Maya Animations & Creations

Polything

This is my project called Polything. This was one of the early on and first projects we worked on. This project really focused on getting the lighting right, which in turn would make the shadows look better. A win win situation. The three main lights we used in this project were: Area lights, Ambient lights, and Point lights. Area lights are the over-head lights that light up a fairly large area. They're normally directly above something. The other type of lighting we used - point lights - are kind of like mood lights. Not too bright, not too dark. They usually go inside of the object you're making. Finally, Ambient lights. Ambient lights are like point lights, except brighter. They also usually go on the inside of whatever object you're making. We used many of these lights in later projects.

Hammer

This is my Hammer project. Before I talk about the tools we used in this project, I just want to say that I am aware of the small claws on the hammer. I didn't know they would be that small until I was close to finished shaping them. At that point, when I finally realized what they would look like, there was no way I was going back to redo it because I didn't have that type of time (just kidding, I'm lazy and wasn't sure how to fix it in the first place). Now, on to the tools. The first tool I used that played a big role in the making of this Hammer was the extrude tool. This allowed me shape the head of the hammer in order to make it look more realistic. The second tool I used was Bevel. This allowed me to edit the edges to add curves to the head and handle of the hammer. The last tool we used was the Cut Face Tool. I used this to get rid of unnecessary polygons in the hammer. All of these contributed to the final product. The lighting was pretty good in this project, I could of made the lighting look a little cooler but this lighting should suffice.

Ice Cream

This is my Ice Cream project. This was one of the first projects we actually animated, which made it pretty difficult. What I think to be the most important tool we used was the Bump Map. This added the texture to the Ice Cream, without this, the Ice Cream would look like spheres sitting on top of upside down cones. The second tool I used was the Looping Move that gave the project its animation. This tool is kind of self explanatory, it looped a single movement on the Lazy Susan. The single movement was just a single, full rotation; it wasn't anything too crazy. However, I did encounter one problem. When I added the animation, the Lazy Susan itself would move in a circle while rotating in the same direction. Modifying the center pivot didn't seem to work.  Thus, there is an image here instead of a video. Came closer to getting this animated and rendered than I did with the Bouncing Balls, I can tell you that much. However, on the bright side, the image looks pretty cool. Except for that dark spot in the bottom left of the image, that bothers me. 

Bouncing Balls

This is my Bouncing Balls project. I will mention that this was supposed to be a video but let's just say that the animating and rendering of this was hard for no reason; to cut to the chase it didn't work out. One of the tools we used was Keyframes. Setting keyframes is what makes the balls bounce (or appear to bounce). The second tool I used was Graph Editor. This tool allowed me to edit the heights and times at which the balls bounce. All of the balls bounce for different periods of time and some bounce higher than others. 

Revolve Cup

This my Revolve Cup project. This project was fairly simple. I used NURBS to make the shape of the cup. Then, I used the Curve tool to make curves a little more rounded and realistic. I used the Revolve tool to make the object in 3D. This tool took the drawing from the NURBS and repeated that pattern in a circle so it wouldn't be flat. This tool was vital in the making of this because it completed the cup. The lighting in this project was - in my opinion - amazing. Although the lighting in the PolyThing project was pretty cool, especially with the shadows and the fact that it was my first project , this is definitely a close second, if not, first.

Salt Shaker

This is my Salt Shaker project. One of the tools I used in this project was The Curves tool. This tool allowed me to edit the curves on the Salt Shaker to make them more rounded and overall make the Salt Shaker look more like an actual Salt Shaker. The other tool I used was lofting. Lofting was mainly how I made the Salt Shaker. Lofting added a surface to the repeated pattern and made it solid but hollow on in the inside which works out perfectly since salt was going to be in the Salt Shaker. I made the salt by copying the lofted surface of the body of the Salt Shaker, then shrinking it down a little bit and placing it in the salt shaker. A lot more simple then it first sounded. Lastly, I just added a rock bump map to the shrunken down salt shaker body and colored it white. Before I end this post, I want to talk about the lighting. It sort of bugs me, but for me, that was as good as it was going to get, hard enough getting the light shining on the object the way I wanted it. Adjusting the lighting and then rendering an image to preview it got pretty repetitive. I know there is probably an easier to way to set up the lights but, me being me, I made it harder than it had to be.