Nov/Dec - Noob - cris007
 

I'm almost a complete beginner with Maya, but I'm going to give this a shot. I decided i'm going to model a coffee machine and while i'm at it i figured i could learn how subdivisions work. Since it's the first time i'm using them i hope they're not going to give me too much of a hard time. Anyway here's a picture of the coffee machine i'm modeling. Unfortunately i wasn't able to find too many pictures of this model so i don't really think that my finished model will be identical, but i hope it will be as realistical as possible :)

And here's a quick rendering of my current progress:

wow looks real good!
how long u been modeling seems very good to me.

Good start on the coffee machine. One thing i have noticed is not proportioned right. It need to be pulled back a bit to look like the picture.

Actually, i left that small gap there deliberately. If you look at the original version you'll notice that it doesn't connect to the back perfectly. There's a small "trench" going in between the pieces. It looks a bit strange at this stage, but i hope that it will look ok a little later on :). Will be posting some new progress soon.

Magicsy, thanks a lot for the compliment :) but i'm not nearly as good as you. I saw your dyson vacuum and i find it to be incredible. Keep up the good work :)

:eek:
lol thanks for that. im only in my 6th or so week at using any modeling software.So any crit or comps is lovely!
Anyway good luck in the competition.:beer:

Would love to see a wireframe on shaded if it's permissable?

Ok here's another image of my current progress. I found the top lid to be extremely tricky and ultimately i still didn't get the result i wanted. :headbang:
I decided that i'm going to add the details (the place where all those hard edges extruded inwards) separately (that's why there's a hole there) but i really have doubts that it will fit right. Can anyone please give me an idea on how to make this top part.

Oh yes and here's a look at the wireframe. As you can see i'm really having problems with that top :(. Would appreciate any suggestions.

PS: Is there a way to render with shaded + wireframe (i just made a printscreen)

There is currently no easy way to render a wireframe with maya. From my experience, you basicly have to map your UV's and use them as a texture map. Though there could be another way.

Anyway, I'm not seeing the problem your describing for the top of the model. Is it a problem with the mesh?

i see what your saying cris, its something similar to what i had to do, basically u have to use the split poly tool to make the shape of the grill thing then use the extrude face tool once u have created more faces (using the split poly tool)
Hope this is wot u mean.
Simon.

Yes, the grill is exactly what i mean, but here's my problem. There's basically a lot of faces that would need to be created there to get all the detail in. Now, from what i've seen, when working with subdivisions it's a pretty bad idea to not have quads just about everywhere on your mesh. Thus my problem. If I add all those faces there, i have to add a whole lot of faces elsewehere and what's more, since the detail is no longer uniformly added my subd also takes another shape. My idea was to just leave a big square there and add the details on a different subd surface that i would then just insert in there. And i did that, as you can see in the image below. But as you can also see in the image below they're not joining too happily (there are some discontinuities in the vertices around the box and also near the adjacent hole). So that's my conundrum.

hmm i dont see much of a problem apart from the fact the box is more highlighted, but im only a noob lol.

I reccomend redoing that whole top piece as a nurbs surface. That way you can trim and loft the detail in place. This is just a reccomendation.

Yeah I was thinking at one point of remaking it with nurbs and i might just do that since i can't find a way of doing it with subds.

Anyway, I just added the handle and here's a rendering from both sides.

looks really good well done man!
have u had any other previous experience with other 3D software?
Im only asking cause ive been using maya 5 weeks or so and ure work and understanding is a lot more advanced than me.

I've been with maya for about as long as you have and ironically
i was thinking that your understanding of maya is way better than mine :lmao:

hhahaha well ure just articulate then!!
anyways well done on the modeling so far u have a good talent.
looking forward to seing more progress.:beer: :beer:

Hey Chris salut frate ;)! Im Romanian too. Just an odd fact. Anyway your model is really goood and I would say your not so much noob as you might think you are. Keep up at it and ypou minght just win :). Cheers! Noroc! :beer:

Wow a countryman... Cool. How come your locations is USA though? You live there?

Anyway thanks a lot and hope to see you around :beer:

Just finished modeling the glass kettle (or whatever it's called) and i thought i'd post a wireframe view of it.

I'm trying to simulate the effect of glass for the kettles but i seem to have no idea how to do it. I tried using a dielectric material but this is all i get. No transparency whatsoever. If i play with the refraction index i get more or less specularity but still no transparency. As if no light is actually refracted into the glass or reflected back. On 1.5 IoR (default) the glass is completely black. The image below was rendered with the IoR set to 0.8. Any ideas how i can get this to work?

Ok never mind about that. Found out what the reason was. Had my ray depth limit too low.

Ok... I played with the materials a little, added a few more details and did a test render (it's not much, but i like it :D ).

I'm going to start modeling the environment now and hopefully i'll have another rendering soon.

this is great work for a newbie...try and light your scene a little better it will make all the difference.

Thanks. I know that the lighting isn't great yet. I kept most parameters low and also used no antialiasing, just so that it would render fast. I wanted to get an idea of how it looks. Working on the ambience now and i'll make some new renderings real soon.

Omg i think it looks very realistic (in its own way :D) just through these test renders!

Thanks Matt. I used a phong material in the end (would have gone with the dielectric one but mental ray causes some problems at rendering my subdivisions... from what i figure, it's because they're not composed just of quads and/or because i have creased edges... i could be wrong though). Anyway the reflections and refractions turned out pretty ok this way too.

Looking really good, well done so far. For some reason after looking at this thread I feel like a coffee :)

Thanks again everyone for all your compliments :), it helped me tremendously and i really feel i've learnt a lot since the beginning of the project. I'm quite surprised i got this far actually since i had almost no experience at all. I owe it all to you guys :D

Anyway, I just about finished modeling the background and did a really quick 3 point light setup. Here's a render preview. I know that there's still a lot of work on the lighting, but i'm pretty happy with the progress so far. I'll be posting some wireframe screenshots of the background objects real soon.

It's looking good Chris! Keep it up.

Cheers
Paul

Thanks Paul. As I said before here are some screenshots of the background models. Nothing too complex or detailed, they're only for atmosphere.

And the drapes.

yo cris, doing great man! Dont lose this nice touch your having right now!

Thanks MetallicJet :), I'm doing my best to make it as real as possible.

In the meantime, while flying around my scene trying to figure out what i was forgetting, i suddenly realised that no coffee machine is truly complete without a jar of fresh beans sitting at its side :D

I really like the setting you have made for this. Especially the light coming through the curtains.. looks great.. can't wait to see more renders! The Movement of the curtains frozen like a photograph is cool. My only crit is maybe the table surface is too reflective. I think the setting of this is going to make it look highly realistic once your done with textures.

Keep up the good work man!
:beer:

mayafreak3

oh another thought.. maybe motion blur on the curtains? like a gust of wind hit just as the photograph was taken. Just an idea..

peace

Thanks a lot. I'll keep in mind the motion blur idea. I don't know if you've noticed in the test render, but the backgorund is already out of focus a little bit. Oh and sorry for my abscence these last few days, but i was out of town and i just came back. Will be posting some more progress real soon.

nice work, its looking really good, can't wait to see it all in place and finished :)

Ok, i need your help guys. I started texturing but the scene but i'm really not too happy with the curtains. I tried tens of different colr schemes/models for them but i just didn't get what i wanted. Then i tried to make them a little different. Here's 2 fast renderings (sorry about the obvious spotlights, they were done real fast). Which do you think is better?

Or this one?
Open to any ideas.