Week 7: 3D Story Worlds
Here I made a 3D “diorama” environment in Maya.
First I used PowerPoint to brainstorm ideas. I made a mind-map of landscapes I think would be achievable, then moved onto a mood-board. I ended up focusing on the cat cafe and the crane game, as the other two might be a little overdone.
I think how well I get used to Maya will affect which one I pick, as the machine is probably more difficult than the cafe. Although after sketching out a 2D plan, I think I prefer the crane. Maybe I could even combine the two somehow (e.g. cats inside of claw machine).
So, I did actually combine the two. Once I found a rhythm with Maya it surprisingly wasn’t so bad – albeit still very difficult. I modeled a claw machine using tools like booleans and extrusion, turned polygons into a cat house, then coloured with standard surface shading. It’s a program where you have to trust the process, and it totally pays off when you add lighting and it renders like magic.
In the future I would like to make a model with more protrusions and bevels so it’s a little less flat, and possibly use an external program to paint over it. I would also add floor shadows and play around with sample settings to eradicate graininess.
Here are some screenshots of the process. The left crane is a scrapped first try.