SEMESTER 2 WEEK 3
In 3D digital literacy this week we were introducted to UV Mapping. UV Mapping is the process of projecting a 2D image onto a 3D models surface for texture mapping. We were given a tutorial to follow and a few excercises to do to get us used to UV mapping and unwrapping.
The first class excercise was to UV map some dice, this was fairly straight forward and I quickly did this with little to no problem, I got quicker and more efficient at is as we did it more, though sometimes the white outlines were too much onto certain sides of the dice and I would edit them slightly tighter next time.
The second excercise was a basic cylinder. This was straightforward and simple to do, but was still pretty confusing since I didn’t know how this section of maya worked at all at this point, it was a good excercise to do to ease me into the other items I’d be mapping and unwrapping since they get more complicated as time goes on.
The barrel was pretty similar although I did have some bother with the edge loops and making the hole on top of the barrel seperate as I made a few mistakes that caught up to me in the long run, so I had to attempt this twice before I got it.
The arm — while it looked very complicated, was not as complicated in the long run. all the different edges and shapes were hard to navigate though and I had some issues selecting all the edges to unfold it, losing them inbetween the fingers and getting confused. I had to attempt it a few times.
This hard surface model was by far the most complicated and had lots of different components. unwrapping and then connecting all the parts so that the mesh was neat and the texture warped as little as possible in parts where it was prone to was very time consuming and confusing. I had to warp the mesh a lot to straighten it out and make it neater, and it took me quite a while to get through this one. In the end though it turned out how it was supposed to, so I’m happy with it.
I also started some very basic ideas for concepts for my object assignment. I decided to go for a staff idea, and was considering what style I wanted to go for, sketching up 4 possible ideas this week that I’ll either discard or work more from. I was considering more oceanic themed, perhaps a ocean staff, as well as a basic wooden staff with some sort of centre piece crystal, and a steampunk-esque idea.
To gather inspiration and reference, I’ve taken the liberty to create a pinterest board to gather images that i’ll research from:
https://pin.it/6xHpZIK
I was very interested in the ocean staff idea initially!