Our first project was something our teacher called the Polything. With it, our job was primarily to learn the basics of Maya Rendering: lights. We had to be sure to position the lights correctly, as well as make sure the shadows lined up.
The next lesson we learned was about building a detailed object from scratch. During the project, we primarily used the cut face tool, extrude face tool, and the bevel tool; each used mainly to extend the faces of one particular object, or edit them prior to extruding.
Our next lesson had us sculpting an ice cream parlor. We used bump mapping to give the ice cream a bumpy texture, and used edit material tools to give the other objects a shiny appearance. We later built it all into one looping video.
Our next project was pretty cool. We first had to create and texture three spheres so that they appeared as three different pieces of sporting equipment: a baseball, golf ball, and a bowling ball. After dropping the real thing on the floor of our flex theatre, we now had the times for when each ball needed to hit the ground, as well as reach its peak height. Using keyframes, we painstakingly animated the bouncing spheres.
We then began using NURBS, which act more like a rounded polygon. We used an interesting new tool which involved tracing an outline before rotating into a full NURB. From there, all it took was a change in transparency to make it look like glass. After the glass I also created a bowl with lid.
The final project was quite similar, and involved carefully placing outlines upward, before connecting them using a technique called lofting. I used this new tool to create a salt shaker, and fill it with salt. In the end, I lit the scene, added some shadows, and it was finished.
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