Maya - Final project ( Exploratory vehicle)





Exploration Vehicle.




Thinking how many people would present a normal land or space based vehicle, I was determined to break the mould and do something completely different. Thus my idea was an alien Submersible based upon an insect civilisation and the design was sketched based upon those ideas.

The body of the vehicle was all monocoque construction and thus meant lots of extruding of polygons to achieve a satisfactory look. This was very time consuming but was indeed nothing compared to the UV mapping which took a complete weekend and several days to get right.
There are several interesting technological aspects here – firstly, the impellors at the rear (of which there are 3) were designed from scratch using an airfoil section similar to NACA 2409 – this was done by taking a very short cylinder and flattening it quite a lot before using the vertex edit to form the trailing edge. Once the desired airfoil section was completed, this was then lengthened to form the blade and then tapered to the root before adding a twist to allow for reduction in speed at the centre compared with the high tip speed. This has made extremely realistic impellor blades.

Secondly, the front of the vehicle – has insectoid eyes which took quite some time to extrude and get right, particularly the texturing which needed the hexagonal texture associated with insectoid eyes. The end result was very difficult to paint and texture – but was very satisfying, so much so that the same technique was used for the two bands around the vehicle which are intended to be sensor bands.
After getting mostly through the UV mapping, I was quite upset that it had taken so long and whilst doing a little research found out that there was another technique which may have been better and made things easier (NURBS) however, having got so far, I didn’t feel I had the time to learn NURBS and complete the assignment in the time given.

Finally, the emblem at the top is the emblem of the Insectoid race and signifies the galaxy which the race comes from complete with a supermassive black hole in the centre.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maya - Modelling Mjolnir (Thor's hammer)

Image
Mjolnir SUMMARY This model was fascinating to do because it involved using many different tools which took a lot of time researching on the internet. This was a very time consuming project not only because there was a lot to learn and a lot to do, but also because I decided to use a drawing program to create the curves for the ornament details. I found this technique on the internet whereby I could draw curves in a drawing program such as Photoshop or CorelDraw and then export them as EPS (encapsulated postscript) file. This was easier than trying to model the curves directly in Maya. However, I obviously had to install the drawing program and to do that I also had to upgrade my internet explorer and to do that...............(Further, I wish I had found out earlier that I could have used Photoshop to create EPS Files as then I would not have had to install CorelDraw and learn a bit of that because I already know Photoshop a little - Grrr!). In total with the reinstallin...
Read more

Self SWOT analysis

STRENGTHS What are you good at naturally? I am naturally good at research on the internet, problem solving and analysing situations. What skills have you worked to develop? I am working to develop my drawing skills, 3D modelling skills and programming skills. What are your talents or natural-born gifts? I am a quick learner, a good listener, a hard working person. What do other people see as your strengths? Being calm, finishing projects on time, the ability to analyse things. What values and ethics set you apart from your peers? Analytical ability. WEAKNESSES What are your negative work habits and traits? Sometimes I work too hard, I get upset when things go wrong or don't work the way they're supposed to. Does any part of your education or training need improving? There is always space for improving. What would other people see as your weaknesses? Being a quiet and introverted person. Where can you improve? Trying not to be negative. What are ...
Read more

Animation Skills - Exercise 4

Image
Walk Animation For this week's assignment we were asked to produce an animation of  a character walking. Obviously to be able to produce any animation, one has to understand the mechanics involved in the actual event we are trying to animate, be it a living being or a mechanical object. Studying a character we can see that the legs have hip, knee and ankle joints to facilitate movement. The animation starts from the hip joint, followed by the knee joint and finally the ankle joint to move the legs in opposition one leg after another. In addition to the legs moving, the arms do similarly alternating in opposition to each leg. I therefore created approximately 10 drawings in different stages of the cycle showing mostly the hip joint and shoulder joint movement with some movement of  elbow, knee and ankle. These 10 images were drawn in Adobe Animate and a complete cycle was created with a key frame for each image. In addition one of the mechanics of walking ...
Read more