Sunday, 6 January 2013

Week 7 to Start of Term 2


Project 1 – Part One

1.   Story

The object that I modeled is Ferris wheel.

The story is about a rat racing around a track on a mousetrap car. In the middle of the track, the ferries wheel will be place there.

The rat has to go pass the Ferries wheel in order to continue the race. As the rat enter in the Ferries wheel at the front, it will turn one round of the Ferris wheel and then back to the base of the Ferris wheel where the rat will exit. After the rat exit the Ferris wheel, it will continue the race and complete the track racing.

The purpose of the Ferris wheel is to acts as a road block so that it will be more difficult and challenging for the rat to complete the race. As the Ferris wheel is placed at the middle of the track, there is no way that the race can avoid it. So in order to complete the race, the rat has to go through the Ferris wheel.

 
Diagram on the rat race

2.   Shape

My toy model – Ferris wheel

For my toy model, it is mainly made up of circles, cylinders and torus. As the Ferris wheel are made up of repeated shapes. For example, the cabins so we can just create 1 cabin and just duplicate it. Then using the move tool, shift and rotate the duplicate shape to place it in the right place.


Parts of the Ferris wheel

The cabins of the Ferris wheel have windows so we have to extrude it. First, we create a circle then we use cube to extrude the windows out.

 Also you can see from the picture, the cabins color is not strong, is more like a transparent color so, we just have to adjust the transparency level.

Maya – Common material attributes
3.   Design

Drawings
Front view of the Ferris wheel

 
Front view of the cabin

Maya Progress

 
1st week – Axis of the Ferris wheel

2nd week – Building up of the Ferris wheel without the base

3rd week - Front of the Ferris wheel, without coloring

4th week – Front of the Ferris wheel with coloring

5th week – Back of the Ferris wheel

5th week – Side of the Ferris wheel

4.   Research

 
Before coloring

After coloring


Leo Tsang also created a Ferris wheel model on Maya. Similarly, he had duplicated the various shapes throughout the model to form the Ferris wheel.  Also, texturing was involved to make the model to look more real by adding texture and colors to it.

He not only models the Ferris wheel, he also makes the Ferris wheel to be able to rotate, using grouping and centering pivot point of the main wheel. This makes his Ferris wheel look realistic. Which is more advance and I can try to do the same if I’m done with the modeling of the Ferris wheel to challenge myself.



5.   Self-Critique
Original model

  Maya model

For my final model, I think that it look quite similar to the original model. The Maya model is not exactly the same as the original model but it gives off similar impression of the original model.

The main problem I have when I am doing the Maya model, is the shape of the cabins, the base and the middle pointy shapes. Other than these problems, I found the rest of the modeling process is manageable.

Below, I will further elaborate on the success and problems I faced.

Left - Original, Right - Maya cabins

As you can see from the left picture, the original cabins are made up of a flat-looking base. It seems to be made up of a rectangle as a base and circle at the top. But for my Maya cabins, I only used circle shape to make it which is not quite similar to the original ones. However, for the Maya windows are quite similar to the original windows of the cabins.

Left - Original and Right – Maya, Back of the Ferris wheel

In my Maya Ferris wheel cabins, I used up similar color in compared to the original Ferris wheel. Also, the number of cabins (10) I made in the Maya is the same number of cabins (10) in the original. In order to make the Maya model as realistic as the original model, we have to include all the details available.

Left - Original and Right – Maya, Detail of the back of the Ferris wheel

For example, for the back of the Ferris wheel, I also do it as the same as how the original model is. It is important to be as detailed as possible as if I did not do the back stander in Maya, it will not make sense. As there have to be a back stander to support the Ferris wheel.

Left - Original and Right – Maya, Middle pointy shapes

This is the most difficult part of the modeling. I used the concept we learnt in the Gear exercise (Week 2 Lab 2 Part 2). First, I create a pipe then adjust the size I want it to be. Right click it and click on Face, click on the sides of the pipe to extract the pointy shape out. It is not quite successful but I managed to make slightly pointy triangles shape out. The reason why it was not successful as when we are doing the Gear exercise, the size we extracted is rectangle which is much easier to adjust the shape out.

The second challenge I faced for this part is after I am done with the Gear part, I have to do blue shapes and diamond (yellow) shapes out. It is extremely difficult to create the shape as well as alight it accordingly as it is in the original model. After much trying, I am still not able to do it hence; I replaced it with a basic triangle shape.

     Conclusion

To conclude, after doing this project, it let me have a better understand of how to use certain tools in Maya. It also gives me more chances to try out different tools and give me more experience to use it.

Also, by doing this project, it make me realized that, items that we see daily, can be model in Maya as well. It also make me realized that, we are capable to model those cartoons characters we see in movies which makes me feel more interested in 1N3D as there is so much more we can do in this subject.

Project 1 – Part Two
Bonus Extras
1)    Lighting



2)    Texture-Mapping - Rust Metal 

Front view of texture-mapping

Back view of texture-mapping





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