Train practice

The first post to this blog demonstrates practice in Maya. In class I began to try to make a replica model of a toy train set in Maya, but when I left, I felt I needed to re-make this. To start with I tried to understand how many parts this train consists of, I made the markings of: 4 x Wheels 1 x Engine 1 x Train base (Under the engine) 1 x Chimney 1 x Compartment for train drivers 1 x roof (Alongside the compartment) 1 x Form of linkage between train and carrier 3 x Blocks in the carrier (Varied colour perhaps) --------------------------------- The simplest way to start this was to start on the engine of the train, for me this meant I had a central piece to place the other parts upon, such as the wheels and the compartment. I started off with two rectangles, both the same width and length, but the top (The engine), taller, so that it stands out:

I placed both together, but the top half was still rectangular, in the picture, it is smoothed. My problem was smoothing the engine on the train, after the class we did a few weeks ago, I was wrapping my head trying to remember how to smooth, but since I had fogotten, I decided the best thing to do was play around with UV on the top of the engine. After looking through 'Mesh' I found something called 'Insert Edge loop'. This let me add more vertex's to the train engine, so when I went to 'Mesh > Smooth' I could choose which parts to smooth:

Using this tool, I clicked to see what would happen after looking through the different things I could smooth out and surprisingly I got as close as I can at this time to a smooth train engine! (Even if it did have some wierd Vertex's and it ended up looking like a swiss roll):

The next step were the wheels, since this is a work in progress, I decided to make a basic train model, then study some tutorials in colouring textures as well as refinement to make it seem more real, for instance, smoothing properly, scaling properly and shortcuts. With the wheels I made a Polygon sphere and duplicated it four times. After this I clicked on them all and scaled them to the size I felt appropriate all at the same time, instead of the tedious task of going through the x,y,z translation in the channel box and editing them to be the same as each other. After this, I rotated them and attatched them to the side of the train engine, when I rotated them I made sure I rotated them all at once, and when I attatched them to the side of the enginge, each set of two had the axis apart from the X axis, which placed them on either side of the engine.

Once the wheels were set into place the compartment came next! I made another polygon cube and made it tall, I also played around with length and width, not making it too complicated, but I went with what I believe it looked like in its similarity to the picture, it is not overly long, but it is tall, however it must be the right height as to accomodate the roof without it being too tall in the Y axis.

I then realised a problem halfway through, the engine is suppose to be in front of the back wheels and the compartment is suppose to be joined with the engine, this is where the wheel goes in the picture (Practice makes perfect):

Finally, to finish my basic train model, I made a polygon cone for the chimney. I placed it on the front of the engine, near the centre to finish off the basic look of my train.

Now comes the carrier, linked to the back of the train. I started off with a basic polygon cube, and I made it the same width as the train engine, that way I could just simply duplicate the wheels and transfer them over, it makes building the train faster and more efficient, as in lectures we were told efficiency and handling of time was an important factor in the industry we are going into.

In order to add some depth inside the carrier, I used the insert edge loop tool to create the faces I wanted to make a hole with, and once I had created that, I used the soft modification tool to bring the middle down and the outside faces up, so that the cubes inside have a place to be, but the cubes would not fall out of the train.

I then found that when I rotated them all, they moved individually, so I went to Mesh and found 'Combine', this combined all of the selected pieces together, so that I could rotate both my train as well as my carrier individually, but with all of their parts moving together, this made positioning the models so much easier.

Once I had positioned the train the ast thing to do in order to make the basic model complete was to make the chain between the train and the carrier. The torus was the best polygon to use, so I made one very thin and small, duplicated this, then rotated them to make the metalic rings.

In the screenshot above you can also see I added two polygon pipes to the back of both the train and the carrier. I remember seeing such things attatched to my toys when I was a child, and looking at a friends blog, (whom made a very realistic looking chain : 'Highrulesgreatest.blogspot.uk') I decided this would be some good practice to make something either more complicated or to try to see how mine differs from my colleague, how ours differ in terms of look as well as how natural they look in comparrison (Since I am starting out Maya, not very in this scenario). At the end of this practice session I have made both the train and the carrier with their associated pieces (The blocks and the chain). The next step is adding colour to the piece.