Week 1 castle Exercise

This is the castle exercise, again using the extrude tool and the duplicate special tool I learnt to create this rather quickly. I made the first castle tower the duplicated it 3 times with rotation of 90 and translate of 10 to then create the 4 towers. The difficulty in this piece was creating rings in pre portion with the castle to create the draw bridge and also the curve at the top of the door was difficult to over come.


Peer Evaluation (Dan 1311860):

I like the impressive detail you have put into this castle. The ramparts are really good and add impressive detail and quality to the overall model. I also really like the drawbridge you have added to the model as well.

House Exersice

This is the house week 1 exercise. I mainly used extrude tools and moving vertices to make it. However i have use the duplicate special tool to creat the fence outside as i didn't want to just keep copying it and moving it. This tool allows you to select the amount of copies you want and the distance between them. Very useful when creating many of the same object in a equal distance of each other. I Found this technique at http://3d.about.com/od/Creating-3D-The-CG-Pipeline/tp/5-Techniques-To-Speed-Up-Your-Modeling-In-Maya.htm

StoryBoard

This is my storyboard for the animation of my models and end project.

Draft

Completed Storyboard

The idea is that there is a camera starting at the front of the X-Wing which pans round as it is flying at high speed in space. As it gets to the back of the X-Wing it shows that it is chasing and shooting at the Tie Interceptor. The interceptor is ducking and weaving to avoid the shots and as it weaves round a corner of  meteor in space,
it hides itself next to the Tie defender. As the X-Wing approaches, it makes a movement as if it double takes at the Defender and then quickly turns and accelerates away as the other two then chase and shoot after it.

Tie Inteceptor Material Progress

This has been slightly easier due to the model having less detail then the XWing project. However again photoshop is needed to get this to the standard I am expecting, however this is closer to completion then the XWing.

Xwing Material Progress

This is the start of the materialing process on the XWing spacecraft. I have found it extremely difficult to get the realism needed on the model and due to a lack of photoshop on the home PC I was limited to using just base colours in the blind and lambert materials. This needs to be improved by using UV mapping in the lap sessions when photoshop is available to me.

Tie Inteceptor

This part of the blog shows the start of the modelling stage of the tie interceptor.

This shows the first half of the interceptor

This was relatively simple to do as the sphere is already a default shape that can be made, however just getting the support to the wings was slightly more difficult to get the right shape and surface to then support the wing. Another difficulty was creating the groves in the wing to match the real space ship.

The finished model, needing texturing

This is the finished model with the details including the fan on the wing and the guns also on the edge of the wing. The difficulty in this was making the fan stick out without making the wing look too chunky. However i am happy with the model and with texturing I believe it will look close to the real model.

Tie Defender Progress part 1

This shows the progress i have made on the Tie Defender.

The first thing I concentrated on was the main sphere of the piece. I used the schematics to help give me the size I needed and then used the Extrude function to give the appearance of the window at the front , the jet at the back and the wing arm. 

Having then made the wing seperately to the body of the model I could copy it and attach it to the extra arm extended from the main sphere.

I did this again to make the third and final wing and then added some small details. This model now just needs a few small details added to it as well as materials and texturing before it is complete.

  

Week 4

The exercise was to create a shiny metal material to the shape of your choice. The screen shot shows the slight reflective nature of the material as the camera glosses over it in the bottom left corner of the cube.



















The next part of the exercise was applying bit maps. Using the same material on each.

The next exercise was using different textures on a plane, playing with the options to get the best results.

Ocean

Crater

Fractal

The next exercise was about the UV planning and making the image appear on or wrapped around the object. I found this tricky getting the image in the right position by using the manipulator. However I managed to use the planar mapping on the cube face to show the moth picture.

X Wing Progress part 3

This is an update of the swing i have been working on. The main body of the model had been done but i needed to add bits of detail that i thought were needed to be part of the project. I have added R2D2 sitting just behind the cockpit and i have added more detail to the jets and the back of the spacecraft. The model just needs colour and it should be complete, after an inspection from Yannis.

The back of the model (above) which includes more detail to the back of the model and jets. 

Front of the model which includes R2D2 and the side stripes.

X Wing Progress part 2

The X-Wing with all 4 wings, the body and back just need a few adjustments before this is nearing completion

X wing progress

This is the first shot of the modelling of the X-Wing. The main tools i used to get this far in my creation is the boolean difference tool, the mesh-tools-insert edge loop, extrude tool and the general moving of the vertices faces and edges to create a basic model of the X-Wing spaceship.

This shot shows how useful the images have been when creating the model as they are a template to get the scale of everything created in proportion with itself.

This again shows the use of the front top and side images used in each view point and also shows the progression I have made today by creating the second right wing. It seems to be slowly taking shape.

The Three Models

The three models I have chosen to create in the star wars universe are the: X-Wing, Tie Defender and Tie Interceptor.

The X-Wing is a complex spaceship, as shown in the pictures, and will require me to use the skills I have learnt in order to create a acceptable, passable model of this space craft.

This picture (left) shows the top, side and front view of the X-Wing, which will be very helpful when starting modelling. It will give me a guideline to follow and shape the model around.








This picture also depicts the detail necessary when creating the x wing and gives descriptions of each part and what needs to be where. It also shows in less detail how it is assembled again giving me more of an idea of what components need to be made.



The Tie Defender again is a complex spaceship, but which is a completely different shape and style to the x-wing meaning a varied range of skills is shown in both models.



The tie defender (left) has a different shape and more rounded components to it giving a variation in the modelling techniques.















This picture (right) gives the side and front view of the spacecraft with the components that are included to give me a base to start my modelling on and to prompt me of what each part of the spaceship does. This should be a great help when starting to model.











The Tie Interceptor is the third and final model to be created. It again is different to both previous models and can again show the varied techniques learnt on the maya program.



The Tie interceptor (left) would need more boolean techniques then the first two models purely based on the wings alone.













The schematics of the spacecraft (right) again gives me a description of each part which gives me an idea of how to model it and gives me a front and side view of the spaceship. Very useful when creating the model due to the import image function in maya.

Week 2 exercise

I found using the multi-cut tool option successful when trying to build the derelict village for the week 2 exercise, also using the Boolean tool on difference and union to make things look like they have been destroyed and collided with by missiles. This is just the start of the village however I was slightly disappointing with the hollowness of the objects which takes away from the realness of the buildings as there would be some depth to the houses.

Week 1 work

During the first week of working with Maya, I attempted creating the steering wheel. The main difficulties that I came across was making the spikes that come out of the main circle. These were hard to craft and I couldn't copy and paste on once one had been made as the moving tool made it impossible to put them in the correct position. If I did this again I would use the Boolean difference technique to cut into the side to give a smoother look rather then one object just merging into the other one as shown below.