We were asked to produce a characterful and vivid imagining of a 3D story world of our own design and choice. Despite having more than half a year’s knowledge of Blender, Maya was a great challenge for me, with my first time using it today – Let me just say that this software feels 3X more complex than Blender. However, as there are always similarities when working in different open-source 3D computer graphics softwares, having the knowledge of Blender helped me alot, with similar shortcuts and functions I picked up quite quickly.
Maya has no default cube!
My Process
My first and initial idea was a floating island of the Hallelujah island, referencing the amazing sci-fi movie Avatar from 2006. These 5 images below include 3 screenshots of my model and 2 references from Avatar. So far, duplicating each 3 different rocks I designed for a floating mountain feeling, has been the longest part – Scaling, rotating, moving sections onto the base/ground was very time consuming. With the time frame I had, it was a very long process, but once getting through it all, I quickly got onto the next process.
Reference One of my duplicates of the rock models. The process of copying, pasting and roatating.
Using Maya was way more difficult than I thought. My idea was to create a small cityscape referencing London city, with a massive electric snake emitting blue light. We reference blue light with technology so I initially wanted to create the idea that in this generation we live in, we are so dependent on technology and the way we use it.
Snakes head Here is the end of my process for the snake
The chinese temple was to make my model more interesting. Chinese temples signifiy the long history and rich culture of China, but are also regarded as valuable art treasures.
Reference Reference
Here are my colour palletes from my model that I used.
Top 3 Top 3 Top 3
My final renders
Close up renders/shots:
Whole model view renders:
Front view Back view Side/front Perspective view (Side/front)
What I achieved: I feel like what went well was including everything I wanted to include in my design. As I had so many things to incorporate into my model, I thought that it would be a real struggle to tick everything off my checklist as it was a little complex judging by my plan. I knew exactly what I wanted my model to look like, however, with the time frame I had, there was some sort of pressure, so I had to make sure my time management was 100% planned.
Challenges: I felt like at first, my biggest problem was scaling and sizing. The Chinese temple was massive compared to everything else, which threw off the whole 3D world. After a few adjustments with the sizes of the main objects, I was able to balance everything out and make it look easy to the eye. Another challenge I faced was that I spent too long on the start of my process, to be specific, the rocks of the bottom of the floating island. Halfway through copying and distributing them around, making sure they were perfectly lined, I realised that time was passing quickly, coming closer to the deadline of my submission.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed doing this project, and would 101% pursue this in the future. I also want to thank the amazing Luca and the 2 youtube tutorials from Mike Hermes and Art MZ used for this project. 🙂
My Padlet link to all of my references:
https://padlet.com/totoyo05202111/7rml47qrlr9fo6a4
Click below to download my PDF Document.