First Maya Project - Yet another guitar
 

Hello All! I downloaded the maya's trial version and played around with it for a week now, so this is my first project in this nice software.
I know it's not really original but I wanted to do something not too complicated and go through modelling, texturing and rendering with Mental ray, just to learn the basics of Maya.
I tried to keep the mesh as clean as possible, but sadly no one will ever notice because I couldn't figure out how to render a wireframe :P
Anyway.. I decided to post it here because it's my first project and I'd like to hear some comments and critics, so I can improve the level of my future projects.
The render with the guitar on the right is meant as a wallpaper image for my pc :)

tl;dr: first project -> Comments and Crits :)

Your first project in Maya but you've used a 3D application before I take it?

Dave

Oh yes I used blender for a couple of years a couple of years ago. Then I started using it again last month, but I'm disappointed with the internal renderer and it's a mess to set everything for externals (even with the new beta version wich is a lot better then the old ones). I thought I'd give a try at another sw and so far I have to say maya is way more user friendly. I still can't figure out how nodes and the hypershade work, but I'm working on it.

Joni

Hi Joni,
I like the materials and the lighting in the first two renders. Just a tip on the depth of field because I think there's too much of it on the guitar neck render, make sure to use it in the way were it causes a subtle effect, it should only be noticable if you're looking for it.

Maya is quite user friendly and mental ray is a good renderer but all those nodes in the hypershade...I've used Maya for quite a while and they still have me completely baffled at times. There's just so many to learn:)

Nilla

Hi Nilla, thanks for your comment! I rendered a less DOFfy version and I think it's better.

:)

I still think it's a bit too much, you need to make it barely visible in the shot. I like the idea I just think it's difficult to get dof to work in it with that camera angle. Have a look at this, it's done by David Mitchell for Simply Lightwave, it's not meant an ad but I couldn't find the original image so I took the one from the tutorial page as this guy is great with cameras:)

YouTube - Lighting techniques for photorealistic visualization

If you look at the toy car it's the angle of the camera and the way the dof works that makes that shot. For the pens you wouldn't catch it unless you were looking for it, and it's the way the camera moves that makes it interesting as well.
These things just take time it's about studying renders and camera techniques in films and photography. One thing as well to note on dof in Maya, it's so slow to render. I was doing a simple pen on wood a while back and it took 25 minutes, so it's better done in post.

Wow thanks for your time! You are right with the render time, it takes forever, and on my old pc I can't even watch a "Walking dead" episode in streaming while it's rendering :) but how can I do it in postproduction? I guess there's a way to render a depth map, but I can't figure it out. Do you have any good tut to suggest?
Again, thanks for your help.

It is a complete nightmare, I know what you mean there. I used to try rendering dof in maya when I first started and because you don't have much control over your settings either you have to test render and wait again and again because it's difficult to get it right and once you have indirect illumination and materials it's just painful that's why I mentioned it.

We have a tutorial on the site that covers how it's done in After Effects in contrast to Maya, you could use other comp software it's more about the principle
http://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-...=182&sub_cat=0

It's an interesting tutorial, you can read a review on it here. I agree with what was said in this one, it's stuffed with information and it covers dynamics, lighting, materials and rendering with cameras and dof but it moves quite fast for someone new to Maya. The animation's cool it was on the banner on the old site we just haven't had time to add it to the page yet.
http://biocinematics.blogspot.com/20...ow-review.html

Cheers,
Nilla