Maya Instruments and Band Room

Above you will see the trumpet. If you
if you look at the buttons they can
twist off.

This past semester I have been working on several instruments and modeling of a band room. I have not yet finished the all the instruments. I worked mostly on brass this semester, needing to finish a tuba. I want to spend what I hope to be only a month on the woodwind instruments. I need to figure out how I want to approach them.

The Start

Last semester I began working on a trumpet almost completing it. I added a few touches this semester and also began to work on a brass texture, which I am still working on.

Chairs and Stands

Band room at my school. Giving me a

good idea on how to line the chairs

and stands

When this semester started , after I got done with the trumpet touch ups, I went down to my band room at my school and took several pictures of chairs, stands, and the room as a whole. When I was done with that I went back down to the animation room to begin working.

The ensemble line up in maya

I started on working on the music stand. This consisted of a little bit of time and patience. I began working on the bottom of the stand which has 3 legs. I moved my way up using a cylinder and ending the cylinder with a connector piece. That connector piece connects to the the top of the music stand. That part is what makes the stand a stand to hold the music. The top part of the stand took me a while because there is an awkward curve on the stand t

hat holds the pencils. To make that curve I added multiple edge loops to the bottom of the stand and started lining it up to give that curve effect. I then making it size right to the picture I took in the band room.

I wanna than Anthony Rima
for this chair he helped with

After  made the music stand I then
moved to making the chair, if I wanna make the band room I have to get some of the smaller details of the room, like the chair. Anthony Rima helped me out making the chair. I needed his help cause the chair had some awkward legs that bended where the back and bottom part met.


I then copied a lot of chairs to line up look look like a wind ensemble set up. I will copy a lot f stands as well, I just need to adjust the size to make it fit and be portioned right to the chair. Not to big, not too small.

Above you will see the podium.
Notice the handle behind it

The Podium

The podium, was was surprisingly a little finiche. The first part of the podium was rather easy. I had to make a few cubes and extrude them. The next was the not harder part, just squirlly part. It was the handle on the back of the podium. It took me a while to make it go straight across. When I extruded it it wanted to go diagonal rather than straight, giving me more things to line up. Making it take longer.

Instruments

View of the Trombone

After the podium

Top view of the Marimba

I made I worked on was the trombone. I had some issues to size the trombone correctly. It looked not right. I restarted it a few times. I also couldn't think of a way to make the curve like I did the trumpet. But the problem was I didn't remember how to do tat. I tried sever things like extruding and soft selecting a long cylinder. I ended up taking a log break from the trombone and began to work on the flute and a marimba. But more on that later. Once I went back to the trombone I figured out how to do the curve. All I literally had to do was copy and past the same curve from the trumpet and make it larger. I was so mad that I couldn't figure out something as simple as that. Once I did that I also copied the same mouthpiece from the trumpet because why
reinvent the wheel. It made so easy for me to complete the modeling part once I figured out those few simple steps.

During the majority of my break I working on a marimba. The Marimba took
me about 3 to 4 days to model, but I need to think about a texture it.  I made a xylophone a long with that. It was very similar to the marimba because the keys are aligned the same, just like a piano. After tat I made some crash cymbals, I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna make the handle for the crash cymbals. I'm thinking of adding an nCloth. But I'm still not sure.

Bottom view to see the pipes

Nearing the end of the semester I started to work on a tube and a flute. The flute is rather difficult as will the clarinet be. They have small buttons and details that matter at lot to them. However, most of the m are small cylinders  that just need to be sized and lined up properly The tuba, the only hard part about that is making the tubes spin around the whole instrument. I have already made the horn part which is now the easy part for me.

Animation School Year

2015-2016 School Year

This past quarter I decided to work on instruments. So far I have modeled a trumpet but I plan on make most of the other band instruments like the clarinet, saxophone, trombone, tuba, etc... I will then submit in next year into the eMagine festival. This Trumpet has taught me a lot of useful skills about different ways of modeling and how I can use this to make more instruments in an easier fashion.

