This tutorial is geared for intermediate Maya users. If you're into mechanical robots then this tutorial will be a lot of fun. We will begin by using image planes of the side and front views. The modeling techniques used will be shaping in nurbs, converting to polygons to add details, and then into sub'ds to define the final shapes.
Mech Warrior - Tutorial description:
This tutorial is geared for intermediate Maya users. If you're into mechanical robots then this tutorial will be a lot of fun. We will begin by using image planes of the side and front views. The modeling techniques used will be shaping in nurbs, converting to polygons to add details, and then into sub'ds to define the final shapes.
When the robot is finished we then move toward preparing our model for texturing. We do this by laying out the UV's for all the separate parts of the body to make them flat so we can get a clean UV snap-shot for our painted textures. Tools covered in the layout section include planar map, cylindrical map, and automatic map, as well as move and sew UV's. After the UV's are finished and your snap-shot is taken we jump into a paint program to start adding color and texture to our model.
You will learn how to use layers for different areas as well as how to stain and chip up certain parts of the body, like the head and torso, for a more aged and scratched look. The last section covers how to texture a few of the nurbs surfaces of our character, such as the tubes, using Maya built-in shading networks. Once our character is all textured we will begin rigging by adding a skeleton to the geometry as well as parent parts of the body to certain joints so that the body parts move with the new skeleton. After our Robot has his joints we will begin adding Ik handles and more in-depth animation controls like foot rolls, as well as finger controls. The last stage of our tutorial covers basic key-frame animation where we move our robot in 3D space instead of a cycle where we would animate him in place. He will walk a bit and then pick up a small object. This will get you familiar with thinking about how the body of our robot would move and counter-balance to get more life-like animation.
Homepage:
http://www.simply3dworld.com/movie_pages/tutorial.mhtml?tut_id=150
