UPDATE! FINAL PROJECT!

Changing my items too:

Rail road crossing: Includes the lights and sign plus the signal arm
Train with wheels (going to be bad as wheels)
Tracks



Well this is for you Dad, thanks!

N'Class Fail 101

Found out what I was doing wrong with the racket

Quick note on how to fix

• When attaching an object to a curve make sure that the face is only selected and that  the curve is an object. Then extrude.
• This can help fix the house too!

That may make no since to you, but it does loads for me :) Here is how it looks after getting it to work 

Please note, that this is still a flaming piece of failure... I should have used a pipe instead.... Live and learn!

O'Da Lolly

O'Da Lolly

*Note* For those who don't read my blog, O'Da Lolly is my bad ass plane I made :)

All of these are  either the steps I have taken or the failures of other plans because I didn't watch what I was doing. Now on, I watch my steps!

Starting point

This is where it starts to go wrong, instead of pulling I extruded

The humming bird

 The humming bird again un smoothed

The humming bird not smoothed

The final product the humming bird, but like you can see on the right wing there is that extrude that I did and I don't think I can fix it with out starting over. :( So that plane bit the dirt!

Same problem with this one extra extrude that doesn't need to be there!

O'Da Lolly

I am very proud of this place if you have not guessed yet. I put a lot of time into. I do believe it will go through another color change, but right now it looks awesome!

 FRONT

TOP













BOTTOM










Like you can all see, this plane is a one trip plane, and plus like in Class 8 we animated our planes to fly from one table to another in a room.... And like my path for the plane, it like crashes into the table. So, to leave you on that note, lets just say this girl is not a plane, builder and probably will never be unless I need to model.
 

Final Object List

The items I am thinking about doing for my final project

• Camera
• Train
• Flip flop
• Cup cake
• Train's box car

I am hoping I can pull them off and the teacher says yes

UPDATE: NOT SURE I WANT TO DO THEM NOW... STILL THINKING I SHOULD CHANG :/

Class 7

Class 7

 Wow we I am so proud of my plane its not funny. Lol any way back to what I was about to do again.


Building a room


In class we learned how to build a room that has two tables and one spiraling stair case. It looks really cool on my end. In this project we learned:

• Menu/Modify - Freeze Transformation - switches back to 0
• When going through any where in Maya it labels all things with  X, Y, Z.
• Edit/Menu/Group - groups objects into a whole that still keeps them as different items. What this means. They maybe group but they still hold their own coordinates. 
• Duplicate Special - Allows you to duplicate more then one item all the time you can make many faster and have them with the right coordinates you want.
• Duplicate Special button will apply and close the window
• apply wont, so us that to test anything that you are doing

That is the basic understand I have with the items we learned. There is more that goes with them, but those are the key ideas of the items. 

((Will insert picture soon))

Class 7 N'Class Fail

N'Class

Had a timed a simple in class... I failed... Because before class that pen and pen holder... In about thirty. So that left me with a tennis racket... I was lost there and not happy about it but I went after like a trooper I am. Let's just say it didn't work right.

Here is the work I got done :( ----------->

It really sucks. I do what I always do and over think everything I do. I need to kick myself for that. I was going to take it like making a big face and extrude in and then connect it with a merge, but half way in I changed my mind. That is when I lost time and still had trouble with the curve tool. I need to work on that and spend a lot of time with it. That is the plan for tomorrow I am going to work with it and finish this to a decent racket.  I am going to go over on how to do that. Plus I need to learn what the hell a tennis racket looks like too. I have to say though that pen I did before was a lot better and I made it really fast.
I need to apply what I did there here.

What to Work on:

1. Speed
2. Thinking (over thinking)
3. Skill
4. Curve tool
5. Snapping a shape to the curve tool
6.  Ask 4 help!

Class 6: Play

Ok I was so proud of myself and feeling like I could finally understand what is going on I decided lets make some other shapes and texture them too :)

Steps

1. Start with a cube
2. Extrude + edge loop tool + other tools to get your shape
3. MAKE SURE THERE IS NO TRIANGLES OR NGONS!
4. Then Texture

The black pen marker

Now the pen has a holder that is sinking into the floor... "Oh, no!"

I fixed it!

This is a top view of awesome shape :)

Now this is a cool close up of the golf inspired pen holder :)

Class 6

Wow we I am there all caught up with the blog! Hell yes! Any who its been one fun ride typing about what I just did. Now on I am going to try to type them out after I get home from class and then do another before class to show my progress and to keep my information fresh!!

Class 6

 Well  this class is all about that thing people like to call texture. It was a little wowing and wordy, but important! I can tell you by the end of class my mouth was on the floor with do to the over load, but don't worry woke up to come in to see teach. Thank goodness he is here day after.

Any who I will highlight the learning and later on add on.

• Window/rendering editors/hypershade
• Gets you to where your texture panel will be any your map to adding textures to it.
• Make sure to remember this commands 
• 5 = shading
• 6 = texture
• 7= lighting

• Lamber 1 is the default to shade your object (don't mess with)
• Render settings/ create (physical sun & sky) 4 steps

Yay I got two images shade with some cool texture... Well here comes my plane :) Finally happy with it.

