Now that I had the concepts tied down, I had to move onto modelling them. I had to research into what I could accomplish in Maya. This included experimenting with how accurately I could render and texture everything, as well as creating some of the more complicated of the object’s shapes.
Modelling the Sword
The first thing I modeled was the gems, as they would appear in both my sword and shield. The gems structure is not only complicated but, getting the light to behave correctly seemed daunting. In order to model the gem, I found a tutorial for it.
Link to tutorial referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8FWXmQ324s&t=3s
The other challenge i faced was making the curved 'legs' of the lizard handle. After experimenting for quite a while, I eventually figured out that by importing an image plane of my sword in Maya I could open a polygon plane and move the subdivisions around by their vertices and model my sword accurate to the concept art. I repeated this process for the remainder of the sword handle. Then once all the planes were made, I simply extruded them and beveled them to create a softer edge.
Beneath is the finished handle design.
I again used polygon plane and extrude method for the small 'engravings' that decorate the sword. Lastly for the blade, I used twist and flare nonlinear deformers on a cube to create the twist and tapered point on my sword. And repeated the rending process used for the gemstones.
UV Unwrapping the Sword
UV mapping was quite challenging as most of the shapes that should have been easy to unwrap were made more complicated due to having certain shapes booleaned into the already existing polygons, which made the shapes 'messier'. This was a result of not thinking ahead, and is something I will aim to rectify with the shield. Now that I have the sword model finished, I moved onto the shield.
Beneath is an example of how booleaning complicated the geometry of the shapes.
Modelling The Shield
The shield was a much smoother process from the start. Since I already had the gemstones done, I just imported them into a new Maya project. I once again used polygon planes and extruded them for making the body of the shield. I also learned of a new tool, soft selection. This helped my make the face bend so that it could jut outward like most shields do. Two changes I made to the overall design was the shape of shield and the glowing engravings. I changed the to make the shield tapper more towards a shield shape, as i felt that it looked almost like a face. I removed the engravings as I wanted the lizard and snakes that will be painted on the wood to be the focus.
Beneath is the redesigned face of the shield.
UV Unwrapping the Shield
This made UV wrapping much easier, I was working with UV mapping in mind, as so i kept the shapes much cleaner, and thus the UV's look much more straightforward. This educated me on the importance of working with these things in mind and is definitely something I will remember moving forward.
Comentários