In-Class Exercise 4

For this exercise I had to model a derelict village with at least one building with an interior. I started working on a village church to start off, these practical exercises are not meant to be too time consuming and getting about halfway through my church realised that I would not be able to do a full village without spending too much time on it. The align tool came in handy to get all my primitives shapes exactly where I wanted them and I used the extrude tool a lot in order to pull out some detail in order to create the pillars around the church and the gate. The Boolean difference tool was also very useful in creating the curved shape on top of the gate and cutting away the interior of the church. Overall I feel that this exercise has helped me to better understand some of the basic tools in Maya, but despite being basic they have been crucial to creating my models so far.

In-Class Exercise 3

For this Exercise we had to model an F-16 fighter jet, I was given a set of technical drawings of the top, front and side of the aircraft, importing these images into Maya I could set up these images so I could better shape the aircraft to its real life dimensions. Overall it took just under 2 hours to recreate a basic model of the aircraft.

I had some troubles along the way mainly due to accidentally joining 2 vertices together somewhere and not realising this error meant that later when I discovered the problem it was too later and I could not undo all the way back to when the problem arose. Due to this I have decided to double check any action I take and every so often have a look over the model as a whole to check if any errors have been made.

In-Class Exercise 2

For this exercise we had to model the basic shape of a ships wheel, in order to complete this we were given a document containing a lot of helpful tools along with how they work and what we could use them for. After reading through I learnt a few new tools that I could use to improve the quality of the models I made and with this knowledge I set about planning the basic outline of my ships wheel. I managed to make the model a lot quicker than I expected to, using the new tools made the process quicker, the live snapping tool was great in helping me place the primitive shapes where I wanted them and removed the awkward fiddling trying to get something exactly in the center.


The finished model.

In-Class Exercise 1

I have recently completed one of our in-class practical exercises, for this I had the simple task of creating a basic house in Maya 2016. I was given a rundown of how to go about doing this and merely had to recreate to the steps on-screen and achieve the desired goal. This did however take longer than expected, at the time this was my first experience of using Maya and I was lost in a sea of buttons and gizmos. I slowly trundled through the tutorial making many mistakes along the way, in a way these were a blessing as I slowly learned the basic interface and how to simply manipulate the objects in front of me.

The main issue I faced was at the very end of the tutorial in creating the roof, I was having difficulty creating the edges where I wanted them and I became quite frustrated by this so I decided to take a break and come back to it later. In the lecture the next day I was delighted to learn some new tools and methods of doing things that then enabled me to finish my project.




This was the finished product.