Category: Exercises

Project 2 requires us to render objects that have realism elements applied to them, meaning to say that we should be able to create objects in Maya and apply attributes to them so that when they are finally rendered, they look next to identical to realistic objects.

The first half of the exercises introduced us to beveling objects, so that our creations have realistic edges. Normally in Maya, and likely every other 3D modeler, the edges of objects are too perfect, they meet at a point that is basically 1 atom wide, where in real life objects do not have perfectly sharp edges. So first we had to make a 3×3 grid and place 5 cubes on the board, arranged in a nice pattern.

I had a little trouble with the lighting for this exercise, but I am hoping to get better at it for the final project.

After the cubes, we had to cut the cubes up into a coherent dialogue of shapes, and then from there, add the bevels and render them into realistic objects. I chose to keep the blocky nature of the environment and chop out cubical sections from the greater cubes.

Next up we worked on understanding how to emulate materials in Maya. This next exercise has to deal with creating simple primitives (spheres) and then applying a variety of materials to each one so that they give off different appearances, in preparation for Project 2. For example we had to emulate metallic surfaces as well as clear ones.

There were two options for each material, one that was less processed intensive in order to satisfy the Maya built-in render, which I opted for since my machine at home will sometimes crap out if there is too much going on. And the second option which is a little more in-depth that plays into the hands of the Arnold Renderer. I opted to go for the simpler one, again for processed safety and just for time saving. Overall I would say I understand the gist of what we needed to take away from this exercise, and will likely attempt to use the Arnold presets for the final project, but for today we stuck with the simpler, time saving option.

Bib:

Cromar, William. “ElementsNineSquareGrid.” NewMediaWiki [Licensed for Non-Commercial Use Only] / ElementsNineSquareGrid, http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/126969200/elementsNineSquareGrid#Ninesquaregrid.

Cromar, William. “Elementsmaterialculture.” NewMediaWiki [Licensed for Non-Commercial Use Only] / ElementsMaterialCulture, 2021, http://newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/127077035/elementsMaterialCulture#MaterialCulture.

For our first exercise using the Maya software we were tasked with creating the class ‘ball drop’ piece that is ubiquitous with all new learners of 3D modeling software, similar to that of the ‘Hello World!’ project that all programmers complete as their first piece of code. For this project we needed to understand how the physics of a bouncing ball actually behaves. There is the first piece to consider which is just the actual pathway of motion that the ball will follow as it moves forwards and bounces in these arcs that decrease in size as the ball continues to move along the plane. The first arc is always the largest and based on the perceived mass and size of the ball, it will determine by what factor each arc diminishes in. So the first step is to assign an x-axis movement, meaning just have the ball go left to right on the screen which covers the horizontal motion. Pretty easy and straightforward. Next is the y-axis which is where nearly all the magic happens and this is basically laying out all of the peaks and valleys of this sinusoidal motion of the ‘bouncing’. However this motion is not a perfect sine wave and the valleys are much less like valleys, and more like gorges or ravines, in that they meet at a sharp point instead of a rounded one to emphasize the impact of the ball on the ground. And for some flair near the end, we add some z-axis movement to have ball roll off to the side at the end. All of these can be edited with the graph editor in Maya which gives a more mathematical and plotted visual of how the object moves in different planes.

After the motion of the path was completed, we had to get into the smaller details of the motion of the ball’s structure as it bounces. Meaning that the ball  does not remain uniformly spherical through the entire motion. As the ball hits the ground the sides of it will blow out slightly, and the top of the ball will sink into itself in a similarly proportional manner. As the ball leaves the ground that warping of each axis will then invert as the top of the ball stretches upward and the sides will shrink towards the center slightly. And this will repeat for each bounce, at a decreasing volume each time similar to how the arcs diminish in power over time.

Below is the end result along with the wiki to follow along.

Cromar, William. “Essentialsballdrop.” NewMediaWiki [Licensed for Non-Commercial Use Only] / EssentialsBallDrop, 2020, newmediawiki.pbworks.com/w/page/126871157/essentialsBallDrop.

http://https://youtu.be/qL96vIJmw9g