My first IN3D lesson (robot modeling)

Modeling a robot


The first step was to identify the primitive shape required to make my robot, in this case i decided to model my robot top-down (head to toe) as i think i will generally do all my modeling top-down as i feel it helps me make the model more proportional.

Hence this is the model head in perspective view, I've achieve this by constantly switching between the front, top, side & persp view to achieve this. Also the move, rotate & scale tool is definitely needed to do this and pretty much any model.

Now here is the breakdown of my model, as you can see I've used primitive shapes such as cones, spheres, pipes and cylinder to do this along with scaling and rotating. I've also made used of the channel box and the duplicate function. 

The duplicate firstly allows me to only work on one side of the model and simply duplicate whichever part i want to fit the other side. Hence i save time doing this as well lower the risk of an un-proportional model.


The channel box is a even more useful tool, it allows me to manipulate such as moving, rotating, & scaling the tool more accurately than whatever i could have done using the tools directly. Example: I've worked on the left eye first, so now i duplicate the left eye and using the channel box, move all the values of the x,y & z to the positive value (since the left eye was made in the negative value zone).

                      (The left side is -1.7 on the x value)


so by duplicating and then putting 1.7 as the translate x value for the right side cone

           There looks good :D



The rest of the model is pretty much using the same techniques.

                                          (Robot Body in Persp)

 

( Robot Legs in Persp)

Finished Robot in Persp

Finished Robot in Top

Finished Robot in Front

 

Finished Robot in Side

Reflection & Learning Points

The things i've learn while doing this exercise was to familiar with the maya controls such as moving, scaling, rotating & such. Also i've learn that when doing a model, it is insufficient to simply check one side of the model but one must utilize all the views to model it properly. 

Also through this exercise i realized all models are made from very primitive shape and that it is the role of the modeler to be able to identify those primitive shapes, as such planning is required before embarking on any maya modeling projects.

Last but not least, the channel box is another powerful tool in maya, i enjoy using it immensely as i can use it to manipulate my polygons accurately and efficiently.