31st January 2013: Creating my own polygon

Using the tools I have learnt from the tutorial provided my Autodesk, I will be attempting to make at least one more simple polygon and at most three, to get a good feel of the software.
First I will be making something simple, so I think I will choose to create a water bottle, since it should be quite simple with the extrusion tool.
I am going to start with a cylinder base and work from that.

Above, I have used the attributes editor to edit the amount of subdivisions that the cylinder has. I have changed it from 8 to 20, to give a nicer roundness. I have made this change now, rather than later because I tried to extrude the object before adding more subdivisions and the object became a mess of edges and vertexes went everywhere. This is all to do with the history of the object and the history stores data on all of the transformations.
Below is the object with increased subdivisions, and I have also selected the faces and moved them up using the Y axis section of the move tool.

Below I have clicked on a different tab of the attribute editor, the tab that allows me to edit the location and translation of the object by inputting numbers. I have risen the object by 1

For the next lot of screenshots I have used the extrude tool, which is a tool I know I use a lot.

Using the move tool, I tried to make the tip of the water bottle seem slightly pointy, but it looked too pointy, so I undid it, this is where something interesting happened,

 CMD + Y, I thought would redo an action that I had just undone, using the shortcut command CMD + Z, but I believe it re-uses the last used tool and places the tools effect on whatever is selected. Using the channel box, I was able to find out what changed and it was (as shown below) an extrusion on the Vertex that was selected. This has helped me luckily, since I was going to insert loop edge anyway and this has done it for me.

double clicking the edge just created by the extrusion of the vertex, and holding shift so the vertex is also still selected.

Above, I am using the interactive split tool to add a complete circle of edges to create more divisions in the model.

Using Extrude, I have created the connecting piece that holds the flip off cap to the bottle.,

Above, I have used the merge vertex tool to drag the bottom vertexes to the upper ones and have them merge.

Above I have rendered the image to see how it looks. The bottle is very bland having no colour, so I will fix this.

Right clicking, selecting faces and then right clicking again and going down to the "assign material" option, I am going to make the bottle slightly transparent.

Above, I have added a material to the model. Materials are basic textures that Maya has pre-packaged into the programme. These help with giving a rough Idea of what texture would be best appropriate for the final product but also give a nice simple colour to something that would usually be grey.

 Using the "3" key on the keypad, I am able to see a selected models with smooth rendering. Although the clear section of the bottle looks good with smooth rendering, the cap doesn't. I will look into being able to separate objects for future scenes I create..

30th January 2013: Making a simple polygon

As an introduction to Maya, I have been given a brief overview of the tools and capabilities of the software. I will be looking at a tutorial today to re-familiarize myself with the software and to create a basic polygon. After I have done this, I will create my own basic polygon of my own design.

Using the tutorial available WITH THIS LINK HERE, I will be able to create a simple looking temple structure.

Above is a screenshot of the layout in which the tutorials are presented, The links on the left side, which contain details about their individual task/tutorial.

As the tutorial above suggests, I will be turning off interactive creation. I believe this may be the option to reshape the polygon, as in determining the width and length and height when creating the polygon. When this is un-ticked, I have found that the object just appears in the middle of the screen, it doesn't have any immediate input from the user in it's creation.

When I have used maya before, upon clicking the polygon tool, I have been able select the dimensions as I drag the mouse.

 A prompt for the user appears (when interactive creation has been enabled), and below is a simple completion of the task. As shown, the shape is of user input size.

Going back to the tutorial now, I am looking at the simplified version of the Maya layout. I will be using this screenshot below as reference, since I don't know the names for all of the tool boxes.

The rest of the tutorial explains the basics of the tools, which I already know, however I will skim them, to quickly make sure I understand all of the tools as in depth as needed.


Before I move on in the tutorial, my tutor, has just shown the class (me included) that the creation of polygons don't just come from the icons in the shelf (which changes depending on the menu selection in the status line), they can also be created through the long way of going to Create/ Polygons primitives/[Any option].
With the polygons that can be created, there is a little box next to the word (as shown below). This box is the settings that the polygons will automatically be created with. Also shown below is the pathway to ticking/un-ticking "Interactive Creation".

Below is the creation settings box for the Cube polygon

And after changing a few of the settings to make the cube bigger and include more divisions, the settings are as so:

 After creating the polygon cube above, I moved it using the move tool and then went to the shelf (pictured below).

After creating these settings, this changes the default creation settings. such as when I click the shortcut Icon (pictured above), it now places a cube of the default measurements, in the centre of the grid (As shown below).

Back to following the tutorial, I have found a few sentences that will prove helpful (The image above the sentences is important as well, otherwise it loses context).

The first two are simply the menu for the shelf (as mentioned earlier) and then the main options for any application (New file, Open file, Save). 

Skimming through the rest of the interface information, I have found that it isn't anything new, so I will now move onto the creation of a simple temple. Below, I have gone to tutorial on the creation of the first polygon. Below I have taken a screenshot of me adding the settings as I have the tutorial side by side with the 

After creating the first shape (a cylinder), I was brought to a page telling me to switch to the "four view" mode, which gives me the view of four screens when modelling. Top, Side, Front and 3D view (shown below)

After changing the view, I used the move tool to raise the shape from having the grid through the middle of it to being on top of the grid. I then saw that as I raised and lowered it, a value in the channel box to the right was changing. I found this to be the "Translate Y" number, which values the movement from the shapes original Y position.
I then typed in 0.5 into the "Translate Y" input box as I found this would move the polygon to being on top of the grid.

After revising the basics of Maya, having worked with it just under a year ago, I think I can move onto making something of my own design, that way I will have ore enthusiasm for it, rather than following a tutorial. I will have a look over the tutorials steps to make sure I remind myself of the main tools that I have at my disposal.