Lesson 1 : Profile Curves

I really enjoyed this first first lesson as I learned how to start with 3 simple curves and loft them together to create the main torso form. I also found it very helpful to learn how to restructure a curve so that each had the same amount of control vertices.

Lesson 2 : Building the Back Leg

I found how he used a basic cylinder and extruded it along another curve to create the leg form to be quite streamline and efficient.

Lesson 3 : Shaping the Leg and Body

No fancy tricks or tips in this lesson, although I enjoyed watching his process of main shaping of the leg and edge flow before moving groups of vertices to bring more of the detail shape to the leg.

Lesson 4 : Extruding Out the Toes

This lesson was really fascinating to me how he modeled one toe and duplicated it for the rest of the foot. I finally understood the concept of how you can match resolution with 6 vertices to 6 vertices to make attaching appendages easier.

Lesson 5 : Building the Arm

For the arm he used two nurbs objects instead of a nurbs and a polygonal object to obtain essentially the same outcome. I found the bridge tool to be quite helpful when combing geometry together.

Lesson 6 : Modeling Wrinkles in the Skin

The tip that really stuck with me from this tutorial was when he was creating his own edgloops only where he needed the wrinkles and then to get rid of the N-gons he merged the vertices where he crossed over the geometry.

Lesson 7 : Refining the Joints

I found it was really interesting when he ignored the joints at first, but his process made a lot of sense when he extruded out the faces on the joints in order to add resolution both for animation and for detail while keeping his geometry clean.

Lesson 8 : Adding Detail to the Feet and Hands

I found the use of the lattice tool to be very helpful, especially as he said when you have a lot higher resolution geometry to work with the lattice tool makes changing that geometry easier without messing with all the individual vertices.

Lesson 9 : Starting the Head

I found his using of the main landmarks of the head to build his curve / geometry from to be really useful, especially when modeling complex things such as heads.

Lesson 10 : Creating / Shaping the Eye Socket

I’ve always had trouble modeling geometry around facial features but adding the basic sphere for the eyeball and building the facial geometry around it is a simple yet effecting way to create clean and effective geometry.

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The Problem :

This was an exercise to learn the Nurbs and Curves modeling method in Maya. Being only allowed to use these tools, I had to recreate a lamp. This method worked well for the natural curves of the lamp, however the sharper corners near the base of the lamp posed a unique issue.

The Solution :

I started with the base of the lamp as it was a unique challenge I was excited to tackle. I started with the square nurbs and stacked them in the rough outline of the base. When I went to select and loft the squares together, I soon realized each edge of the squares were separate and not connected. Instead of selecting each square, I lofted the sides one at a time, which gave nice corners as well. For the main part of the lamp, I decided to use the freeform curve creation tool. It was in this stage where I discovered how wonky Maya’s curve editing capabilities are. In order to reach my desired level of detail, I had to switch between four different tools just to edit one control vertice. I started with the curve editing tool, which allowed me to change the handles of the bezier curve, then I would switch between the edit point to edit my existing vertices, and add new ones by switching to edit curve, applying the knot tool, and then switching back to the edit point and curve editing tool. Once I had completed the main part of the lamp, I simply revolved it together.

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The Problem :

This exercise helped me begin to dive into the creation of an object from a primitive through the extrusion of vertices. One of the main issues I ran into was keeping my edge-flow clean, and using edge-loops efficiently so as to not have unnecessary vertice information.

The Solution :

In order to use shapes efficiently, I roughly blocked out the shape of the desk before adding in the extra detail. From there, when adding extra edge-loops to create finer creases, I found it helpful to clean up the edge-flow by redirecting the vertices with the multicut tool.

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The Problem:

This short exercise was a test to see how creatively I could turn a basic primitive object into a lemon juicer without deleting or extruding vertices.

The Solution:

I started with a basic cylinder as I knew that would make the base easy to create. From there I scaled it and added subdivisions in the attribute editor, as I knew the center circle needed to be both pushed down and up. From there the basic shape was practically done, all I had to do was grab a few edges in the center and push them in or out to create the grooves.

The Problem:

For this simple exercise, one of the main problems was figuring out the rotation speeds of the plants in order to become more familiar with the Maya graph editor.

The Solution:

Once I began to understand how the keyframes on the graph editor translated to the movement in the viewport, I was able to easily adjust and fine tune the rotation and speed of each planet individually.

Screenshot of the hypergraph hierarchy

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The Problem:

this assignment came with a unique challenge to not only learn the Maya interface, but to only model using primitive shapes.

My Solution:

I decided to first view the constraints of only using primitive objects as an advantage as opposed to a limitation. The robotic form I chose actually benefits from a predominately blocky form. In contrast, I was able to use a few of the more organic circular primitive objects to soften and add interesting contrast to the main body.