Project two - still life - fall 09

Project two - still life

This assignment is designed to acquaint students with Maya's sculpting, deformation and shading tools. Students will learn how to build, modify and reshape objects into representative surfaces; how to assign shaders to those surfaces; and how to use Maya's dependency graph to make non-linear changes to their work. Students will use these tools and concepts to create a still life of various organic and inorganic objects of their choosing.


What: One rendered still image at full 1024 resolution, one maya scene file, and all used textures.

When: Due 10/14, at the beginning of class - 4 weeks

Project 2 - fall 08 - gallery


How:

• Decide what objects you want to fill your scene, and how you will arrange them. Try to find both organic and inorganic objects. Look for reference images!
• Create your objects using the different sculpting techniques we will go over.
• Shade and texture your objects using shading networks and source images.
• Setup your camera and lights to find the best composition and mood.
• Focus on composition, staging, depth and mood. Use the geometry to shape the scene and the lights to color it. Use the camera to frame it in an interesting way that supports your idea.

Key concepts:

Interface/Pipeline:

• nodes and inter-nodal dependencies
• hypergraph
• understanding construction history

Modeling:

• polys, nurbs and subdivision surfaces – pros/cons
• creating and editing organic and non-organic models
• managing a workable level of detail
• sculpting on a component level
• using curve-based modeling tools
• understanding smoothing and creasing
• using the paint tool to sculpt surfaces
• using lattices and non-linear deformers for broad level shape changes

Rendering:

• understanding the qualities of different surface shaders
• creating and applying shading networks
• editing shading networks in the hypershade
  
• procedural vs. authored textures
• texture creation and placement
  
• using the 3d paint tool
  
• advanced lighting - raytracing, reflections, translucency, fog