This course will look at the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. We'll look at what makes a good model in Maya and why objects are modeled in the way they are.
I'm close to being done with the exterior. I really just need to add a few more things to the tail, a third wheel, and do some minor tweaking here and there. I don't really think there is much more I can do with the exterior, though. I am thinking about doing some interior work now, too. Add a seat, some controls, a few cupholders lol. Texturing will be the last thing I do, though seeing as how I hate it.
Well, I just went through everything and did some cleaning up and organising. Every object has a proper name now, unnessisary faces have been deleted, and all objects have been placed into a group called "Rooivalk_Attack_Helicopter." I feel really good about it now that everything is in order.
Since there are eight missiles, each one at 560 faces each, I decided to instance copy 7 to reduce the file size. (I wonder if it made a difference.) I can instance copy one of the wings, one of the missile holders, and a few other small things, but is it worth it for a smaller file size? Doing this means that you can't modify vertices of individual missiles or the wings correctly in animation for say, a fantastic crash and boom animation. What should I do?
Alright. Last thing. Based on the images you've seen, how many faces do you think the entire plane has right now? The person with the closest answer wins a free pat on the back!
Wow. I just did a little test. I duplicated a poly sphere 20 times with true copies bringing hte total face count up to 8400. The file size turned out to be 624 kb I believe. I then deleted all 20 true copies and made 20 instanced copies. 8400 faces just like the last one, but the file size was only 44 kb. I deleted all copies leaving just the single sphere and the file size came out to be 43 kb. Needless to say, I will deffinetly be using instanced copies for this helicopter unless someone gives me a legitamate reason not to.
I did the same thing with nurbs spheres as well. When duplicating, the file size for true copies was about half as large as the file with poly spheres. I've always wanted to know how much the file sizes were effected by all these things.
Seeing as how undseth is the only one who guessed, he wins! lol. 19, 220 is the correct answer, though. Each missile is 560 faces and the base alone is around 4000 I believe. Then you include the wheels, and other odds and ends. Anyway, I am FINALLY finished with smoothing this thing! It has taken me forever. I feel like ripping Polygon>Smooth right out of Maya. I also decided to go ahead and texture the exterior since I am a little tired of modeling at the moment. I literally have hours upon hours to work on this thing since school is out for four days straight from sickness problems. I'm predicting that I'll have this thing done faster than I first thought.....
Thanks to Mike's tutorial on render globals, I have finally learned how to make files into AVI or MPEGs and zip them so that you all can see my animations! This is my very first one. It's a simple 360 degree shot of the helicopter. (439 kb download) It's 62 frames and was rendered in Maya as Jpegs for small file sizes. Sorry about the resolution. AVI would have been so much better, but it was a wopping 3 megabites! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
Noce work there, but I think the tail boom is to high.. If you look at the reference picture you linked to... You'll see that the exhaust gate from the jet is in line with the top of the tail boom, but on the model, the tail boom is much higher, and the exhaust is below the top of the tail boom...
Well, I really don't have any good images of the interior, you wouldn't see much of the detail if I stuck it in there, and since my power went out a few days ago and it's near the end of the month, I don't have a lot of time to work on anything. So, I have decided to leave the helicopter as it is without the interior. I finally found some time to model the back wheel, the back blades, and do some minor touch-ups, so I'm calling it complete now. Thankfully, I have already named all objects in the scene, named the textures, and completely organized everything in the Outliner just in case I happen to win. It would be a nightmare if I had to do all that now! The image below is the final render.
By the way, thanks for all the comments. DukerX - I used that reference image for the basic design, but combined the look of a few other helicopters I saw. I included Hellfire missiles, which are not usually equiped to such a helicopter, made the tail boom slanted, created slightly different blades, and like you said, repositioned the exhaust. I figured I would let myself go with the flow and be a little creative this time. Thanks for noticing, though. You were obviously paying close attention, which is a good thing. :-)
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