Spring 2008
Ray Tracing Image in Maya
Original Aperture Drive Image
How was it made?
I used Maya 8.5 on Windows to create this graphic image. Since the Maya software has default texturing color (grey), I had to apply textures for cement, grass, and sky. Textures used from: XNA Textures WebsiteWhat it is?
This landscape is situated on the hill of the Aperture Drive, infront of the University of Lethbridge library.Background
Since I had no experience in using any of the graphics software, at first I was going to create this image in PovRay. So, I went through few tutorials and found them to be extremely time consuming. However, I did learn a great deal about how we can apply transormations, textures, arithmetic commands on basic shapes and reuse them to make something big like an object. A friend referred me to use the Maya software, in which we can simply drag and drop polygons (basic shapes) and easily move them around the 3D plane.Difficulty
Actually, it wasn't that easy as it sounded like since there were several properties in Maya that I had to be aware of. I spent lots of time on transforming the polygons to the correct place so that they would look more realistic in any perspective. My biggest challenge was to learn how to use the Maya software especially when applying textures, shadowing, and ligthing on these objects. I ran into the problem of shadows appearing everywhere because I was using two light sources. The ambient light (sun) to reflect on the sky so that it would appear lighter than my original texture, and another one explicitly to create the shadow. The resolution was that I turned off the option to create shadow from the ambiet light.Different Perspectives
Zoom-In View
Straight View
Angle View
Ground-Up View
