Mental Ray (the built in rendering engine) is really good at producing really juicy images without much effort. This is something I already knew, but Maya takes it to a whole new level. A highly glossy and reflective 3d rendering can hide a lot of mistakes in the mesh It’s tempting not to touch all those buttons and sliders in the control dialogs – and I’m learning to realize that less is more with complex models such as this. It takes a long time to get the surfaces and forms right, and I’ve ruined hours of work on my R8 trying to fine tune things after I was already satisfied with a complex panel. This is especially bad when sculpting something very organic like the surface of a car. That level and control and adjustment gets the designer in me very excited, but I find that the more I mess with stuff, the more I screw things up. Tweaking forever can be a bad thingĬompared to FormZ, there is a control or adjustment in Maya for everything. I’d say it’s even forgiving enough for someone like me to create a Lamborghini Huracan 3d model – which is a bold statement condsidering how much I’m struggling with this R8. But with polygons, I can push and pull, merge and cut, extrude, and tweak forever to achieve the shape I want. With a solid object, the geometry essentially had to be perfect to achieve nice bevels and proper transformations – and many times those transformations simply weren’t possible. I know this isn’t a Maya-specific thing, but coming from a solids-based modeling background, I’m blown away at how forgiving modeling with polygons can be. Polygonal (subdivision) modeling is very forgiving Modeling with polygons in Maya has really opened up my eyes in terms of realizing what’s possible with 3d content, so I thought it would be fun to list out some of the things I’ve learned since starting to build this car: 1). Front view of the Audi R8 wireframe I’m currently buildingĪs frustrating as it’s been, I’m also having a lot of fun. One step forward, two steps back – that’s the way it goes for a beginner to polygonal modeling.
I’ve been pushing and pulling vertices for weeks now, and it’s so intense that I actually dream about it at night (and these aren’t pleasant dreams). I’m currently about half way done with this car so far, and on two separate occasions over the past week I’ve come very close to giving up and forgetting about this project forever. That means that I’m basically starting my 3d education over from scratch and there’s not much I can leverage from all my years of previous modeling experience. The car I’m building in Maya is being constructed entirely with polygons – which is a completely different way of constructing objects. While I do have years of 3d modeling experience behind me, nearly of all that has been with FormZ using solids-based modeling methods. I admit that seems like a rather lofty goal for a Maya newbie, but I’m a 3d expert…right? Yes, I’m being sarcastic. I’m currently up to my eyeballs with my second Maya project: a 2008 Audi R8. I know that I’ll be better off in the long run though, so slowing down a bit and learning Maya is not something I regret doing at all. I’m used to producing content at a high volume, so this is kind of a big change of pace for me.
Ive been busting my you-know-what over the past several months, and I’m not going to lie that I’m a bit irritated that I don’t really have anything to show for it other than a couple shiny renderings (that I can’t sell as stock) and a bunch of new data about Maya stored in my brain. It’s a frustrating place to be considering how many project ideas I have floating around in my head, and learning a complex new 3d modeling package is putting a serious damper on my output. You know…that awkward (and sometimes painful) stage where it takes far too long to accomplish seemingly simple tasks and nothing seems to be getting done. Now that I’ve made the decision to migrate my 3d workflow to Maya, I feel like I’ve totally given up my “pro” status and reverted way back to newbie mode.