Reflective Journal + Technical Notes #1 - Maya / Photoshop Intro

Reflection + Technical Notes (Maya / Unity)

Today was my first time using the 3D modelling program Maya. I have used Blender a fairly large amount, and I found that there are certainly many areas of overlap, but a lot of methodologies and inputs to get desired results are quite different. For instance you have to often hold the "alt" key while pressing something else to navigate the viewport. Rather than "cntrl r", loop cuts (or edge loops) are accessed through a dropdown menu. There is also a button along the top to display wireframe over mesh which is interesting - the functionality exists in Blender but is much more buried and not something I've really used much.  It is interesting that mesh bevels are to be customised through a bar on the right, like a modifier in Blender too. I guess it's more non-destructive for the workflow which is a positive. I ended up making a simple mechanical component that could possibly somehow fit into our "alien" aesthetic themed vehicle project, but it was mostly just an experiment model. In general the aesthetic will demand stuff that looks technical and impressive, but also unique/bizarre enough that it invites interest and looks at least a little non-human (like 80/20). It seems that alien designs are often made in this way - humans tend to make things relatable to humans but add mutations/creative oddities that add an extra-terrestrial vibe.

We also took some images and used basic tools in photoshop such as the text tool and pencil tool to draw over the objects, as one possible approach for thumbnailing (taking a 3D model and using it as shape reference to draw over). I initially encountered problems with wanting to remove the background from the object so that it could exist on a white backdrop, but the smart object tool was something I found which was able to pretty accurately select the object, allowing me to invert the selection and delete the grey background of Maya's UI.

 

I also used Unity in a later workshop on the same day (part of Prod 121, but I thought I'd add a little about it for my own sake)

I have brief experience with Unity, but primarily I have used Godot in the past. Overall, there were a decent number of similarities such as the hierarchy tab on the left, the asset browser on the bottom of the screen and the viewport navigation was similar too. It was interesting to be introduced to the way unity handles the prefabs, they seem very convenient. GitHub was also used for the first time, it was relatively straightforward to link things and then start committing and pushing local changes to the remote version. If anything, what I struggled most with was the account verification activity they make you do to verify you are human (I got stuck on it for an embarrassing amount of time).