Introduction to Maya - Rendering in Arnold
This course will look at the fundamentals of rendering in Arnold. We'll go through the different light types available, cameras, shaders, Arnold's render settings and finally how to split an image into render passes (AOV's), before we then reassemble it i
# 1 12-08-2006 , 10:12 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2006
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*pokes head into the doorway*

Hiya! Never really posted in this forum before, so I guess I'll preface this a little...

I'm a DirectX guy. I design engines, I write shaders, and in general I make things look pretty and run fast. These "things" that I play with, however, have always been made by other people on the internet or other artists on the team I'm working with. This really hasn't bothered me, as I've always been concentrating on projects for other people, classwork, etc.

Recently though, I've wanted to take some of my own side-projects and turn them into polished demos in my own vision. This requires specific models and environments, specially rigged skeletons, and generally a lot of work that I didn't want to put on other people.

Fortunately for me (unfortunately? user added image I've been laid up during the last week because of shoulder surgery, so I decided to take it easy and teach myself a modeling program. Seeing as our school has a site lisence for Maya, I have only one more year left at Uni, and I was laid up with nothing better to do I decided to give it a try...

And I <B>love</B> it! It's reeeally easy to make models that actually look like something! Keep in mind that up until this point, I've been the victim of terrible "programmer art". True, I've made some of the most beautiful quads/triangles you'll ever see in your entire life, anything more complicated than a cube was always a product of someone else's work.

Lookie lookie!

user added image

I made that, and in about 4 hours too! Mind you, I've never touched Maya before and realize that it probably looks like crap to most of the people in this forum, but I'm just baffled that I could make something that looks like this:

user added image

I began to follow [url="https://www.thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/"]this tutorial[/url, but realized that he had some skills that I just didn't have or know. What did I end up doing? Dive right in and try to make it! I don't mind if it looks like crap, as it's my first model ever!

user added image

I admit that there are a TON of problems with this model:

- The nasty seam down the middle of the head didn't seem to get smoothed like the rest of the mesh (I figure this is one of those learn-as-you-go things)
- I started in 2D from an image plane, then moved to 3D
- His upper lip looks like a beak! O.o
- I "eyeballed" a little bit
- There are non-square (weird for a DirectX guy user added image and non triangle polygons
- It's a mishmash of lines
- Okay, I "eyeballed" nearly the entire thing

... and a million more I'm sure that you guys can spot. But again, this is my first model... and certainly not my last! user added image

I'm open to criticism and critiques! Be brutal... the more things you point out that I did incorrectly, the more I'll learn. If you don't want to, then just take this as my way of saying "Hi Artists"!

Edit: Sorry, I'm typing this with one hand, so I probably made a thousand spelling mistakes

Edit2: So sorry! Thats what I get for trying to host a site on a Dynamic DNS :/


Last edited by skyfire360; 13-08-2006 at 08:55 AM.
# 2 13-08-2006 , 07:07 AM
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Join Date: May 2004
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Well, Welcome to the site, and the world of digital art, I hope you enjoy your stay in both..

AS far as crits and comments, i eh.... well would have to see a picture first, and, as i cant i do belive i'll have to hold any such comments untill the images are working..LoL

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# 3 14-08-2006 , 02:19 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 408
Just a question, are the two sides of the face joined?

Make sure both sides are combined (edit polygons -> combine I think, maybe just "polygons -> combine")

Make sure the vertices are merged (edit polygons -> merge vertices -- be careful that the threshhold's not too high else you'll be merging anything within X-units of each other... which if high enough could reduce your entire model to a single point)

Type polySoftEdge -a 180 to set all edges soft... telling the renderer to smooth the faces the edge borders across that edge.


Last edited by Phopojijo; 14-08-2006 at 02:31 PM.
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