Notes 02

Manipulation tools

• Q key - Selection Tool (Quitter Tool?)
• W key - Move Tool
• E key - Rotation Tool
• R key - Scale Tool

Framing (to zoom in/out so that we can see everything)

• A key - Frame view in current viewport
• Shift+A key - Frame view in all viewports

Take a screenshot in Mac

• Cmd+Shift+F3

Renderings

• '4' Key - Wireframe
• '5' Key - Shaded
• '6' Key - Shaded with Texture
• '7' Key - Lighting

Viewport Navigation

• Alt+LMB - Rotate
• Alt+MMB - Pan/Move
• Alt+RMB - Zoom in/out
• MMB: Activate a viewport
• Holding space key gives you a variety of menus to navigate to.

Sphere subdivisions

Use 8 - magic number.

Parenting

• Either use Modify -> Outliner, or Modify -> Hierarchy.
• Good to have all the parts renamed so that it is much more clearer which object is which.
• Also before parenting, freeze transformation by going to Modify -> Freeze Transformation (clean the value, no residue)
• MMB to drag object A to object B, thus parenting A to B.

Coping with different Maya versions

• File -> Open Scene [] -> Ignore Version
• Save as .ma, in case of version incompatibility with .mb

Notes 01

For every new project (not scene!!!)

• File -> Project -> Set
• Then browse to the project folder and click Set
• File -> Project -> Edit Current
• Press Ok

Orthographic vs. Perspective

Orthographic is kind of the 2d view, since it lacks any depth, and parallel lines does not meet. However, in perspective, it is in 3d view, and it looks just like how we view our world with our eyes everyday. Parallel lines will eventually meet in perspective, thus it is also known as the "distorted" view.

Four views

Either press the four square button on the left side of the toolbar, or press and release the 'Space' key. There will be four viewports. The three viewports at the top left, bottom left, and bottom right are orthographic and are mainly the top view, front view, and side view respectively.

NURBS vs. Polygons

NURBS smooth things mathematically, just like 2d vector graphics. Polygons are like pixels in 2d bitmap graphics. Most of us uses polygons because they are the most easiest thing to be drawn by the graphics card, and is widely used by most game engines.

Turn off interactive creation

• Create -> Polygon Primitives -> Uncheck 'Interactive Creation'

To avoid having to draw out the primitives manually. Instead we just use the manipulation tools or use the channel box to do the adjustments.

Companion Robot

A good companion. The most important feature of the robot is the ability to program it to cook food for me. Just open the cover on his stomach, put the ingredients inside, and talk to it. It uses speech recognition and run the correct program/recipe.

Combat Ready First-Line Mission Robot

The Combat Ready First-Line Mission Robot (CRFLMR) was designed by a man named John, who was fired  by the Robot Maid Creation Company after producing several robots that looks too dangerous to work as a friendly maid. One of the people belonging to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) saw John's work, and hired him to create a robot for the CID.

The CRFLMR is designed to be able to carry out most of the task (such as neutralising dangerous subjects and navigate around the area to detect any unusual scenario), and therefore it is called "Combat Ready" and "First-Line", because they are to be deployed and enter and clear the area before the CID people enters the area.

Following several mission deployment, the CRFLMR has gain recogition and trust among the CID team. The military is currently studying the robot to analysis the feasibility of the robot for military deployment.

Week 1 Exercise 3

• Prisons are meant to be scary, powerful looking places, while Toontown is meant for fun and childlike enjoyment – how is this reflected in the lines and angles of the buildings?

For the prisons, the buildings are straight, giving a sense of seriousness. The shapes gives the prison a more organized feeling as the design of the building is uniform and does not have anything that is not in order or pop out and attractive. On the other hand, the Toontown buildings have curvy and irregular outlines, thus making it more appealing to kids. The sense of disorderedness makes the environment looks less strict and rigid, giving a relax feeling for anyone who visits the place.

• How does the sense of scale reflect the different purposes of the prisons and Toontown?

The prison is much more bigger because it is meant for the prisoners as a place to live while serving their sentences. It also looks much more imitating this way. Whereas for the Toontown, it is for the children and other visitors to have fun, so therefore by making it much smaller, it looks less imitating for the kids. Children, compared to adults, are much more smaller in terms of height and body size, therefore building it too big will also make Toontown more like an adult theme park than for children.

Reflection
This exercise allows me to see that architectures are not solely designed with only art in mind. It also conveys the main purpose of the building. The buildings were not randomly designed by the designers, and if he or she did, then it will be very obvious because they will look odd and awkward otherwise.

Similarly, some of the details that we see in objects in our daily lives does not exist just to make the objects beautiful. Sometimes, it is there for a reason, even if the purpose is not immediately obvious. Therefore, this exercise teaches us to look closely at details in objects that we want to model into Maya, so that we can create models that are as realistic as possible. One or a few missing details might end up breaking the model's realism.

Primitive breakdown

The image below is the original robot picture.

This is my break down of this robot into primitive shapes, in 3 views.

Reflection

This exercise allows me to look at things in a much simpler way. In the real world, objects are made up of zillion of atoms, or perhaps even more. Obviously with our current technology, it is impossible to represent these zillion of atoms inside our computer. However, by using lines (just as what we are doing in this exercise)  provided inside Maya, we are able to create a model that is very close in terms of appearance to the object in the real world.

I look forward to learn how to create models such as this in Maya.

Screenshots of my original robot

(click picture to see the enlarged version)

Process

This robot is merely made up of several primitives that were already in Maya. For example, the face is made up of a sphere and the eyes are also made using spheres, while the ear is made up of a cone with a helix surrounding the cone.

I started building up the robot from the chest, creating its arms and hands, and down to the legs, before making the face and ears.

Reflection

It took about an hour to complete this since I was still inexperienced in Maya and it was difficult for me to get used to the Maya interface. However, after completion, I was pleased with the final result.

I also used the Outliner window that I have learnt to do the parenting of the parts, e.g. parenting the arms to the chest, the hands to the arm joints, and etc, so that in the future, if I want to, I can apply animations to the model and the parts will move together properly even if only one part of the model was rotated for example.