Week 1
For this week I have been asked to create and model a vase in Maya using the some of the skills we learned on a Linkedin course.
Firstly I opened Maya and prepared the project folder of the scene by going onto file and then project window which would pop up a window that has a bunch showing all the elements that will be in this set up folder. Before pressing accept, I had to make sure that the project would save in the right folder. So I clicked on the folder Icon which popped up a new window to allow me to select the correct file. Now that it was done, I pressed accept and began the work.
The first part was to set up a reference for the vase. I went to the top left on Create>Polygon and then on plain. This will spawn a solid flat surface. With it I will use the scale tool by selecting it and pressing R on the keyboard and grabbed the middle point of the object to scale it equally on all of the three axis. Afterwards I used the rotation tool by pressing the E key to do so. This will make a transparent ball appear with three ring to appear, representing the three axis. To spin them easier I used the channel box on the right side of the screen, clicked on the Rotate X box and typed in 90 degrees. This will allow the object to be at an accurate angle. Then I grabbed its Y axis and held shift so I will be able to make a copy of the object by dragging the y axis and typed in the rotate 180 degrees in the box. This allowed me to move onto the next step. To add the reference image. For the image to appear I had to firstly enable the program to show the texture by going on Shading and then on Hardware Texturing. This will allow the program to see the texture instead of it being invisible. Now I select both by holding shift and using the right click on the objects and then holding that same button to bring up an option bar. With it I went to add new texture which opened a new window. With it I simply went onto Lambert which switched the channel box to an Attribute Editor. With it I can change the Attribute of the object. To add the texture, I went onto the box near colour and selected it. This opened another menu. I selected the file option with brought me to a new part of the attribute editor. I went and clicked onto the folder icon near image to be able to select the image. This opened a new window which allowed me to find the appropriate image for the reference. Once selected I pressed Open. This allowed me paste the image onto the object. Link to the picture: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/249105423123040177/
Now was time to create. So I spawned a cylinder the same way I did for the plain except I choose the cylinder option. Before making any adjustments to it, I made sure it was aligning with the ref image as accurate as possible using the move tool which can be accessed by pressing W on the keyboard and uses the three axis to be moved around. I also used the different views in Maya by pressing space which gave me four different perspectives which will come in handy when modelling.
Now, that the object was placed correctly now I had to adjust it to the right height of the reference picture by using the scale tool and using the Y axis. Then I cut the polygon by using the edge tool that can be found in the Mesh Tools and Insert Edge Loops. This will allow me to cut the right sections of the object to make it easier to be manipulated into a new object. Then I switched the object selection from Object Mode to Vertex by holding right click, dragging it and dropping it on the Vertex. This will allow me to move the point and create a new object using them. The way I did it was by selecting the vertex points on a certain section and used the scale tool to increase and decrease size of the section. This was done for every section. Here are some progress pictures:
Now that I got the right look, I hid the reference images by creating a layer in the channel box through the lower menu by selecting Layer>Creating Layer from Selected. Then I clicked the V in the layer box. This hid the images, so they wont appear when rendering the scene. Now, I had to get rid of the top by switching from the Object Mode to Face mode the same way I did for the vertex mode. Then I only select the top side of the object by using shift. Once the faces are selected I just hit delete on keyboard. Lastly I go back to Object mode and hit CTRL and E to enter extrude mode which allows me to thicken up an object. So I do that to my vase to add volume.
Now it is time add texture to the vase. I opened Photoshop and selected a preset size from the new window that popped up on the screen when selecting Create New File. once the preset was selected, I clicked on create. Then I began creating new layers using the plus icon on the bottom right corner of the app. Afterwards I grabbed the brush pen using the Keyboard by pressing B. Next I went on the colour picker on the top right and selected the colour I want and started making simple patterns using the brush. You can see the image down below.
Before the pattern was made I had to search for texture that I can use on the web. So I grabbed the texture from this page as it looked like the one that would fit the look of a clay vase. I simply just dragged the image onto Photoshop using the right click. Once it is put in I used the resize tool that is on the left side of the screen. Once resized, then I went on the layers tab, selected the layer with the texture and selected the layer mode to Linear light to make sure the model blends with the patterns. Once this was done, I saved the image as a PNG and put the image in the texture slot for Maya.
Afterwards I used the UV editor which can be located on top right on the Toolbar of Maya. This will allow me to adjust the texture to wrap around the object that I have created. To set it up, I held right click on the outline of the object and select UV Shells. Then I moved them using W on the key and reposition it. After that I resized the UV shell, delete the other UV shells that aren’t needed. Once that is done I exit out of the UV editor.
The next step was to add a camera to the scene so I can adjust the image quality with it. Alongside That I tried to search for a background to be added to the sky dome but so far it wasn’t looking good. I also noticed during the search that the model for the vase had black spots on it (clipping issues which at the time I didn’t know how to fix). So I I made a new vase with a similar process as the first one.
The only exception is that I decided to turn this into a material. I clicked on an icon at the top right side of the screen which brought up this menu, allowing me create my on material. The way I added the material was by dragging the properties that I wanted to have in it such as blinn. I also added a texture that I downloaded and put it over the colour like I did with the texture for the first vase. Once the material was done, I just simply closed the window and used it like I would with any material.
I also looked at images of vases to get an idea of how the lighting on it should look like.
Lastly I wanted to add something extra to this vase which was a snake. To do that, I first spawned a cylinder, created a curve using the curve tool and drew and S shape, selected the top face of the cylinder along side with the curve and went on mesh tool to Extrude the object. This allowed me to modify the polygon count of the object to create a smooth S.
Then I spawned a sphere and used the vertex point to create the head of the snake along side two other spheres to create the eyes of it. Afterwards the textures were added for the snake.
Lastly I found the perfect texture for the Skydome. I simply saved and applied the texture to the object as it was spawned from Light>Arnold Lights and Skydome light. Then I hit render icon at the top right of the toolbar. The image was then saved by going onto file and save as.
Overall I am very happy with the object that I created in Maya. The thing that I like the most is the texture that I created for the second vase as it looks quite realistic, alongside the snake which serves as a nice touch to the vase. The two thing I didn’t like about this exercise is the first vase had some errors where the model would clip with itself, and also the model would have a problem with the texture wouldn’t line up, which ment I had to brute force it to look like a continued pattern. When creating this, I had to use the LinkedIn Learning tutorials on Maya which were very helpful!
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/maya-2020-essential-training/extrude-along-a-path?u=35574164