Trumpet in its early stages

While modeling this trumpet I learned several new ways of how I can use multiple polygons to make it look like one whole polygon. I learned about a new tool called the Target Weld Tool.  I'd say this is one of the most important things I learned this year about modeling. To find this tool make sure you are in modeling, then go to mesh tools and then go to target weld at the bottom. This tool was used to take the vertices from one polygon to the next. However, you need to make sure that both of the polygons are the same shape and have the same amount of vertices. If they have a different amount than you won't be able to weld the objects together properly. I mostly just welded cylinders together with the torus. I used the torus and cut it in half and then welded the cylinder to it. I used the torus so I could have the smooth curve on the side of the trumpet.

I needed to learn a new way to get a smooth curve instead of making it from a cylinder and curving it. It would just make the curve look very sloppy. The importance of this tool turned my project from looking like a student made it, to a much more professional looking model. A lot of times when you see an object made from multiple polygons, you can see were each object starts and ends. But what this target weld did was made it a lot harder to tell where each polygon started and ended. This was the most important tool because of how much it changed the way the trumpet looked. The target weld tool would have really come in handy in a few of my other projects like the light saber

Final modeled stage of trumpet

I would say my greatest strengths of this year is being able to  think of something I want to model and I can figure out a way to make it. I am good at sticking with what I want to make and finishing it. Sometimes I can get distracted by other people in the classroom, myself, and my computer. Next year I want to work on not getting distracted as easily. I can get a lot more accomplished as long as I don't get distracted, talk to others for long periods of time, and not getting out of my seat. I'm gonna work on that for next year to improve upon that. This year I have improved a lot on just modeling in general. Last year I had a tough time figuring out what to do to make things. I've thought out side the box a whole lot more.

With these improvements I plan to take on my senior year with an iron fist. Making sure that I'm not getting distracted as much, taking the modeling onto the next level, and continue to make more instruments so I can finish the big progress. I'm gonna work over the summer, hopefully finishing 2 other instruments. I plan to learn how texture a lot better in this year to come. My texturing right now is eh. It looks too generic. I want to make it look a lot more realistic.

Final scene of the light saber clip

Things I would change in my trumpet is I would defiantly add a lot better texture, rather than just the typical phong e. I want to give it a more  brass look, than just a shiny yellow color. I plan to watch YouTube videos on how to make textures better.  For next year I'm gonna change my act more. I'll still talk just not as much, I'll get more things done,  and learn more techniques.

This year was mostly a successful, I made a good house interior, designed and animated a light saber, and worked the last quarter on a very realistic trumpet. There were some ups and downs this year, but over all it worked very well in the end. My modeling got a whole lot better. I think it started with the house. I put some fine details in that and it really transferred over to the trumpet very nicely. I can't wait to see what next year has to offer. I will see you next year.

Lightsaber Emagine Entry

Lightsaber

The past few months I've been working on a lightsaber. Within the video I modeled it, I textured everything, made a moving camera, and also wrote the song for this animation. After I completed my house the move Star Wars Episode VII came out, getting me into the Star Wars mood. So I decided to just make a lightsaber.

Tutorial

I started by extruding a cylinder to the size I wanted it to be. After that I took a second cylinder and added several faces to it. With the several faces on it I pulled them up giving an area for where the light from the lightsaber would go. It starts out short and goes taller and taller as the tip goes on. Once I managed to get the tip to look the way I wanted it to look, I made a cylinder and rounded the top and textured it green. But when I rendered it out the lightsaber looked like a popsicle not a lightsaber. I had no clue how to add a glow to it. I found a couple of videos on how to do it but some did not explain very well how to do it. I found a glow intensity setting on Maya and it worked beautifully. It looked like a lightsaber!

Above you can see a cylinder with the
edges stretched out

Now that I had a good top and a lightsaber, I needed to add some grips and buttons. The grips for me took a little while, I had to make each one basically the exact. I probably made it harder than what it had to be. I extruded and remembered each of the numbers that changed. I also wanted to smooth out the edges, so I beveled out the edges and made it look like more of a grip. If I remember right I believer there are about 5 grips.

Once the grips were done I wanted to go around the lightsaber and add some detailed buttons. I booleaned a small hole in each of the areas for buttons and screws. I made the screw by just extruding a square on a rounded tip cylinder. A few more details to add, a lot of it is just personal preference.

Overall

Overall this project was really fun to work on. I enjoyed ever minuet of it and I didn't run into too many problems. It  was just a fun project to occupy my time very well.