3D MODELING: First model in Maya

22:07 3D , Professional Toolkit , Research , Year 2 0 Comments

This technique forms an object through extruding the polygons of a cube to form more complex shapes

Through the introduction of various tools and shortcuts we were asked to model a spaceship for use in the Interactivity module. We were also advised to create half a ship since the model could be mirrored, that way avoiding extra work.

I started off by extruding forwards to create the front shape, extruding backwards to create the rest of the ship. I transformed and scaled the faces to create the different variations. Then i extruded sideways, back and front to create the side wings/weapons. I extruded above to create the aerodynamics. Then to add detail i extruded multiple times to create two guns at the front of the wing.

We were then shown how to create an instance in order to create the other half of the model. Instancing does not create a copy, rather it links the duplicate to the original object. This means that changes can happen to the original model and they will be reflected in the duplicate.

Continuing on i added some extra detail windows and an extra gun

At this stage we were asked to clean up and simplify our model. This helps in two ways:

1. The model will be easier to UV map
2. In game engines it is good practice to keep the polygons as low as possible in order to help performance

We learned to individually create UV's based on logical areas, and how to rearrange them in texture space ready for painting.

The last step was to paint the texture in photoshop. To do this we exported the wireframe uv and then painted over it.

After some trial and error, and after realizing that some rendering artifacts were caused by the photoshop file having an embeded alpha channel from the uv export, this is my final model: