Reflection for week 2


For week 2 Lab 1 exercise 1, it was quite fun and interesting. For the exercise 1,modeling wooden blocks, it was quite manageable. I was able to follow the instructions well and learnt new things like beveling, splitting the polygon, using the align tool and cutting the shapes with booleans>difference. I do not really understand the deleting node part and make live part. Something useful i learnt was to show and hide objects which helped me to work much easier as I'm able to see better. I repeated this exercise a few times and was able to do beveling quite well already.

Thanks to exercise 1, exercise 2 wasn't a problem. To create the train, it just requires a lot of thinking and exploration to know what polygons to use. There were a lot of beveling and i learnt how to use different kind of width. i can say that i have masters booleans and beveling through this exercise. I am looking forward to more of this but hope it could be clearer. I want to get maya on my fingertips. The train was the best i had ever created. I even put it up on my Facebook page.

For the Gear Exercise, i learnt how to select and unselect things using the shift and ctrl key. I learnt to check all the other faces too after selecting a certain face because the other side maybe selected accidentally. I also learn the extrude tool. Changing the size of the square before protruding it out so that it will look nice. It was really cool and amazing how a pipe polygon can turn into a gear. I love the part when i extrude all the sides out together.

For week 2 Lab 2 exercise 1, it was really very challenging. I had to really look closely at the instructions and the pictures if not i can never get it right. I repeated this countless of times cause i keep doing wrongly and halfway here and there. I learnt how to use face, the extrude tool, pick walking, and the most challenging one, pivot tool. It took me really long to figure out what was that. First i had to press the insert key which i do not have on my keyboard. Manage to find out what's another button for mac and changed the rotate tool to the pivot tool. But i was still not able to know what to do. Until finally  when i rotate the flap down, it wasn't rotated nicely and i know what it means already. The pivot had to be there. The most confusing part was when i had to select all the necessary edges. The instruction was not even clear and the image was useless. Manage to solve it myself. Something new i learn to was the move tool> set to face. It let us create jagged stuffs.

As usual again thanks to exercise 1, exercise 2 was a little easier? IT was still really challenging because of the extracting of the torn part. It wasn't taught in exercise 1. Had to really experiment it to get it right. One thing i regret was using the split polygon tool and split the polygon too much. The reasons was because after that i had to make the jagged jagged part which was really a lot to do. It was really tedious. The gear exercise helped me by teaching me to make sure when choosing faces the correct ones are chosen and no other vertices were chosen. It is important to rotate around and check first before proceeding or else it will not turn out right. i'm actually starting to enjoy maya.