Wednesday's lesson - UVing

Spent the lesson Uving a head for practise, I didn't finish, but it was definitely worth it because it makes everything that I need to model for this module seem a lot easier than they did before.
I don't know who modelled the head, it was just given to us by the lecturer for practising UVs.

 

For the most part it was just splitting the object up into flattish planes and using the uving based on camera angle. Then unfolding them as much as possible then stitching them back together. The ears, eye balls and the inside of the mouth and nose remain separate to prevent over lapping UV's.

Podracer continuation

I redesigned my pod racer again. I'm actually happy with it this time, although now I'm just experimenting with adding different parts. Hence why the cylinder like shapes aren't attached, as I was just seeing if I liked them there.

I also started trying to make the engine look less like it's based off a portal gun. It isn't, it just looks like it. I changed the shape of the underneath part. It looks better up the other way, but I may just delete that part and redesign it anyway.

Tron bike progress

I had to redo the main body of the bike because the curves I had used we too uneven at the front of the bike, so it looked terrible even when smoothed. I also notice that the model was actually a lot more detailed complicated than I origionally thought, and so also had to take this into account when remodelling.

Work from earlier digital systems lessons part 2 - Tron Bike, lessons 2 and 3

After the second week

Class notes

Tron Bike week 1
File > Set Project > tron bike
Use the CV curve tool and revolve to model the different parts of the wheel.
Move the pivot point before revolving as it’ll revolve around that point
Lofting- for tron bike main body
Follow the shape in the side view with the cv curve tool
Duplicate and move the curve so that it follows the shape of the bike.
Select these curves and use the loft tool to create a polygon.

Tron Bike week 2
Fill side of bike using append to polygon tool
Add horizontal edge loops and shape around wheels

Cutting out parts for wheels
Duplicated and scale to -1
Join the 2 halves together using merge edge tool
add edge loops and cut of parts of frame

UV mapping
assigning Uvref to object
in hypershade, select lambert
next to colour click on the checker board
click file and add image
select the object, right click on lambert > assign to object
select object
create Uvs > choose type of mapping
adjust in UV texture editor

Podracer this week

12^th November

Continuation of Pod racer

I just started to refine some of the shapes, for example the side part now curves with the main shape rather than being vertical. I also added a ring to connect the bottom part to (highlighted) because I was thinking that maybe the part underneath could spin.

Te bottom part still needs a little work, the shape is kind of odd.

13^th November

Pod racer lesson 2

Due to my usb stick dying I decided to work on the pod. This was really hard, probably because I haven't really got a firm idea of what it should look like in my head.

I started with a cube, but after deleting multiple faces, I might as well have started with a plane.

I just extruded edges and then moved vertexes in the orthographic views. It ended up being a very slow way to work and I'm not particularly happy with the out come.

Work from earlier digital systems lessons part 1 - The Table

 Modelling a table was really just to introduce us to the basics of Maya.

Notes from class

Create cube

Snap the pivot point to one of the top corners of the cube.

-Press insert

-move while holding v

-Press insert again

Snap pivot with the corner of the desk.

Scale leg till level with grid

Duplicate (ctrl+D) and move each leg to other corners

Change rotations to match

Edge loops are needed to retain sharp edges when objects are smoothed

Edit Mesh > insert edge loop tool

Curve Tool

create > CV curve tool

plot points on a 2D plane around the centre line

Select surface in the drop down menu

surfaces > revolve (the little square for the options)

-check axis being used

-Output geometry as polygon

-quads

-control points

Check for non-quads

Table after first week

For a first try I was fairly happy with this, however the table legs and scale really needs to be addressed and they really just don't work.

Concept City Street Project

Just wanted to post my two final images from my first module. The brief was to make two concept images of two different cities, one contemporary and the other historical. I chose Sibiu and Miami.

I loved this project and learnt a lot from it. I may have been pretty good at perspective drawings to start with, but designing urban landscapes was something that I really didn't have a lot of experience with. My use of colour has also gotten so much better. Before I used to use a lot of different bright colours and avoided both realism and restricted colour schemes because for some reason they always had a tendency to look muddy. Not a great look.

Anyway I can always say that I could have done better, but I'm actually really proud of these.

Digital Imaging Lesson

This lesson was based around using photos as a starting point for creating character designs. This was done through photo collage, digital painting and the use of other tools in photoshop.

I found the photo I started with online, however because I never intended to post it and was only messing around with it in class I don't have the reference for it. But I'm pretty proud of it for 2 1/2 hours work..so yeah... perhaps being a little naughty here.

Podracer so far

Okay so maybe I didn't do any more. But like I said I would I'm posting my progress that I've made on my podracer.

I made the main part of the engine as 3 parts, an inside, a middle and an outside part. All using cylinders. For the rest I just started with cubes and extruded them. It's still pretty basic, no detail yet, but I happy with the over all shape. And considering that something when wrong with nearly every piece I think I did pretty well to get this far anyway. For example I forgot to reduce the number of subdivision down to 12 from 20 and by the time I realised it was too late to easily fix it. Other parts just went really weird when I pressed 3. I have a feeling it was because I was trying to extrude the edges around a face instead of the actual face.

A new start and some rambling

So I told myself that I'd keep blogging after finishing my art foundation...That when well. And then for one of my modules for my degree I'm meant to be keeping track of it in a blog...Started that yesterday. I got the brief about 6 weeks ago, which shows how badly organised I am.

Anyway the location of that blog is http://rianeery.tumblr.com/

So yeah I intend to post that stuff here as well as stuff that isn't relevant to that project. I hope anyway:)

Why the second blog? Well do I really want my lecturers to see my art foundation stuff? No. Maybe I should delete it? Probably. But then I wouldn't have anything here and might as well have started a new blog. But then it's not like I'm active enough online for it too really matter. *sighs* The internet is not a scary place.

Anyway lets post some work.
At the moment we're building Podracers in Maya so here's my Front Side Top Bottom of my design

I kind of need to finish the bottom one and add detail, but I think that I’ll just do that on the model. I was getting way too confused drawing these as it was.

And here's a quick run through on how I set up my image planes

Create 3 polygon planes that are the same size and rotate them like so.
Create a different Lambert surface for each of them and assign the correct reference image to them.
Place each of them in there own layer and make the layer a reference so that it can't be edited.
-select the plane, right click on the layer and select add selected objects.

I haven't modelled a lot yeah, but I'll post the stage I got too before going to bed.