3D Modelling - Introduction to Maya & Building a Spaceship

Maya and unity very much work together when creating games, and models for a game. Because there is this connection between them, our objective in our 3D modelling lessons is to create space themed models,  which we can use in our game that we are creating in unity.

The easiest way to create a shape that can be easily manipulated and then UV mapped, is starting off with a cube, and shaping this cube into the shape you want. The tools on maya are very flexible. You can select faces. edges or vertex's on the cube which can be moved to manipulate the cubes shape in many ways.

Using the extrude tool, I managed to formulate different shapes coming off from this one cube. I did not follow a particular idea to how I wanted my ship to look, I mainly wanted to just experiment with each tool and become more comfortable with Maya. Compared to unity I find maya slightly more challenging, however after more use I think I will be able to get used to it.

After I have created the basic shape of my spaceship, I UV mapped it which allowed each face to be laid out onto a flat surface, ready for textures to be added. I added my textures using photoshop, where I coloured each part of the ship using the brush tool, and then added a metallic texture. I then exported the image, and added it to my 3D model using a blinn.

Over all considering I had never used software like this before, I was fairly happy with my outcome, however I felt it looked more like a bird than a spaceship, so I have a lot of improving to do before I can create a model suitable for my game.