Introducing Maya® 2008

ABOVE: This model of a deer man was created by Caitlin Blackwell for a class at Piedmont Commu-

nity College. She created the character in the standard pose for later rigging. The character is a single

surface made with polygons, and it will make an interesting animation rig!

BELOW: This piece called Janitors Thru Time is a group animation project at The Art Institute of Cali-

fornia–Los Angeles. The project uses a group of talented students (the Red Giant Production team) to

create the characters and animate this short story about janitors. All the work was done through Maya

over the course of two quarters at the school.

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ABOVE: Lei Yun of the University of Southern California created this train

scene as his final project for his first class on Maya. Interested in modeling and

rigging, the train presented a great project for him, because it allowed him to

focus on modeling the engine and cars for the train as well as create an anima-

tion of the train speeding down its track.

BELOW: This wide shot shows you the entire engine of the train Lei created for

his class. He animated the train along a track and created a fly-by camera move

to show off the model in his animation.

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ABOVE: Emily Fox drew her design for this loft space first on paper and then pro-

ceeded to model it in polygons. She then lit the scene with indirect lighting in mind

for the rendering. She rendered the scene with Final Gather for the indirect lighting

through mental ray for Maya for her Advanced Lighting and Texturing course at The

Art Institute of California–Los Angeles.

BELOW: Isaac Dettman also of The Art Institute designed this museum and rendered

this view into the entrance for the same Advanced Lighting and Texturing course. His

use of raytraced reflections in the ground surface denotes a glossy marble material,

adding a sense of richness to the design.

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ABOVE: Joseph Macha created this character for his Character Modeling course at The

Art Institute of California–Los Angeles. The head was constructed from curves that were

revolved into NURBS patches. Joseph remained in NURBS for the majority of the sculpt-

ing stage and then sewed it up into Poly. For the body, Joseph utilized a MEL script known

as XY ShrinkWrap to remesh various parts of a body scan, and he finished by customizing

the forms for the character in Poly mode.

BELOW: A detail render of the face of Joseph’s character reveals the amount of time and

effort undertaken with this model.

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ABOVE: Amor Santos of The Art Institute of California–Los Angeles created

this Subway model for his Advanced Lighting and Texturing course. This is a

seemingly sparse model, because he wanted to focus on creating textures for

it. He started off by gathering subway images for reference and sketching some

concept art, and then he modeled and lit the scene with some basic lights.

BELOW: Textured, the subway model takes on a whole new life. These images

are a perfect example of how much textures can add detail to a model. Amor

spent the most time texturing the subway and adding a lot of dirt in the right

places to emulate subway grime. After completing the textures, he tweaked the

lights making sure to achieve that dreary subway sort of feel.

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