First assessment in 3D Literacy

The first big task that would be assessed is to model a 3D object with textures/materials. The objects we were supposed to model were given to us on Trello, on the assessments sheet. Because none of the objects really spoke to me besides the windmill, maybe, I wanted to go in my own direction and keeping with the theme of mainly antique objects, I decided on an antique car - a horseless carriage. The obvious choice for me was the Ford Model T from 1908. I started out by eyeballing it, just looked at some reference images and just went for it with no guidance. Here's how far that got me:

Of course everything was out of proportion, i had no idea how i would do the doors, the interior, the fenders and side steps....

Lucky for me, my tutor showed me how to import a plain with an image into Maya so I could use images and photos as a guide to at the very least get the proportions of the car right.

From this point on i just kept on trucking. Modelling the car after the guide, trying to keep it fairly simple so i could later texture it, which turned out to be a beast of its own.

As soon as it started looking like a car, I was already so excited that it's all coming together. I tried to keep it as low poly as i could because I want to at some point use it in an actual animation, once we start figuring that out in our animated narratives class.

As soon as it came together and i added the roof, and the smaller details such as the pedals and steering wheel and the handbrake lever, it already looked fantastic. Still had no idea how i would even go about texturing this or adding materials or even just basic colors.

I made some basic texture maps in Photoshop using royalty free textures or photos I could find online, or just plain colors in Maya, for the headlights i added a glass effect using aiStandardSurface. Now that I am writing this i realize i should add the same material to the windshield, as right now the windshield frame sits empty.

When it all started coming together, i found out how to automatically unwrap some of the UV texture map thingies for the objects which helped a ton with keeping the textures in the correct proportion/aspect ratio on each surface, which really made the leather benches and the slightly grainy paint texture look fine, as well as the gold and wood trim on parts of the vehicle. Then I found tutorials on youtube that explained how to use Arnold a bit, so I decided to get my first previews of how this would look when finished.

Final update on this project coming soon!