Workshop 1- Part 1: Week of October 11th 2021

Workshop 1- Introduction to interface

I started by creating a cube and then reading the given PowerPoint on how to overserve all the prospective such as zooming, scrolling, spinning around the space so I can view the model I had created.

I then created other shapes such as pyramids, tea pots and cylinders.

The PowerPoint then prompted that we play with lights and camera angles. This confused me slightly so I will need to research this to see how it can help make my models look better.

The workshop then instructed that we change from standard primitives to extended primitives. I then played around with these and created a capsule, a hose and more.

I then learnt how to move these around.

I then followed the instructions to find a gizmo. This is a set of xyz co-ordinates that can be used to move the object around the space.

You can also rotate the object by selecting the “select and rotate” cursor. This moves on a similar gizmo.

To resize the shape the “select and scale” tool is handy as it can change the shape of the object depending on how it is scaled with the gizmo.

Uniform scale- dragging from the middle of the gizmo will make the object larger or smaller

To modify object sizes, you must click modify front the command panel which is found next to create. I Open up the Parameters rollout and changed the length and height of my object you and then typed in 500cm for the length, width and hight. I then changed the number of segments to 10 on each. However, in the standard view I could not see a change in segments, so I followed the instructions on the PowerPoint which said

“Select a viewing window (e.g., the Perspective) and in the top left corner you will see the window view information. If you Right-click there a pop-up menu appears. Select edge faces”.

By doing this the cube was then divided into 10 edge faces on each side. These were shown by a grid on the cube.

I was then prompted to create an object, so I will use the example of a blocky person as shown in the workshop.

I made the body out of spheres, a cube, and cylinders. It was fun, and I got to play around with parameters and using all four views so that item was lined up correctly. I also used the rotation gizmo to rotate the arms. The struggle I had with this was getting them to rotate on the same degree so I will need to investigate this.

My flatmate was able to help with rotations by looking at the numbers in the bottom. These were then flipped from negative to positive so both arms can be up.

Next, we had to understand polygons, so I created a sphere and viewed it in edged faces and converted it by right clicking and going to covert then convert to editable poly. I then selected the edit vertex under selection and was able to push and pull the point to make a face. This was not the best face but with practice this week I’m sure it will get better.

Over the next week and for part 2 of the workshop I need to review the lighting tools and practice messing with the vertex by pulling them in and out.