I see many photography things, but no Maya things! Since this is the "Art & Photography" section, I guess this goes here. I am, with no shade of a doubt, a newbie to Maya. I realise that, for a first project I've picked something utterly ridiculous, and that I should probably start with small stuff, but I'm not exactly known for my logical decisions. Besides, I like the subject matter, and that makes me more likely to stick with it. So. Subject: Camaro 2008/9/10/whatever. Modern. I set the image planes up, I've managed to work out the most useful keyboard shortcuts, but it's taking between two and three hours per panel - I can't stand to work in a "subtractive" situation if I can avoid it. At the moment, I'm modelling one side and mirroring it to be as symmetrical as I can be, I've seen one or two of the free tutorials on Digital-Tutors, and they all seem to do a half+mirror system if they're doing something symmetrical. Anyway, two sessions of a couple of hours in, and I have: I tend to roughly match the footprint of the panel I'm modelling then over-estimate the height so I have some working room if things go tits up with my estimates. I subdivide until I've got enough vertex's to make an acceptable looking piece, and usually remove any superfluous vertex's (additional rows that do nothing, for example) before final tweaking and eventual mirroring. Is there anyone here who uses Maya and has any tips for improving the way I work?
Your doing better than I did when I started using maya. It was sooo complicated that I gave up, and things never seemed to work. For example, getting images loaded in and them all being the same scale, even if they were all the same size image. It didn't help that we weren't really being taught it properly, and we were just told to follow tutorials which were for Maya 2000, and so some of the tools were missing or significantly changed in Maya 2009.
eww maya =D im a 3ds max man myself, looking good tho man rember to keep the edge flow so the smoothing groups work properly =]
I've been arsing about with Maya for a while, so I'm vaguely familiar with the interface, just not half the tools or shortcuts.. No idea if what I'm doing is the most efficient way to do it or not >.> I do know what you mean, though, that a lot of things change between versions. Last time I touched it was ~v8 or something daft, and it's a totally different beast to what I vaguely remember. And all the tutorials are written for the age old stuff >.> So much time is wasted looking for the new location of a tool mentioned in a tutorial Haha, yeah, we're doing some 3DSMax in uni later in either this term or next. Sort of looking forward to it, but by then I expect I'll be far too entwined with Maya to be turned That's actually something I've not yet done - Thanks for the reminder!
I'd say spring for a Digital-Tutors membership. I bought a couple of their tutorials (back before they were membership based) and they helped immensly.
If I had that kind of wonga lying around, I absolutely would. I've enjoyed their free tutorials (Even the ones for stuff I don't have) immensly. Would love to get access to the rest when I can afford it though.
What uni are you at?? I'll be doing 3DSMax later on in the year too as part of my Game Multimedia module.
Bucks New Uni - Interestingly enough, we're covering 3DSMax and I signed up for a Network Security & Management course :/ Ahwell, the lecturer for that is cool, so it's decent enough. I have considered the Escapee Studios 6month Maya crash course thing, I've spoken to a number of the lecturers there and they're all pretty damn good/keyed up. Supposedly you come out of six months with the equivalent of a two year course of experience with Maya. That was back in my "I want to get into games design" days, though. More of a hobby these days
What do you think would be better for "Movies" such as short commercials and such? (Maya or ...____ ) I am looking at integrating CG with live action and such.
you could do it with maya or max they both can do as good a job as each other, the industry tends to use maya for films ect and max is usally used for games, but use the one you feel most comftable using tbh.
I'm a semi experienced maya user, have done some professional work. And actually worked on a project almost identical to yours. I'll post some stuff in a bit. Can't find the project files for it atm. But this link is a 3d PDF. (click on it after it loads, i never set a preview picture) I modelled it using the exact same method you're using. Making rough geometry then subdividing. If I were to model a car again though. I'd use nurbs. Much more accurate. You look like you've got a good start going. The key is really in setting up your geometry to subdivide the way you want. Such as having dense geometry arround edges that you want to remain sharp. I can't tell from your screen shot, but are you using the handy proxy mesh feature? Once its set up You hit the ` key and it will toggle between a mirrored and smoothed version / and your working lowpoly mesh.
