Some Basic Projects
 

Hello, everyone! This board's been a big help in the past, so I figured I might as well ask around about this. I've been searching for some basic projects to- 1. Continue my familiarization with Maya, and 2. Include in my portfolio(I'm a high school senior). Does anyone have any suggestions?

I should probably mention that I'm familiar with the basic modeling tool sets (not quite into texturing yet), so I don't need to do the extremely basic tutorials. What I'm looking for here is the type of projects one might find in the beginning of a 3D Modeling course.

your best bet is to just pick something up around your house and focus on modeling and texturing that as accurately as possible - like a desk lamp or stereo....

Thank you for you suggestion!
Just one question- should I take photos for reference images or just model it from life?

Go with photos to be as accurate as possible when you model.

There are loads of good tutorials online, the book "The game artists guide to maya" is good too as it covers modeling (with images), uv'ing (with supplied textures) and animating, using the trax editor and even some particles.

cheers,

gubar

Uv's you say? May the various gods of the cosmos be praised! I've tried to understand these things, but they seem forever beyond my grasp... -.-

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutori...v-101-248.html

this should give you the basic idea of how it works