To make my terrain I got plane and made the surface bumpy and uneven with the transform tool. To make the water I got another plane and applied the ocean shader. I then found an image to use as the terrain’s texture, I gave it a pink tone to emphasis its otherworldliness. Much like my terrain the whole modelling process started off smoothly and gradually got bumpier.
For my fountain there were numerous options to do a liquid simulation, I decided to find one that my laptop would be able to handle. I went to curves, selected the ep curve and 3 cubic curve degree. I then went to surfaces >revolve.
But when I went to press ‘revolve’ this happened.
I eventually got a shape I was happy with, but it was black, I tried flipping the mesh and adding an ocean shader but to no avail. I found out that using the side view and aligning the curve being drawn to the central part of the y axis was integral to getting the shape I wanted. I also had to convert it to a polygon then reverse the mesh.
It was fairly hard to place the fountain since its quite big, and my terrain’s very uneven, everywhere I placed it parts of it would be buried in the ground. To overcome this I went to the sculpting tools and used the flattening tool to flatten the land before I put my fountain on it.
I also got confused when the Torus which would function as a ring around a planet was too transparent no matter how much I changed its settings. I then found it it would render differently and look how I intended it to.
I encountered another problem when I wanted to put lightning between two shapes I modelled to function as lanterns/heaters. However the lightning would form in a strange way, it would curve out instead of being contained within the perimeter of the shapes.
After further research I concluded that this happened because of the irregularity of the shape. To overcome this I made two ‘dummy’ cubes and hid them inside the objects to get the lightning effect I wanted.
Another problem I had occurred while trying to model a bench curved like a C. No matter which way I rotated it, it would not bend in the way I intended. Apparently this was a lost cause, as Maya ’s bend tool is a bit outdated.
The largest problem I encountered was when I was modelling the bridge was when I was trying to align both parts. My mistake lied in the fact I made one half of my bridge curved, then copied and pasted the other half. No matter what the two pieces couldn’t align.
Therefore to get around this I simply rotated the other half of the bridge so they were identically positioned. It didn’t look the best but still worked.
All in all, the process went well and I learned plenty. I realised that I don’t have to rely on tutorials as I can work things out for myself – and learn better if I do so. Next time I think I will focus more on modelling high quality, detailed models rather than trying to make as many as possible. Doing things this way would introduce me to more tools and techniques, as at the moment it feels as if I am merely scratching the surface when it comes to Maya’s capacity.