Modeling a Marker

CAGD230: Marker

Assignment Details: For this assignment, we needed to use more tools aside from the basic transforms. This is the first assignment where we could work with vertexes, faces, and edges. There was a introduction to image planes, the edge-loop tool, extrude tool, combine tool, and union tools. We worked with UV and more texturing. Using all these new skills, we needed to model a dry erase marker. 

I actually had quite a few struggles with this one. For one, I had to remodel the marker twice before I could actually UV the marker. I messed up the first time by scaling the Z axis while in front view. It oval-ized the shape and made it difficult to properly model the cap and tip. The second mess up was when I was working with UV. The marker cap's cylinder map was not laid rectangular like the tutorial showed. It was more elongated with bumps sticking out. Even when I used 'Straighten UV' it only made it worse and fold some vertices downwards. In frustration of not knowing what the cause was, I remodeled the whole thing hoping I just made a simple mistake somewhere before I UV-ed my second attempt. However the same problem still sprang up. The cut of the cylinder map didn't start and end like the tutorial. Instead of starting the map's cut on the flat part of the cap, it started the cut in the extruded part, which causes parts to stick out. There weren't any clear answers online about my problem so I just decided to move vertices around and use "Straighten UV" to proper create a proper rectangle. Luckily the map didn't stretch out too much and the checkered template looked pretty decent in the model view. It was also lucky that the cap is just textured with a basic color, thus the my UV problem didn't cause much trouble. I can only hope such an issue doesn't arise in the future. And if it does, I hope I would know how to solve it.   

Modeling with Primitives

CAGD230: Primitives

Assignment Details: To get used to modeling, our first assignment is to build a simple scene using the basic shapes in Maya. We could not mess with the shape's vertexes, faces, or edges. We also couldn't edit their mesh. The tools available were mainly moving, rotating, and scaling. But it is still possible to build details and complexity off basic shapes, it just takes... more shapes.

The scene I built is a city, or rather, one street of a city. The shape I used the most would definitely be a cube. It's scaled to be a rectangle or a box but there are possibly around 300-400 cubes in the scene. The buildings would be the most obvious cube-primitive structures. There's also the awnings on the bottom half of most buildings. The point of the awnings were to show more detail than just a basic door. Rather than a simple building, some of the buildings look like storefronts especially similar to buildings in Chinatown. Windows took up most of the cube-primitives. Rather than using a plane, using cubes as windows felt more natural. Planes made rather flat windows, metaphorically and literally. I actually had trouble with texturing and adding materials. It was difficult making mainly the windows shine but it turns out the buildings and the sidewalk will have to too. This was before learning how to properly UV and texturing but I am pretty disappointed that the buildings and sidewalk reflect. The most detailed object is probably the smallest. It's the water towers and there's only two. One might be more noticeable than the other. They look possibly the longest to make because I was experimenting with snaps. Although it's not noticeable, they do look rather good for being made out of basic primitives. It's the littlest things that count.