I named it O'Da Lolly and it is a futuristic water plane. :)  Yes, it does have some wheel like skies because it is a water plane :) it lands on water. Now it wont be a one trip mission.

There is one problem I have with it. I know my lighting might be a little off and I need to understand how and why.  So teach, can we go over the Sun & Sky thing again. I will keep messing around with it and I think I might get it. :) Going to go on and make some other shapes just so I know I know this!





I know a lot happened and I posted so little, but I will update this to make it better I promise myself I will

Class 5

Class 5

Wow yeah, been in class 5 times and really need to get this program mastered better and I say that now because of that test the teacher gave. I can honestly say I knew how to do it and getting done fast was not part of my plan. I figured out why my merge was a big failure too. OK here is what I mean buy the way, but before that lets take a good look at Shanna's failed homework.

You see that. I didn't get to merge my pipes.... I want to say I didn't know how, but I do. It all stems off of me being lazy and not truly figuring it out. I know my cube rocks because that is a no brainer. My cube and sphere almost there, but used way to many subdivisions and didn't use a handy tool that I need to use more. Edge loop tool!!!!! My joystick would have loved that tool and would have rocked with it... I believe I will retackle this and rock it :) Have to give a update when done.

INCLASS SNOWMAN

This is what I had to make. See how all the spheres look smoothed when they are connected. That is what every smooth needs to look like. ((From the picture you can see that I got it)) That is what needs to happens

The problem I was having is when I was deleting faces I was not seeing I left to lines of faces that need to go on the middle one and a line on the top. So when merge nothing was happening thanks to that fact and this is the snowman I was coming up with.

To a untrained eye it looks just like the other one, but it is not. It has that nice line going right through it. That is why it fails at life. I am going to say this now,  I need to stop over thinking. That is where I failed right now in this test of my skills! PLUS I NEED TO USE MAYA MORE!!!!!

Building a Plane

Now that the class got in trouble for being lazy pieces of crap and needed that kick in the ass to move along in your progress of master Maya. We built a plane. I will only highlight not give step by step how too, because I feel you should be there to learn it. I also feel if you know how to do it you don't truly need to know it.

Basically you start with one cube (yes one) and you add more to it. Then you change sizes and extrude here and there and you get this.

This picture shows you the basics of the plane before smoothed and where my plan started to take a nose dive to being a piece of trash. You see that wing that looks like it is starting to take shape into a sharp knife, well instead of just lengthening it added well a extrude to it... And yes you know what comes next I didn't do shit with it and it fucked up my final costing me headaches and time wasted. SO WATCH WHAT YOU ARE DOING!  Here are the other images at the work moves forward into completion.

RETURN FOR NEXT POST TO FIND OUT COMPLETED ONE!

Class 4

Oh wow almost done with all theses and sorry there isn't a lot to them, but I am trying to get caught up so i am just high lighting the main points, but I will go back and up date them. Don't worry I will tell you if I did :)


Class 4

  

The homework was to make some other objects or make a cup with a handle. I did the cup and plate. It was hard and I wanted to make a tea cup, and the first one I was making was so much better then this, but when I smoothed this it didn't work out some how so I went back and started over. The thing I had trouble with the most is connecting that handle. You can see this is this picture right here.

You see my handle is inside my cup. Not going to work and some how my handle was turning into weirdness until I figured out I need to work with my extrude functions inputs. 

For class we made a mug and learned the right way to do it. I was not merging when i was working with this and not using the curve tool right. I know I wasn't or my handle would have worked. I know when working on his I may be slow, but I need to get faster. I also need to stop over thinking everything that is a key to being better. 

Look at that cup it is so awesome. The handle may look weird and it does, but over all that is one cool looking mug. I would use that mug.

Over all one needs to remember that when modeling make sure to watch what you are doing and to understand your steps.

Tools used that gave me a little trouble:

• Merge
• Curve tool 

Class 3

Class 3 

In this class we went over our houses and went further into our work and made a cool vase. i am going to say now my vase has problems here and there. It doesn't really match up, but I will get to that in a moment.

How to make a vase

First a sphere then you just change its shape with extruding here and there. ((this is where I went wrong) Makes sure to keep it a circle and not a oval. Now that you got that down lets keep moving forward. we gave it a nice pattern wit just deciding how many subdivisions we wanted (yes learn that Geometry now). That is how we gave it that cool looking zigzag. Over all it is the same things we already have done, but with a little more.

Just learned more tools/commands

3 - to smooth
1 - to turn it back to normal
Merge - to take to lines/vertex/face into one

This would then lead us into merging shapes for homework

Class 2

Ok I just 4 more to go and then I am right where I need to be :)

Class 2

In class 2 we took everything we learned from that class and placed it to a test. Ok now you try! you got five minutes restate everything. Don't worry I can't do it well either. I know what it does but saying it right is hard. I have to study them every time I open the program or am using them.

First off the keyboard commands I know for a mac. 

