Project 1 Help Session : Modeling

Most of what you need to know for the first assignment you will learn from Learning Alias, the Introduction, Modeling Basics, and Lessons 2-8. There is a copy of the relevant sections associated with each machine in the lab. Please leave these in the lab.

You should absolutely, definitely, without-a-doubt do (most of) these lessons before starting on your own models. You will gain an intuition for how long modeling takes and for choosing the appropriate tool to use for each component of your model. The tutorials hold your hand all the way through. You may want to stop following the step-by-step at some point in each lesson, if you find yourself numbly following instructions.

One change

The tutorials in the book assume that you have your own personal copy of the CourseWare directory, which holds provided models. Instead, you will have access to a global copy, which means that you won't have write permission in the directory. Before starting Lesson 2, make a new project as follows:

  1. choose File->Retrieve
  2. using the diagonal arrow in the upper left, move up to the user_data directory
  3. choose Project->New Project (this menu is camouflaged as a button in the lower right)
  4. double-click on the new_project directory and rename it something informative (tutorials, perhaps)
When you want to save wireframe models, rendered images, etc., put them in this new directory. When you want to load in provided models, get them from the CourseWare directory.
Your models

For this first assignment, think stylized. Make the bare-bones shapes first and add details on later. Don't get depressed if you have to simplify quite a bit. This is a good exercise in extracting the most important pieces of an object, and you can always add detail later. Plus, remember that modeling is really hard. Don't get depressed by the result of quick rendering in Alias blue, either. Shaders make all the difference.