Project 1: Learning How To Use The Maya Program

Creating A Bike By Following Digital Tutor Tutorials

I write a lot, I feel like it helps me to learn and maintain information.  I know it's a lot of text, so I have written the most important things in bold lettering.  So feel free to just look at the bold lettering and get the gist of what happened.  =] Enjoy!

Step One:

The first thing that the tutorials had me do was make part of the bike's frame.  It looks kinda like a hook right?  If you are thinking that this looks nothing like a bike, I would have to say that I agree with you.  However, I did learn more about how valuable curves can be at smoothly creating surfaces.  It so happens that you can make lots of cool objects by lofting curves (we used the "CV curve" tool).

Step 2:

  

Next, they had me make the fork of the bicycle (at least that is what I think it is called).  Up close I thought it looked rather like an alien head.  =]  This is one of the pieces of the bike that I started having difficulties with.  This time instead of using the CV curves to form the fork, we used the "Bezier curve" tool.  The only difference between the two, for those who care about knowing this information, is that the Bezier curve gives you more control over how your curves will look.  Once you draw a curve there are handles on the vertices that you can bend and tweak (it's the same as in Photoshop and Illustrator).  So by following the tutorials and using Bezier curves we made an alien head, I mean fork!  Somewhere along the line when we lofted the Bezier curves together some of us ended up having lots of undesirable creases and divots in the model.  Since we didn't know how to fix it, we deleted it all and used the good ol' CV curve instead.  Guess what?  It worked!  We didn't have any weird creases or divots, just the smooth bike fork like we wanted.  Word to the wise; sometimes there are other ways to create the same model.  If you are experiencing difficulties by following a tutorial try to make the same object using different tools or objects; it worked for me.  ;)

Step Three:

 

This thing connected the bike frame and fork that I made from watching the other two videos.  It wasn't super horrible to make, but it was rather annoying that the instructor changed its size and moved at a really quick pace.  Sometimes it is good to watch the video once first so that if he (the instructor) changes the size again and again you can make the final size adjustment when you first start making your model.  This way instead of wasting time by pausing the video every 5 seconds, because he keeps adjusting the size, you can wait until later in the tutorial and then change the model's size.

 Step Four:

I'll continue this tomorrow, it's 2 o'clock.  =O yawnnnn.......(sleep)(true story)

Okay, I shall continue.  The tutorials next showed us how to add to our bike frame.  We were making the part that holds the wheels in place.  They look like hockey sticks.  Luckily this part of the tutorial was fine, for the most part, and I got through it without much difficulty.  It taught us more about using the "extrude" tool and checking the lighting on all sides so that you will be able to render an image accurately.

Step Five:

Because we had created most of the bike's frame, the next logical step was to start making the frame for the wheels.  This video taught me more about using the torus and pipe shapes.  It also taught me about modifying and smoothing an object little by little in order to make the 3D model look nice and clean.  Making part of the frame for the back wheel?  No problem!

 Step Six:

The next step I had to take was to create the inner rim and half circle bike spoke.  The instructor, in the video I had to watch, kept making lots and lots of adjustments to these items.  There were a few things that I learned from this video.  First, vertices may have to be dragged and re-sized multiple times to make your desired object.  Second, using the "insert edge loop" tool helps one more accurately shape his object.  Lastly, is it usually good to often check what a shape looks like in its normal form and in its smoothed form.  I finished the back wheel!

 Step Seven:

    

When I started the next tutorial they had me start making the front wheel.  First, I copied the back wheel and deleted the half circle bike spoke; the front wheel needed its own special spoke.  I had to learn to use a combination of a hexagon, curves, and the "extrude" tool to create this famcy spampcy wheel (yes, famcy spampcy is a word).  =D  All the spokes were connected to the hexagon, but they were not completely attached.  To make sure that everything moved together as one mesh, we had to grab multiple connecting vertices and use the "merge" tool under the "edit mesh" menu.  There was one part of the tutorial that my girlfriend Julie and I had a lot of trouble with.  We tried to duplicated one of the spokes twice so that it would revolve around the hexagon and form the whole spoke, but it didn't work very well.  It was hard to separate the duplicates from the main spoke.  In order to separate the copy from the main spoke we had to click on it while holding down the control key.  Somehow this selected the copy, which you could then revolve around the hexagon.  If anyone is having trouble separating the copy from the main object, try clicking on it while holding the control key on your keyboard.

 Step Eight:

In this tutorial we made a handle bar frame.  It was pretty simple really; just draw a curve, adjust the vertices, make a circle, click on both of them, and extrude.  Adjust the size some more and you have yourself a standard handle bar frame.

 Step Nine:

This step required some interesting finagling in order to make the completed bike handle bars.  We took the nurbs' extruded curve and changed it to a polygon.  We then smoothed it and gave it more faces so that we could create bike grips.  We had problems doing the exact same thing the tutorial instructor did, so we had to go to the smooth option and manually put in what we wanted.  We were able to create bike grips by selecting every other face section on the grips and then extruding them.  At the end we duplicated the bike handle, freezed its transforms, and put -1 in the x axis box to flip it (it's in the channel box).  Yay!  I created two bike handles!

 Step Ten:

  

After I made the handle bars, I was commanded to make the outside of a sprocket!  What is sprocket you might ask?  I don't really know.....but here it is!  =D

 Step Eleven:

The inside of the sprocket was the next thing that had to be created.  It was fairly simple to make and mainly required things like pipes, edge loops, duplicating, and extruding.  Yes yes, I know it looks awesome.  ;)

 Step Twelve:

 

This part didn't take very long either.  I attached my completed sprocket to the bottom of my hook-shaped bike frame.  It didn't fit perfectly at first, so I had to adjust many things and turn the hook into a polygon.  It is attached now wooohoooo!!!

 Step Thirteen:

This my dear people is part of a chain guard.  I didn't really learn anything new this time, but maybe that is a good thing.  (Maybe I am learning a lot of the tools?)

 Step Fourteen:

 

Well here is the inside of the chain guard.  Lets just say that the duplicate special tool is very helpful; you can make one part and then make thousands of copies of that object easily.  I think it looks cool.  =]

Here's a quick look at what the bike is looking like so far:

 

Slowly, but surely, I am making progress on this bike.  I still have 15 videos though!  I can do this!

Step Fifteen:

Here is the bike seat I created.  This was pretty cool to make considering it was only a polygonal cube to begin with.  This lesson again reinforced the usefulness of extruding and the resizing vertices. 

Step Sixteen:

  

This tutorial had me add to the frame of the bike by creating the supporting structure of the bike seat.  This lesson was easy for the most part since it dealt with extruding curves, but I ran into trouble when I was trying to cut holes in a part of the frame.

Step Seventeen:

  

Here is the shield/screen front of the bike.  Besides the instructor resizing the curves every five seconds, this tutorial was fine.  I just had to draw curves and then loft them together.

Step Eighteen:

The pedals of the bike came next.  They look like little inflatable rafts.  Again this was only a cube that was given divisions, re-sized, extruded, and smoothed.

Step Nineteen:

  

Next we had to build the part that connects the pedals to the inner sprocket.  I had to again use extruded curves to make this part.  The only other thing to build to completely connect them was a nurbs cylinder.

Part Twenty:

 

In order to make the bike frame look more interesting, the instructor had me duplicate parts of the already existing bike frame and extrude them.  I also had to drag vertices around in the front to make the bike look more interesting.  I guess these were just extra parts of the bike's already existing frame.

Part Twenty-One:

Uggg!! This part took forever!  This monstrosity that you now lay your eyes on is an infamous part of the bike's brakes!  Besides having to rebuild many of the shapes in order to match up the sizes of the instructor's parts, I also spent much time build another shape.  In the end he deleted about half of the structure that he has you create and then has you attach random pieces of geometry to the bike's tire.  This is one of the parts I loathed building the most!  I am sooo glad it's over........

Part Twenty-Two:

This tutorial was much much simpler.  It made me happy.  Using two cubes, extruding, adding edge loops, and smoothing we created the brake handle.  No problems.

Part Twenty-Three:

I created the bike's brake tube, along with some screws to hold them in place.  This part was a little annoying, but luckily the simplicity of this tutorial made it not as bad.

Part Twenty-Four:

  

What you see before you is a fancy kickstand.  The lesson I learned while going through this tutorial was that you can sometimes duplicate already existing geometry and use it to make new geometry.  By duplicating some faces and extruding them, I was able to create a nifty kickstand.

Part Twenty-Five:

In this tutorial we got to use the text tool.  It was super easy.  You just type in the words you want, choose the font, and pick the size.  Just place the text on the side of the chain guard and POOF your done!  =D

Part Twenty-Six:

 

This was the second to last video.  The instructor had us group parts together and name the individual pieces.  We also had to place pivots in their appropriate places so that we could turn the wheels and such.  I organized bike parts in the outliner!

Part Twenty-Seven (The Final Tutorial!):

Here before you stands the result of many annoying videos.  I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this bike.  But it was mostly sweat....well and tears......and well maybe the blood that splattered on my keyboard when I slammed my head against the wall many times in frustration.  After making a few bike parts I was already sick of making the bike, however I did learn to use a lot of tools that I would not have learned otherwise.  I think my knowledge has now grown.  =D

See you guys next time!

First 3D Model

Thursday, January the 12th, I did my first 3D model in class.  Take a look!  (Or the Pandamaster will hunt you down and destroy you! >:O)