Category: VFX Fundementals Unit

In week 3 we also first did a test for wineglasses. We did this so we knew how to work with the spline tool for the hot air balloon.

This week we started by making a new kind of object. We had to create wine glasses and a wine bottle, we did this so we could also figure out how to use the spline tool in Maya, the spline tool is a tool that can be used to create an outline of an object that u want to create. This object will need to be the same on all sides because when you will resolve around the spline tool it will create something like for example a glass.

As an end result, I got these 2 glasses with a wine bottle on a table. We also looked for a background view so that when you would render out the product the light and the shadows would all fall into the correct places. looking back at the glasses that I made I think they came out very good. The texture put over it really gives it a wine glasses feeling to it. Yet again if I look at the shape and the proportions I think I could have paid a little bit more eye to detail to make it more realistic.

We also got introduced to the hot air balloon we have to make. This is a project we had to start to combine with our nuke classes. Everybody has to make their own hot air balloon for their hot air balloon festival in their nuke file. We learned a few things over the last 3 weeks to get a good start on our hot air balloon. for example, the glasses we made had the spline tool in them that we can use for the ropes on our hot air balloon.

This week was for me my first Maya class on sight, the class started with making something from scratch. but this time something have we used more different components. So Nick came up with the idea of doing a lego man for this week’s class. I had a lot of struggles during this class since I just really started with using Maya, I have used Maya once before but I normally used C4D so I was used to the structure of that software. Nick is a very good teacher but sometimes goes quite a bit to fast for me, also because I’m new to Maya. I can imagine if you are used to Maya it would be normal to follow along but for me it went quite fast.

Aside from the class, we learned a few different elements in this class. Doing a lego man makes you work with different shapes, it learns you how to visualise the right shape for a different piece of your model. Also, did we get this extra element where we had to bend the arm so it would fit like a normal lego man character. In this build, we got 5 different components since the legs and the arms only need to be mirrored. As for the other components you have the head, the body, and the part that goes in between the legs.

[Images of my process in Maya]

For the end result you can look at the images just below, I found an image of a lego man’s face that I have also added to my work. Looking back at my work I think I did quite well in keeping track of how to model the different parts and putting them together. But if I look at my lego man now I clearly see that it is very out of proportion compared to a normal lego man. If I would have to do it over again I would redo the scaling on the different parts so it would be more in the right proportions

This week I was still having problems with my visa, Due to this I was not able to fully apply to the course and had 3 days of delay. For this, I had to later refollow this class and do the assignment everybody did. For this weeks class we started a few basics of the Maya class. To start we had to make a cyber truck.

As shown below I did a simple Tesla truck to recreate the class we did during this week. I worked with a simple cube and cylinder and added this together to make my final product.