February 2019:

3D recap task – create a junkyard asset within a given timeframe and use <3000 polys

• Assets found in a junkyard: car doors, tires, steel barrels
• Tire references:

 

Pictured above is the final render of my asset. In retrospect, I believe it would have been better for me to have modelled the basic shape of the tire, and then add the tire marks in using a normal map. However, by the time I’d made the tire marks, this meant I was at my poly limit and so had to remove the edge loops I’d added to make the front bits of the tire stick out and be less flat.

Pictured below is the UV map for my tire. The UVs for the inside and sides of the tire went well but the UVs for the outside of the tire were a bit stretched in places, and the way I’d modelled the outside of the tire made it difficult to cut and unwrap the edges. This, paired with timing constraints, meant  I needed to leave the outer areas of the tire looking alright for the most part.

 

November 2018:

3D skills learnt so far:

So far I have learnt the basic skills required to use Maya such as using the camera and changing the view, as well as shortcuts like ‘r’ for the scale tool.

I have predominantly used tools such as the extrude and multi cut tools, in addition to basic UV mapping and so feel comfortable using these tools in my 3D work.

Skills I would like to work on/ improve:

I would like to improve my ability to see the basic 3D shapes that make up an object, as I do not want to become over reliant on using tutorials in order to find the best way to create my 3D objects.

Ways to improve:

Although at home I have been doing extension tasks (e.g. this week I started making ‘Lucille’, Negan’s baseball bat from the Walking Dead as well as making another barrel as I believed there was room for improvement following the barrel I attempted as the starter last week), I believe practising my ability to make 3D objects from scratch as well as using tutorials will be key to my improvement.

September 2018:

Creating a car has allowed me to become more comfortable with Maya’s interface and using shortcuts as well as introducing me to a number of features in Maya, including:

• The Extrude Tool – for example, when creating the windows for my car, I extruded the windows inwards slightly before altering the offset
• The Multi-Cut Tool – this enabled me to insert edge loops which allowed me to scale the car in a way that would make the car look less like the cube it was constructed from
• Assigning materials to an object – this enabled me to add the colours to my car