3D 1- Introduction to Maya & Building our Spaceship

Today we were introduced to Tanguy Dewarvin, who is a professional within the games industry, creating his own games and helping teach programs such as Maya, which is the piece of 3D software we will be using which I have never used before. As 3D and Interactivity link together, we found out we will be making all the objects within Maya, such as the spaceship and asteroid's. This can then be imported in Unity for our interactivity project. Im looking forward to working on both projects as combining the skills I learn in both workshops. 

We learnt how to use a technique called 'Box Modelling', which allows us to experiment with a shape and morph it into something more complex, adding more and more layers. One technique I instantly found helpful was the duplicate key, which meant you  only had to do one half of your ship and then duplicate and move it together. This is a very useful key as it allows your work to be symmetrical and it also saves a lot of time. 

During the Maya working process, I decided to take several screenshots of the progress of my spaceship. Similar to Unity, I found it difficult to begin with, however Tanguy was very helpful and would talk to me individually and give me pointers and tips to save time and get a more professional, accurate finish to my spaceship. 

We began with a basic square. 

I began by simply resizing the shape to a more rectangular shape. I then manipulated the shape by scaling and transforming the faces, which would then add another shape onto the current shape, which you can then move around and re-shape to whatever you like. By Extruding the sides I could add wings to my spaceship. I then rotated the arms slightly upwards so they didn't look completely flat. 

I then extruded the front and back to give my shape a more robotic, spaceship-like shape. 

Once realising I needed to move the arms in the opposite direction, I decided to manipulate the front and back even further by playing with the faces, reshaping them to make them more diagonal and pointy to make my spaceship look more spaceship-like. 

I then added wings to the top of my spaceship by inserting a plane and connecting it to the top and duplicating it, however I was told by Tanguy that when it comes to UV mapping the sapceship, it doesnt work on flat plane surfaces. 

I decided to add triangular whole shape wings to my spaceship (Look a bit like cat ears!) which is a simple shape so it shouldn't be too difficult to UV Map. Tanguy also helped simplify my shape so that it would be less of a hassle to UV Map as difficult shapes can morph together which means more time is needed to separate them. 

I then went onto UV mapping, which was a very long process as a lot of my shapes were closed together and all over the place. After about an hour or so of moving each part, I then exported the UV Map and changed the color to black for the meantime in photoshop. 

Edited UV Map. 

Rough finished spaceship.

Im quite proud of the work I did today and im happy with the spaceship I produced. I look forward to using my spaceship within Unity and I feel I am learning valuable tools that will help for the future when it comes to creating new projects.