Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Maya - First attempt at a model

During the development of my project, I was interested in producing a weapon from Overwatch. This is because my game was planned to be a laser-tag game with a futuristic setting. I felt an gun from Overwatch would be suitable, as most weapons from the game have a futuristic design and feel.

I chose to model Mei's Endothermic Blaster, a beam type gun which fires shot-range streams of ice. I chose this design because I liked the bright colours and design of the weapon, and felt comfortable with a series of basic shapes I could have used.






To make the section above, I used a cylinder polygon which I rotated at an angle, added three divisions onto the central section, and extruded this out. This allowed me to create the extruded grey section. I added a second cylinder which I dragged through the center.



To make the section above, I started with a cube and I chose to manually adjust the position of the vertices. This is because I found this easier to produce and make the shape of this lower section by altering the vertices. I originally attempted to build this section using the Multi Cut tool, but I ended up getting some odd shapes and some faces went out of position.

This shows how I used the vertices to adjust the final shape. I would click and drag around the point, to access the front and back vertices, to keep the shape symmetrical.




To make the section above, I used two different shapes and tried to merge them together. I also used the bevel tool to allow me to create smooth edges, to make the corners look tidier. I used the boolean difference tool to allow me to produce the three rectangular gaps within the shape, as shown in the image below. I found this easiest to let me add gaps within existing objects, without breaking any other parts of the model. 





To produce the section above, I was required to add edge loops to allow me to add further edges into the cylinder. This allowed me to add the section with a red texture, as I ended up using the Extract tool to move the expand the faces out.



The above section felt a bit messy. It incorporate a large grey sphere, with the central section removed with a boolean difference of a sphere. I used a pipe tool to create the blue 'handle' shape which overlaps on top. However, I was experiencing issues during the development of this process, and ended up losing a section.

Textures used:
I used a series of Phong E textures to add to the design of the weapon. This was because they gave a metallic and reflective texture which is what I was looking for. I chose to use Phone E, instead of Blinn, because it renders quickly and uses less processing power.

At this stage, I chose to cancel development of this model, which I explain in the next blog post.

Final attempt: