Photo-referencing

To accurately create my objects in Maya I needed solid reference, particularly for the scaling and proportions of my objects. In order to do this I photo-referenced everything that I would need to model in order to work off.






I have taken photographs for every iterm from more then one angle so I can use it as a map to model off. This produces quite an accurate outcome.



I have taken this approach with every item to produce very accurate outcomes.




The 3D models of the bedside area.




This is a preview of the desk area although it does not have the amount of details as the actual thing it is still proportionally fairly accurate.

Idea and Storyboard

So with some sort of idea I just thought about what kind of objects I could use to create a Domino effect with. I had to think about what objects in my room could lead to what so I started with my phone alarm clock as a starting point. I had to think how that could trigger something else off so looking to my own room as inspiration I saw the xbox controller on the floor next to my bed and thought how I could involve that somehow.

This eventually led me to creating a photographic storyboard of my idea.



I decided to somehow bring the xbox into play so I thought I would try to use the character from the game on the tv screen as part of the Domino effect



The storyboard now allowed me to concentrate on modelling my objects in maya but to do this I needed photo references to work from.

Domino Project

For the 3D project the title was the Domino project. This basically means using maya to create a domino effect. I just needed a theme for this project and seeing as my biggest enemy is waking up in the morning, I decided to go with an alarm clock theme.

As I needed to model objects in 3D, I needed to make an animation with objects that I had easy accesibility so I thought what better to use then my own room and model objects that are within arms reach so with just that quick thought I was able to come up with something simple and achievable as the main focus to me on this project was getting familiar with the Maya software.

To me the flow of the domino effect must be flawless and so fluid and that is the kind of effect I would like to achieve.



This is an advert for Honda that uses car parts in a Domino effect and is the right kind of inspiration needed for my project.

A few random Maya experiments

Just following a few tutorials, doing some experimenting of my own and a few youtube videos.

Getting started on Maya

Learning Maya has been far from an easy task and even now I still dont know fully how to use it but I have done some of the online tutorial as well as other polygon modelling tutorials and I think I have finally got the basics of modelling.

I also decided to make notes as I went through the tutorials so that I could use it as referencing throughout the project.

So i've not really touched my blog for a while now and at the moment I am at a point in the project where I am running through a few camera tests. However I can say that learning maya has been one of the hardest things I have ever done and even now I really only know enough of the basics to do what I need to do.

A few basics that I have learnt that have and are going to prove useful such as basic polygon modelling, rendering, how to control a camera with aim and lighting basics.

I spent a week or so just getting really familiar with the program and did some online tutorials just to get a feel for the program and how to go about creating 3D objects.



Looking at camera basics. I managed to learn how to create a camera and aim, how to move the camera through an 'invisible' wall and a few tips.



Basics on applying materials. This has proven one of the most useful notes as it explains when a certain material should be used e.g what to use when making a metallic object etc.



Basic modelling and lighting.

The world in 3 Dimensions - Intro to Digital Animation.

So its a new term and a new module. This terms module we are looking at an introduction into the world of 3D digital animation. This will cover the use of Maya, Photoshop and Illustator as well as other specialist software however the one to focus on for this will be Autodesk Maya.

Basically.... Bring on Maya!