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Southern Alberta Picture

Starting Out:
When I began to think of what to model that would represent southern Alberta, a wind turbine came to mind, what better way to represent southern Alberta than with a wind turbine. So I began to model, and because I have a little experience with Maya (and I mean a little) it only took me about 20-30 minutes of modeling to create my wind turbine, so I decided to expand my 3d image to include a house and misc. trees, bushes and other organic material.

Difficulties:
The one of the most difficult part of the modeling process was using some PaintEffects with things like grass and leaves. Then I would have to say the software itself was extremely deep, with menus upon menus upon menus. Trying to figure you way around the interface and menus was half the battle. But with some tutorial videos and online resources, and program became less intimidating.

How I Modeled:
For the wind turbine it was mainly primitive objects that we deformed, except for the fins where i drew with a curve tool and used loft and planer to finish it. The house was built along with a video tutorial (see references) with mainly using NURBS curves. The Tree was imported and I added the leafs, and the grass was added using PaintEffects (within Maya).

What is the final image:
The final image is a southern Alberta secenery were a small house is on the foothill surrounded by wind turbines, also using background images to give the image more depth and realism.