3DVA: June 2011

Research

Part one of the video

The link below is a video tutorial on how to model basic tire tracks in maya. In the video, he creates a polygon plane and slowly adjust (move and scale vertices) the plane to form one piece of the tire track. I found this video very useful as the tire tracks on my model is quite complicated too and I need to find more information on how to properly model the tire tracks of a car.

Part two of the video

In the next part of his video, he selects the faces that he wants to extrude on the polygon plane and extrudes the tire tracks from that polygon plane. Next, he moves on to modeling the edges of the polygon plane, as he intends to smooth it afterwards.

Part three of the video
In the third part of his video, he uses the duplicate special tool and duplicates 50 pieces of that polygon plane. Next, he merges all the pieces together and bends the the polygon to form a structure that looks like a pipe/loop. When he bends the 50 polygon pieces to form a loop, there will be a gap caused by the ends of the polygon when bent. He solved this problem by changing the curvature values of the bend, right down to three decimal places. I found this particular technique extremely useful when it comes to joining the ends of a polygon/polygons together, as it helps to achieve the look that the polygon is one whole piece by itself.

I found these three video tutorials very useful. Although it shows us how to model a single object, I learnt many techniques from the video tutorials. Techniques such as using the duplicate special and the bend deformer tool. Although the usage of these tools have been thought to us in the lab sessions in school through online tutorials and under the teacher's guidance, the way the person in the video demonstrates the tools allowed me to learn more on how to use these tools. For example: after using the bend deformer tool, I never knew how to get rid of the bend deformer (ugly line that cuts through my polygon after bending to the desired position). In the end, I found out from the video that simply deleting history in maya solves the problem.

Self-Critique

I feel that my final model is very similar to my real object and I would give it a 85% in terms of similarity. The object that I am modeling is a lego toy car and the approach that I took to model my car is by modeling the lego pieces one by one and then putting them together afterwards. Although I have heard that this is the wrong approach to take in modeling and the 'correct' way to model is by extruding from a single polygon, I feel that if I can accurately join the pieces together to make it seem like it my model is extruded from a single polygon. I don't see why this approach is 'wrong'. In my opinion, there are many ways in doing things and the same goes for modeling. I model the way that I am most comfortable in and I am proud of my final model.

I tried using reference images when modeling but I found taking good reference images to be a very difficult task, much less following the reference images. Another confession that I have to make is that I did not add in a few minor details such as the circular indentations in the back engine and the circular holes at the bottom of my lego toy car.

Final