Course Overview and Introduction to 3D

My first class was this past Tuesday, 16th February. This would not only be my first day at SAE, but my first official class of 2016: MDU115 Foundations of 3D Graphics.

I arrived a few minutes early and before long my lecturer, Jodi Kruger introduced himself and asked a question to which the class response immediately sent a shiver down my spine. Everyone bar myself (to my knowledge) has already taken, failed, and therefore is repeating this class. This brought about some nervous tension for a few reasons: How difficult must this class be? Was Jodi the lecturer last year as well? Is he a harsh marker, or was he unable to equip the students with the skills they needed to pass the class? Will he teach the class under the assumption that everyone already has a years worth of knowledge because of it? How much of a disadvantage will I be at being the only student new to this course?

Suffice to say I was quite distraught as this was a terrible way to begin my first day. Luckily some of my fears were quickly dispelled - Jodi was to be a new lecturer for this unit and had a confident air about him and spoke with a real passion for what he does. He is an environmental artist for video games and has worked with big names companies of old like Atari. As far as I'm concerend, he is living the dream and I was eager to learn all he had to teach me.

However my lack of experience in this field of study was quickly highlighted as each topic that Jodi went on to cover was already learned previously by my classmates. Each time Jodi would address the class with "Are you familar with concept X", there would be a resounding "Yes" which more often than not drowned out my solitary "No". I realised that I was at a disadvantage as these student have already encoutered the assignments (Create a 3D Chest), syllabus and of course basic knowledge of the software (Maya 2015/2016) that we would be using. I approahced Jodi during the class break and informed him that unlike the others, I was new to this class and had no prior knowledge of 3D modelling, Maya or any of the concepts he was covering - he replied that he would teach the class as if every one was in my position, which brought me some releif until he annocued our first piece of practical work...

Jodi had set two tasks - the first was to create and utilise an online blog. In this blog we would journal our thoughts relevant to the course syllabys and as we progress week to week, undertaking new projects, we would use this blog to discuss our learning of the concepts and techniques introduced to us that would enable the completion of our tasks.

The second task and what would be the first week's tutorial would be to source an image of a tin-robot from the early 1900's to be used as a reference for our first 3D model.

The image above is not the robot I chose to use in that class - Even though I spent close to an hour working on it, my lack of expereince with Maya meant that I made very little progress. I struggled with the absolute basics, from manipulating the camera to manipulating objects. While the students around me were bevelling, playing with verticies and creating all kinds of shapes, I was driven made by my fixed camera angle and rudementary objects.

Jodi made his way around the class to assist each student and provide feedback and when he made his way to me I quickly had him cover the necessities - camera and keyboard shortcuts. This didn't allow me to create a robot, but damn it helped releive some frustration.

The class ended and it hasn't been until today that I've had time to really sit down and teach myself some Maya using the resources provided. Once I had a few bits and peieces of information locked away I began to create my new robot based on the image above.

After a little while I started to become more comfortable witht he hotkeys for manipulating the basic objects and before long I was on my way to creating a robot! At this stage I was still trying to learn which shapes were best used and I realised why Jodi asked us to reference this particular era robot - it it chock full of the rudemental shapes that are avilable to us in Maya and I assume forms the basis of what will soon be much more complicated tasks.

Soon after I was droping and manipulating shapes with much greater efficiency.

Although you can't see it in my reference picture - I beleive that the tin robot actually has 'C' shaped claws for hands - this is something I really wante dto incorporate in my model but I decided at this point to simply use the flat cylindars and move on to complete the model first and then come back to the finer details.

Before long I had completed the robot in it's most basic representation. I liked it, but thinking back to this week's tutorial I recalled just how swiftly and expertly Jodi had created his robot and how much cleaner and true to form it looked.

Of course I know that he has decades of industry knowledge but I felt that with a few more help videos and tinkering that I could better this robot, even if just a little.

I had a look at the reference image and decided that the msot glaring issue was that even if the robot was made of basic shapes and from tin, it wasn't as coarse and basic as my creation was. The quickest way to polish my model would be to learn how to smoothen the edges of the pieces is was built from, or as Maya would call it: bevelling.

After my first sucessful bevel, I knew I had found a new love and I quickly got to work.

I began to bevel my ass off. Everything immediately started to look better, realer and closer to the reference image.

The more I played with the function the more control I found that I had over the shapes and elements and so the more I tweaked my robot.

Soon I had bevelled everything that I felt needed it and as I compared this image to my orinigal, blocky one, I was very pleased with the decision I made, but I felt that I coudl still do more...

I referred to my notes taken from the lecture and Jodi had taught us about the different finishes that can be applied to models by the way of materials and their different names: Lambert, Blin and Phong. Again I had no idea how to create/use this technique so I started to poke around Maya until I found where these materials were hiding.

I played with the different attributes, chose a colour that looked like the source colour used in my reference and tried to replicate the reflectiveness etc and this is more or less where I felt I had to leave it. I wanted to do so much more - I wanted to include the image used on the actual robot and apply it as a texture on the front of my robot's chest, I wanted to create the plastic finish on the light on the top of my robot's head but for all my want I was simply creating increasingly difficult tasks for myself and by this stage I had already spent hours putting this robot together and accuring the knowledge to do so.

So for now I leave you with my robot. He doesn't have a name, but maybe one day I'll finish it and that will change.

Jodi, if you're still reading this then thanks, I appreciate you taking the time. I look forward to next week and the challenges that follow!

Cheers.

#Photography #robot #MDU115 #3D #maya #modelling #blog #journal #diary #week #task