The first class of the semester is 3D Literacy, from 10AM to 1PM on Wednesdays. This week was a general overview of the course and the module handbook, and then the second half of the class was allowing us to play around with different tools in Maya. Despite having already played around with Maya by completing Alec’s tutorial for the cute cactus, I still felt completely out of my comfort zone. It is one thing to follow a guide step by step, it is a completely different thing to try making models on your own. As a result, the first scene I created – which was a general cafe scene – was made primarily made from separate individual shapes, with limited extruding or any other modelling techniques. We were given some pointers by Henry during the lesson, but then we were left to our own devices for a while (and encouraged to ask lots of questions):
This model is OK, It’s not particularly attractive etc. but it worked for the assignment we were given and given my lack of experience, I’m not mad at it.
I then made sure to stay behind after lunch for the extra hours of tuition with Mike to get started on the homework. We were given a table, chairs, a martini glass and vase to model in preparation for next week’s class and I knew there was no hope of me managing it on my own. We were taught how to model each item and I made a sort-of bar fight scene for fun by adding extra toppled martini glasses and a knocked over chair. It’s not perfect, but this scene is much more competent than my first attempt.
It’s all very overwhelming, but I really do feel as though staying the extra hours after class today has taught me so much already and therefore I will continue to stay in class after lunch on a Wednesday as well as Thursday. I feel a lot more confident in modelling independently after going through these basics with Mike.
Overall, today was a HUGE learning curve for me – It’s actually exhausted me, to be honest – but I feel like I’ve come out knowing more and that’s been truly gratifying.