Animation this year is far more interesting: 3D animation offers a whole new realm of possibilities. So far, we haven’t actually animated anything: we have just been working on designing things in 3D applications such as Maya and ZBrush.

Maya

Greek Temple

The first real 3D project we had in Maya was the Greek Temple. It was to practice using Maya and learning its interface—simple polygons, copy and paste, using various modes and learning the various views, etc.

Fire Hyrdrant

Our second project in Maya was creating a fire hydrant. We learned how to extrude faces, manipulate vertices, and use various other features Maya offered.

Weapon Modeling Part 1 – Maya

We were supposed to create melee weapons in Maya. I misunderstood, and created a laser rifle from an old anime I like, named Akira (from 1988!). This is the first project with colors.

Character

Our biggest project in Maya was creating our character base, which we will eventually animate. I chose the main character from Akira, Shotaro Kaneda, who at one point uses the rifle above (The Arasaka HLR-12X, where HLR stands for Heavy Laser Rifle). The character is headless, as we are making the head in Zbrush

ZBrush

The second 3D modeling software we used was ZBrush. Unlike Maya, which focused on lines and polygons, ZBrush creates objects in a much more organic form, where the user brushes on layers and molds them over and over again, similarly to creating something out of clay. When rendered out (in ZBrush), I chose a random reflective material, not accurate to what the actual material should be.

Skull

Our first project was to create a skull, human or otherwise. I created a mostly human skull,.

Head

Our second project in ZBrush was to create a head for our character. While it would have been cooler to make a monster, or at least unusual, head, to match my character body I created a rather normal head, albeit with anime proportions.