First day and we are already diving into Maya. In this session, we started with Maya basic controls, shortcuts and modelling tools.
A good mousse and shortcuts knowledge are key to speed up the process of creating in Maya, so we learnt the main controls with the mousse (to zoom in/out and to change view position) and shortcuts to move the object position (W), rotate it (E) and scale it (R). From there on, more shortcuts were coming up along the session depending on what we wanted to find or what little accidents we had that made us (and the professor) discover new ways to use the programme.
Secondly, we created a cube to practice with the ‘Extrude’ tool (as shown in the above picture, my 3D modelling skills are very basic but improving with practise and time). We created subdivisions to the mesh and smooth them to don’t have too sharp edges.
Lighting is an important part of a 3D scene as it pronounces the bright and dark spaces giving that 3D depth and texture to the object. Therefore, in the ‘Arnold’ section, we created a ‘Physical Sky’ and rendered it to preview the final result. Adding a plane to the composition at the bottom of the main object and assigning an ‘aiShadowMatte’ material, created the effect of the objects shadow that is casted depending were the point of light is positioned.
Alternatively, we removed the ‘Physical Sky’ and added a ‘SkyDome Light’ instead to add a background to our scene. We downloaded an HDRI from polyhaven.com, saving it in our ‘source images’ folder and linking it to a new material’s colour of our light. This would determine the direction of light and how the shadow would cast and would add that background to our object.
After playing around with a simple object, we give it a go to try model a Tesla Truck car. We followed the instructions that Nick was giving us step by step and could (kind of) would something similar to a triangular ‘car’ (as seen in the pictures below).
Since I wasn’t really happy with my first attempt to model a ‘Tesla Truck’, I decided to try again. It took me quite a bit to design the second version, but I realised that my skills with Maya were improving and I got used to the shortcuts and controls.
At the end, my Tesla Truck is not perfect, but I’m pretty satisfied with the result and the basic skills that I developed in only the first week of the Master’s. I also developed later on a short animation to make a nice presentation of this model for my term 1 showreel.