More of my Maya Scribbles…
Here are more of my notes which I managed to scribble down
during a couple of tutorials, one based upon helpful hints and tips, the other
during our Companion Cube project.
• You can use the move
tool to move the offset areas but never let the edges of an object you have
built touch because you will find yourself with hidden faces.
• You cant extrude
edges because an edge is an infinitely small shape in space and Maya will
likely make on side disappear (think about Tomb Raider, older versions, where
you could rotate the camera around Lara but more often than not the camera
would go through a wall but you would still be able to see through that wall) s
if it had disappeared.)
• Your door need to be
perfect from both sides ensuring there are no hidden faces or incorrect
elements on either side.
• Moving the pivot area
> select hierarchy (top 3 square icons above the shelf) > X key changes
cursor to snap too areas of the grid/ C key snaps to a curve or edge/ V key
snaps to vertices & points.
• Manifold geometry
> edit mesh > merge > single edges are merged into 1 shape.
• If you have extra
edges you can select and delete them and then select merge under edit
mesh.
Portal 2 Companion Cube, Pt 2.
Tuesday, 20th
I must admit before I dive in with the “walkthrough” that this
week I struggled. Not with getting to know Maya as a programme, deep down I
actually love Maya…not sure how long that will last. No, the thing I struggling
with was keeping up. I often found Maya did stupid things that it wasn’t meant
too and I would end up not having the cube looking correct. Trying to fix what
happened would often lead to me missing something else just as crucial. Alas,
the tutorials are still really fun, I’m not the only one who gets lost and I
find we all bond over helping each other out and trying to help fix issues! It
makes the learning experience much better! Anyway, what I am trying to say is
that this week my walkthrough guide might not appear as clear as it did last
week. I will try to amend it if I can at some point.
Part 2, Step 1: The 1st very basic step was to build a new cube. This was so begin
working of the outer block sections that you can see in-between every large
corner section. As you can see from the screen shot (just) I have created
another cube by selecting the cube from the polygon shelf. I then made the cube
bigger and moved it into place over the top of the larger cube we built last
week.
Note: I found it got very confusing halfway through building this new
element of the Companion Cube, having to look through the main cube and the
visual reference images so I can only wish I had done this sooner than I did. I
decided it would be best o have everything in separate layers so I could turn
them on and off at my will to ensure it was easier to see what I was building.
I did this by highlighting what I wanted to be in a layer (e.g. the main base
cube) and then clicked the small orange & blue ball icon at the bottom
right of the screen above the layers section to section it off into a “new
layer”. I then called this layer “BaseCube”
(or something similar). I then did the same for the new cube we had created and
named it “CenterCube”. This left me with
3 layers, the reference images, base cube and new mini cube so that I could
turn them on and off when I needed too.
It made my workflow much easier!
Part 2, step 2: Here is what the shape looks like when we “hide” the
reference images and base cube. To get
here I had to select the layers and attributes section and select “SubDivs” and change the
quantity to 2. this made the cube have 4 smaller faces per every main
face/side. We then turned off “camera based selection” by double clicking the
move tool icon and selected the 2 L shaped sides of the shape (right click
& select edge).
We then went to edit mesh and chose the bevel tool option.
However we only clicked it, we didn’t double click to open the options. What
this allowed us to do was to enter the number manually on the left side of the
Maya interface screen. We had to set the bevel to 1. This created the extra
face you can see (which we don’t actually want) but also brought the middle sub
div down lower.
Part 2, step 3: Okay so it’s evident that there is an extra face on the
side of the shape as you can see from the screen shot above and below. To get
rid of any unwanted faces and not end up with hidden faces (for example by
merely manually pushing the 2 edges
together, it will not get rid of the face).
To properly be rid of this extra face I had to right click and
ensure I was in object mode > select the entire object > edit mesh >
merge vertex tool & select it. This option gives you the chance to move
certain vertex and merge them into other vertexes which is helpful to remove
faces. Here you can see that I dragged the corner vertex (highlighted in red)
Part 2, Step 4: I needed to further sub divide the shape to give more
accuracy for the upcoming steps. I did this by selecting edges and setting the
offset to 0.5 to even out the new lines so they evenly went round the shape.
Part 2, Step 5: This is where it got super complicated to keep up with
the class tutorial! So many people, including me, were having issues getting
Maya to behave to I tried to keep accurate workflow notes on how I got from
what you can see above to the stage I am at now (and that you will see next).
Here Is what I wrote:
Edge > select middle (i.e. the middle
“ring” that goes round the cube) > edit mesh & bevel > segment 2 >
select edges on front & back middle (not on top or the bottom) > scale
tool “R” key > function/insert & enter > snap to centre vertices on
edge > hold “V” (so it changes to a circle) > move to the middle back of
the 3 rings that go around the shape > use the middle mouse click to move
the tool itself > select the scale tool from the left side > ensure “soft
select” is checked (your model’s edges should turn into a fiery colour to show
the area that will be affected) > select fall off mode…
What I have written here are the notes I managed to take during
the session. As we were all having trouble keeping up I cant really re write
them so they make perfect sense, nor do I have any real idea how to re create
the shape from scratch. But what I did take from it was a further understanding
of the tools. This section was us basically creating the curves of the shape
(as seen below). What I will do now is post the rest of my notes and screen
shots along with the final outcome in hope that it makes more sense.
Select the “L” faces of the shape (the 2
corners that sit inside the base cube) > extrude them to “0” > select
everything in object mode > extrude again and then re select move tool.
Part 2, Step 6: Okay now the main shape is ready all I need to do is
duplicate and rotate the shape so that it goes all the way around the main base
cube. I made workflow notes for this section too so here they are.
To duplicate the shape > right click select
object mode > edit > duplicate special (square/tools) > copy/parent
> make sure the pivot point is in the centre of the entire shape so it
pivots nicely around a central point (use function/insert & enter keys
together to be able to move the pivot point)
The duplicate special options menu brings up a grid in which
you need to manually enter the amount you want to rotate and duplicate your
selected object. This is what it looks
like…
Part 2, Final Outcome: Okay, once we had
figured out which of the boxes where the different axis (X, Y & Z) so we
could rotate them properly, we could select the different shapes and literally
rotate them around the centre pivot at 90 or 180 degrees so that the duplicates
were on the right side and looked right. Here is the final outcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment