Lab 2: Introduction to Modeling
IDS252: Computer Animation Production, Fall 2007

Goals

• Become familiar with modeling NURBS and subdivision surfaces.
• Learn how to import objects.
• Experiment with composition through the use of placement and camera position.

Directions

1. Making a Project: For the lessons below, create a single project (e.g. called Lab2Project) in your ids252 folder on your H drive. All of the scenes you create for this lab should be saved into this project. Recall, to create a project, open Maya and go to File;Project;New .... Enter the name and location of your project. For now, leave all other fields blank.

   Remember: Once your project is created, then everytime you open Maya, you will need to set the project File;Project;Set .... Once the project is set, you may open your scene. This will insure that files are saved to the correct place.

2. Modeling: In the Maya tutorials, go to Getting Started with Maya. Do the following lessons:
   
   • NURBS Modeling:
     • Lesson 1: Revolving a curve to create a surface (glass),
     • Lesson 3: Lofting Curves to create a surface (saltshaker)
   • Subdivision Surfaces:
     • Lesson 1: Modeling a subdivision surface (hand). Note, you will probably not be able to finish this. Get as far as you can.
       
       
3. Rendered Image: For each object you create, render a 640x480 jpeg high quality image and place in your IDS252Fa07\Lab2\your_name folder on \\home\enfuzion (see lab1 if you forget how to do this). Make sure the image files are given names that reflect what they contain and include your initials as described in lab 1.

4. Importing Objects: At this point, you should have several Maya scenes (i.e. .mb files) from Lab 1 and Lab 2 contained in the projects (i.e. folders) called Lab1Project and Lab2Project. The scenes contain the different objects generated from the tutorials you did (temple, helmet, glass, saltshaker, hand). Before you continue, it is a good idea to go back to these scenes and group any objects that are composed of multiple components. For example, your temple from Lab 1 is composed of a number of parts (base, columns, etc). Open up the temple scene file and group all the parts of the temple. Rename the group to "temple". Save and close the temple scene.

   Once the objects in the individual scenes are grouped, you can now combine these objects into one scene as follows. Open a new scene and save it (e.g. call it composition), and then go to the main menu in Maya and choose File; Import.... Select one of your previous scenes to import . The object should appear in this new scene. Repeat to import several more objects. You will need to translate the different so they aren't on top of one another.

5. Composition: Using several of the objects that you have created, combine them into one scene.;

   Arrange/duplicate/scale/etc them in a way that tells a story or makes the viewer curious. You do not need to assign colors to objects, however, if you really want to do this then make sure you keep things very simple. DO NOT USE FIRE OR OTHER SPECIAL EFFECTS THAT YOU DISCOVER IN MAYA). Think about issues of composition, for example:

   • Can you identify the overall form - horizontal, vertical, diagonal, etc?
   • Have you grouped objects in an interesting way?
   • Have I created a sense of depth? Do I want to?
   • Is the dark and light range consistent with the established mood?
   • Is there a single major focal area? Is it well placed? Are there subordinate or secondary focal areas?
   • Are there organized movements through the picture?
   • Does the basic light-dark pattern design create and interesting abstract pattern?
   • Are the negative shapes interesting and varied?
   • Are weighted areas (dark values and intense colors) balanced to avoid lopsidedness?

Evaluation

You are to place images of the following objects in your Lab2 folder on \\home\enfuzion:

1. glass
2. salt shaker
3. hand (complete as much as you can.)
4. One composition containing several objects you have created. This image is the most important part of this lab.

You will be graded both on technical skill and on composition.