Finished Helemt, 9/28/12

Despite Wednesday's troubles, I got the helmet finished. I was actually really close to finishing, which surprised me. I worked steadily on through the day, crafting edge loops and splitting faces. It was slightly tedious, but I persevered and created a rough and smooth helmet.

9/26/12, a pretty bad day.

Thankfully, we got new computers, so I think that the workflow will go much faster. However, none of my previous projects transferred over to my new computer. I hustled hard and fast to get to where I was yesterday, thankfully, but no new work on this blasted helmet has been accomplished. I've still got 20 minutes, so I think I can get at least SOME new work done. We'll see how this goes...

Ok day, 9/24/12

Today was alright. I got some work done on the helmet's faceplate, but I'm stuck right now. No matter how hard I try, I cannot bridge the gap between the faceplate and actual helmet. It's frustrating, cause the software says that I have to have an equal number of border edges to bridge the gap.... yet I have an equal number of border edges. I'd like to think it's a simple bug, and it will be fixed the next time I try to work.

9/17/12

Today was a good work day, I began working on the mouthpiece of the helmet before writing this. The helmet is a relatively easy thing to work on, as the general shape was easy to mold. I had one issue adjusting the faces and vertexes, and I had to quickly back track to fix it. I had forgotten to move the second edge loop to the grid point, and threw off my whole project. However, I conquered this and pushed on, to where I am now.

Finished Temple

The first, and probably easiest project besides the Eggs, the temple was my first experience with ANY 3D modeling software. The temple was rather easy, and the instructions kept me in line. Working on the stairs and steeple was a bit harder, only because there were no instructions for it, and I thought there may be. But after finding there weren't, I kinda just winged it.

Finished Salt Shaker

The salt shaker was probably the hardest thing out of the Eggs. I can only describe it as tedious, because I would always mess up in such a way that would completely mess up the project, only ever so slightly. Eventually another student came and told me what I was doing wrong, and I got kickin' again. The appearance of the shaker, however, appears slightly marred, and I don't know how to fix this.

Finished Egg Head

This egg head was a bit of a challenge, as the sculpting tools would be a little too drastic for my tastes. I found that the hardest part was sculptin g the brows. No matter what I did, the brows came out jsut plain.... scary. After a few tries, I smoothed them down to what you see. The mouth was also a challenge, as it would contort and become a silly flop of digital mesh. However, I persevered and got the desired effect.

Finished Egg holder

The finished egg holder, it was relatively easy to do. It took me a bit to figure out the curve tool, however it wasn't a big issue. This project was relatively easy for me, as I got it done in approximately 30 or so minutes. The most time I spent on it was making the general curve shape for it.

Not a good day

I began to work when I realized I had made a mistake on the previous day that was irreparable, so I decided to start anew. The work actually got going rather quickly, until I came to a snag in my project. Somehow, as I worked on the control vertexes, I had somehow turned on the soft modification tool. So, any time I wanted to modify this blasted phaser battery, the tool would modify the whole shape rather than the CVs. I restarted Maya, but the soft mod actually stayed ON! I couldn't escape it, until I found a way to turn it off. I've begun work again, but today was almost a complete waste.

Captain's Log, 9/7/12

I've begun to work in depth on the Phaser. It was generally easy, most of the work was just tedious vertex shaping. I got stumped a little bit trying to use the Insert Edge Loop tool, but after I found it, the work got easy again. I created the structure of the battery part of the weapon, then cut it in half. Now I'm working on it's overall shape, adjusting it's side curves. I expect to be finishing the whole thing within the next 5 or 6 work sessions.