3D Journal: Week 1

Within this week I had my first journey into Autodesk Maya - while I have had experience in 3D Asset Production before, I had only done it through Autodesk 3ds Max. These programs, while similar, had a very different feel to them. At first, I was apprehensive to using Maya. I felt comfortable with using Max. For this project however, I had to break out of my comfort zone, learn to use Maya and hopefully transfer my skills over from Max to Maya.

                                             

The day after our introductory presentation, we had our first session where we were introduced to Maya. Our first task was to create a fork. I admit, that I was rather against using Maya adamantly, but I realize now that this was a silly stance to take on the use of the software. I ended up creating the fork and, with the time we had left, creating an additional knife, spoon and plate to create a small cutlery scene.

These small objects I created taught me the basics of Maya. Many of the things I knew how to create in Max were available in different locations within Maya, but I still do miss the slice plane tool. While you can achieve a similar effect with the Multi-Cut tool in Maya, it's difficult to be as accurate as you might like to be due to making use of a mouse instead of a plane you can move with widgets. 

Within the first week, I learned the basics of Maya - enough to create simple objects. As I continue to use the software and learn how it works, I feel I might be able to get to the same capabilities as I did with Max.


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