Maya Tools
Learning how to work in Maya has been frustrating, difficult, and on my best days, breathtakingly simple. I've learned how to do tons of different things I never thought I would be able to create on my computer screen. Some projects I have soared through and really enjoyed, while others have set me back and caused me to ask nearly twelve different people for help. Despite any issues I had creating my projects, I learned so much valuable information in Animation.
Hammer
This project was my favorite overall. I think that may be because I understood how to do it best and I really enjoyed building the hammer. We used the Cut Faces Tool, Extrude Faces Tool and the Bevel Tool. It really helped me learn the Extrude Faces Tool very well. I carried that knowledge to other projects also. Along with that, there was the Cut Faces Tool used in order to cut the back part of the hammer to create the two separate pieces.
Poly Thing
When making the Poly Thing I used both Booleans and then learned how to use all the different lightings. I mainly used Point Lighting and Ambient Lighting in all my projects overall. I used Point Lighting here in order to lighten the scene and then added Depth Map Shadows to create a realistic shaded look.
Ice Cream
There were so many different tools I used in the overall creation of my Ice Cream movie. The new ones that I learned were Bump Mapping and how to Loop my movie. I used the Bump Mapping (found in the Attribute Editor) to create the actual melting Ice Cream effect on my scoops. In the Graph Editor I made the rotation of my Lazy Susan linear in order for it to loop smoothly.
Bouncing Balls
There were many different processes that went into making this movie. One of the main things that I learned was how to use Keyframes. With the help from my peers, we made a key in Microsoft Excell in order to time out when the balls would hit the ground each time. Then we plugged those keyframes into Maya by using shortcut S. In order to make the movie loop smoothly I went into the Graph Editor and changed it to Linear.
Salt Shaker
In order to make the salt shaker I used a
NURB circle and then edited the vertexes to manipulate it into a shape of a salt shaker. I duplicated this shape four times and placed them all above each other. I then
lofted, which was creating a surfaces over all the curves. I'm really happy with the outcome.
Cup Revolve
I created my two cups by creating a curve lined up with the Y-Axis. Following my creation of the curve I pressed the Revolve button found under surfaces. This revolved my curve all the way around in order to make a cup.
Process:
I worked with Kacie on this project and we made twin products. When brainstorming ideas for our package we tried to stay by something we would enjoy creating and knew a lot about. When deciding on a Mermaid theme, we picked out colors. I then sketched out an idea of what our mermaid might look like. I (obviously) used Ariel for inspiration. I later scanned the sketch into the computer and traced with the pen tool n order to create a clean-cut copy of our mermaid. We went on from there and created fonts, logos, slogans and an overall color scheme to follow. We were both very impressed with our final product and had tons of fun creating it together.
My Experience:
I learned a lot of things while creating this product. I really enjoyed creating the graphics and placing them together. It was something that I really had fun with mostly because we were all so free to do whatever came to mind. I experimented with a lot of different ways to design the product and wasn't happy with any until we put it like this. I learned how to both advertise my ideas and to creatively add them to a product in which would be sold to a certain audience.
Reflection:
Overall, this product has been one of my favorites. Kacie and I worked well together and had equal parts in the making of our product. We helped each other out when we needed it and made sure we both stayed on task. This product took quite a while but it was definitely worth it.
