Duplicating objects along a curve in Maya

You can duplicate objects along a curve in Maya by animating the object along a motion path and creating an animation snapshot. Let’s take this stylised roller coaster as an example.  During this project, I wanted to easily create a roller coaster track by duplicating planks along a curve. To do so, I first created…

Importing Maya 3D model to Flash Papervision3D

I thought I’d have a go at using Papervision3D to import my 3D character into Flash. They say that the total triangle count for Flash should be under 3000, which meant that I needed to create a low polygon 3D model – lower than Azusa. Since I may want to add more objects to the…

High Poly Character: Modeling a Cute Witch in Maya

Here’s my design for a cute witch, Liah, which I whipped up for my first ever high-poly character modelling challenge. In this post, I’ll go through how I modelled her in Maya.  Her torso was modelled similarly to my low poly character so I won’t go into detail in this post.  Here’s how I modelled…

Deleting edges without introducing tris: Attaching a hand to a character

In this post I’ll share how I ended up needing to delete edges without introducing tris, and how I went about doing it.  If you’re interested in the how only, skip down to The Fix. The problem So here’s a low poly body I made just like how I modeled Azusa. The difference was, instead…

Subdivisions and Creases: Modelling a Hand in Maya

I’ve been making hands like mits for my low poly characters, but now I needed to make a hand for a high poly character. So here I’ll share how I modelled a hand using the subdivision method. Let’s start with the fingers To model a hand fairly quickly, start with a polygon cube with 2…

Low Poly Character: Modeling a Geisha in Maya

Above is my concept art I whipped up in photoshop: A punk infused geisha named Azusa.  In this post, I’ll share how I modelled Azusa – my first ever 3D character. First, two planes were made orthogonal to each other to place the front and side outline of Azusa. Modelling one half of Azusa is…

Project Ancient China: Modelling a Siheyuan in Maya

Below is a concept sketch I drew of a traditional Chinese house Siheyuan to be modelled in 3D. In this post, I’ll be jotting down short memos on how I used the Edit Polygon tools to model this Siheyuan in Maya. Quick notes on modelling the Siheyuan I started off with a polygon cube and…

Modelling an Arched Door in Maya

So Boolean operations are a no-no in Maya… Then how do you model an arched door for this church? First, create a polygon tube and rotate and scale it to the size of the arch. Delete the bottom half faces. Fill the hole that results from deleting the faces with the Append to polygon tool….

Modelling a Tree in Maya

Today I’ll share how I modelled a tree using Maya’s extrude tool. To make the trunk, I created a polygon cylinder with zero number of caps and deleted all faces except its base circle face. I also drew a curve from the base of the face. With the face and the curve selected, I fired…

Append to Polygon Tool in Maya: Filling Faces of a Hammer

Often I’d want to make parts of an object separately then merge them together. What I used to do was just combine them or use boolean operations, which either results in redundant faces or screwed up normals. Finally, I’ve learnt to do it properly by using the Append to Polygon Tool. So here’s a hammer…

Manipulating Faces and Edges in Maya: Modelling a Wheelie Bin

This is an intro to the Edit Mesh tools in polygon mode. This wheelie bin was made to learn how to use tools in the Edit Mesh menu such as Edge Loops, Bevel, Bridge, Cut Faces, and Split Polygon. A wheelie bin is more or less symmetrical. I can save time by modeling one half…

Texture mapping in Maya: Making a flan

I wanted to try out texture mapping. I’ve done colour mapping before, but never really layered things like specular, reflection and ambient maps. I just had awesome waffles at Max Brenners so I thought about modeling a waffle, but somehow I ended up modeling a flan. I started off with a polygon cylinder and scaled…