NYU ITP 4-in-4

Maya

3D modeling for me, goes way back to somewhere around 1990 with Lightwave 3D on an Amiga 2000. While that sounds like I’m some sort of pro, I didn’t say I was good at using it. I played around with it every so often, but I never really got anything good out of it. Most likely because I was 9 at the time and 3D modeling software wasn’t made for and still isn’t made for 9 year olds. In an effort to relive my childhood and actually model something in 3D, I used a student version of Maya and ran through the first two tutorials for it.

Getting started was a bit slow. It wasn’t the easiest interface to get used to. The first tutorial involved making a temple…sort of Jefferson Memorial-ish.

This took me about an hour to run through. Getting used to moving objects in 3D took a little time. Aligning the columns at first was awkward, but I got the hang of it eventually.

After the temple, the second tutorial involves making a Halo-ish type of helmet. I never thought to create a 3D model based off a sketch, most likely because I never think about making 3D models. Makes a lot of sense though.

This tutorial took about 2 hours. I would say the one thing I learned was when the Maya tutorial says to do something and you don’t see it easily, hold the space bar and it’ll probably be right there. After a while, following the directions was quick and easy. I found that the workflow was pretty decent, but I would’ve liked to know some keyboard shortcuts, if there are any.

Next step is to make something from scratch.

January 19th, 2011


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