Tutorials

I've been spending some time learning techniques on blocking out in Maya such as creating a 'snapping reference'. This technique acts as a guide for properly scaling and sizing objects or 'modules' in your scene. I've been using the 'snap to vertex' feature a lot in Maya and I've also created a square plane and divided the polygon diagonally to create perfect 45 degree angles which I used to adjust my doors. Furthermore, I also learned about the 'golden ratio' (1.618) which is commonly used in architecture and applied that to the scaling of my doors. 

I've found a new course on digitaltutors.com which is titled: Urban Environment Creation in Maya. That's not to say that the tutorials I'm currently using are now redundant but this particular new learning path is more relevant to my end goal for this module. The tutorials look at building an urban environment and cover everything from blocking out to UV mapping and texturing. 

I've been looking into an art style I wish to pursue for my project and my interest lies in Studio Ghibli's work who worked on a game called Ni No Kuni with Level 5 and Namco Bandi. I had a look for some images on Google and I've found a few that are of relevance to my city-based environment that I'll be building. 

Ni No Kuni Images

I'm going to spend the rest of my week going through all 48 videos of the Urban Environment tutorials so that I'll be confident in modelling my own city. My next post will probably talk about what I've learned from the tutorials and I'll show a screen dump/render of my finished urban environment. I'm starting to think that I'm spending far too much time on tutorials but I feel that it will be worth it in the long run when I have developed the skills necessary for making my own city smoothly without getting stuck and having to look up solutions. 

Thanks for reading, 

Gavin