Well this is embarrassing. After having defended 3Ds Max for years in arguments of it vs Maya I have finally sunk my teeth into my first Maya project... and must already admit defeat. Aside from the random crashes and bizarre glitches, Maya's interface has proved much more convenient for getting things done, and simply has an all round nicer feel. I would still argue that Max has a more powerful modelling system, and would certainly consider importing some more complicated .objs from it, but from then on, Maya certainly seems to hold dominance in creating beautiful renders. This being my first venture into a proper project, I turned to Digital Tutors for it's Introduction to Maya tutorial. A quick (13 hour) run through of it, and I was ready to tackle the work.
While I wanted to learn from good tutorials, I didn't want my work to be a replica of theirs, so I created my own designs for a more "victorian great inventions" feel, or as seems to be so popular today, Steampunk. Ridiculous for a hovercraft but, well, that's half the fun of being able to create absolutely anything you want. So, above you can see the basic model, made with a combination of NURBS and Polygons. While it took a bit of getting used to, and I had to find all the familiar tools all over again because they were of course all named differently, I was quite happy with the result. Certainly could do with improvement but satisfactory for a first attempt. Next up, texturing.
Spiffing. Forgive me the iron man colours, my ingenuity runs thin when it comes to colour design and I simply went with something I thought looked suitable only to realize how unoriginal I am once I'd finished. Not to worry, as long as it looks somewhat presentable. One of the biggest differences between Max and Maya I noticed was the way it handles bump and normal maps. Perhaps I just hadn't fine tuned my Max files correctly, but Maya seemed to offer great results at the touch of a button. I was very impressed.
With the basic model ready to roll I added some animation, including the use of custom attributes to govern the speed of the engines, which felt very fancy (as simple as it was. What can i say, I'm easily pleased). With it darting around I experimented a bit with some basic smoke particles and sent her flying. Simplistic and made in only 3 days, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with the results. Unfortunately, it's not up online by itself, but it's in my showreel at the 00:35 mark if anyone's curious enough to see it fly!
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