was easily fixed by placing a smaller cylinder inside it. This worked great and took me a couple of minutes tops; if only I had thought about this to begin with.

Experimenting with Shot Framing and Lighting

Similarly to my induction, once I had finished making the shape of the object, I started to experiment with different colours and materials for the boat. I went for a general theme of blues and whites as I thought this was most aesthetically pleasing. This time I also adjusted the material of the plane that the boat sat on, and gave it an ocean texture, so when the composition was rendered, it actually looked as though the boat was floating, which I thought was a nice touch. 

I experimented a bit more with the lighting this time around, and changed the sun direction as well as it's intensity to create different atmospheres. I thought the lighting was great, but I didn't like how there was black strips in the background, where the sky didn't quite reach the water. In an attempt to fix this, I exported my shots as PNGs so this part of the background was transparent. I then opened them in photoshop in an attempt to add a different skyline to the image. 

I think the addition of the skylines greatly improved my image, and overall I'm really pleased with how much I have improved with Maya. I'm looking forward to see how much I can develop these skills, and hopefully I will get the chance to learn how to animate using the programme.