• Q =Select Tool
• W= Move Tool
• E = Rotate Tool
• R = Scale Tool
• F = Focus
• Spacebar = Switch selecting mood that is when you are on an object. When not then it is a Maya help tool

 Now that we have those in thought, and reviewed the basics it time to move on to the project

Making a Simple House

Make a cube and make sure you understand the Channel Box

Channel box- is located on the right side. This information relates to the X, Y, and Z, translation, rotation, and scaling for the active object. This allows one to input what they want about their shape. Thy can inform how big they want it to how small.

Plus from no on understand GEOMETRY now!!!!! ((But don't let it hurt you or over think stuff))

Start with a cube and this is when the Edit Mesh Menu comes into play. These are the ones we learned to use with our house

• Extrude
• Cut Faces
• Curve tool

Just remember when you extrude or you will get lost and your geometry will fail! I had a lot of problems with cutting faces and extruding, but now that I got the hang of it. It isn't that hard to do. My house has a nice wood door that has nice wood panels on it. Plus my windows look really cool like they are boxed up and all over the place. I want to say it was on purpose, but it wasn't. I was having problems with the extrude... I figured out what I was doing wrong. I don't think I will fix them because they look so cool :) 

Also had to make a fence and a table. First table false because legs are different sizes. Other table work because I pulled them out at the same time.

Fence works to a degree, but I need to remake one now that I know better geometry. Oh before I need this you see the tub at the top. That is my attempt at a gutter. I am working on it still. I will up date you on it as I finish it. 

Class 1

I am going to do a little recap of all my classes up until this point to make sure I know what is going on and to refresh myself. I love what we are doing, it just gets over whelming at times and I just need to remember to sit there and breath in and out. I can do it!!! I know I can. Any who here is the first bit of information.

CLASS 1

The Basics. One has to understand their tools before they can us the program. First off using a make and Maya don't really mix that well ( my feeling on it). You have to make sure if you have a mac mouse that the 3rd button is on. Then another keep point one needs to remember is that in the main document line bar there is a help section. Click and go to Maya help. This place all the help you can get, but its a lot of reading just to let you know and you have to know what you are looking at to fully grasp what you need to read.

Status Line toolbar- is where a lot of your key functions one needs on working on the program. Starting left to right in naming off the tools.

Menu set menu- is the first one people need to find, because if not not a lot will happen in the program and one will get lost fast. The menus in Maya are grouped into menu sets. Each menu set corresponds to a module of the software: Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Dynamics, and Rendering. Maya Unlimited has additional modules. As you switch between menu sets, the right-hand menus change, but the left-hand menus remain the same; these are the common menus.

File button- No brainier what these three buttons do, so not even going to explain. If you don't know then you need to go learn a computer

Selection tools or Mask- Is a section that holds many different ways to select. The selection tools determines what type of objects or components you can select.

•  The selection mode menu lets you select common preset sections

• The selection mode buttons let you switch between select by hierarchy and combination mode, object mode, and component mode 

• The selection mask buttons let you make specific object/component types selectable or unable to select

 

• Selection options- lock or unlock current selection

• Snapping buttons-snap to grids, snap to curves. snap to points, snap to view planes, make the selected object live

• Render Buttons (( Not gone over just yet)) Basically it allows you get at jpeg of your work

• Then comes the Input mode area. 

Then there is the panel toolbar- the ones that I know what they do are as fallows.

• Select Camera -Selects the current camera in the panel as can do: View/Select Camera
• Shading buttons- allows to see different shading of the shape there is: Wireframe, smooth shade all, wireframe on shaded. (( there is more, but those are the current ones I know))
• Isolate Select too

Tool box- (tools top to bottom)

• Select tool- Lets you select objects and components ( quick command for mac Q)
• Lasso tool - ((not sure of what it does but it looks like it allows you to select objects and components based on your free formed shape around them.))
•  Paint Selection Tool- ((can be a pain)) Lets you select components by painting over them with stylus. ( quick command for mac to make brush selection bigger or smaller B)
• Move tool- Lets you select objects and components and move them in any direction (quick command for a mac w)
• Rotate Tool- Lets you rotate the object and components selected (quick command for mac E)
• Scale Tool- Lets you scale your object and components selected (quick command for mac R)

Those are all the tools I know how to use of right now.

Quick layout buttons

• Single Perspective View
• 4 Perspective View (More helpful when getting complicated shapes) 

As a designer one has to understand perspective and how looking at a object will effect your design. Now that I am modeling I have to be double that, because if something looks good on one side and not on the other it will not work!!!!! So turn that screen and view it from every angle.

MOUSE COMMANDS FOR VIEWING IT

LEFT- MOVE CAMERA ANGLE 360 baby :)
RIGHT- MOVE IN AND OUT CAMERA (( to get right on the object and focus right now it the quick command on a mac is f)
MIDDLE BUTTON (I find it to be the roller) LETS YOU CHANGE THE PLACEMENT OF CAMERA

That is what most of the commands I  remember off the top of my head that we learned, but there could be more. If not we covered it in the next class in depth. I know this is a lot, but one has to understand this is a big program and you have to know this if you want to make anything.