Wow...

For the past 12 hours or so iv been in a constant battle with maya trying to make a guitar (we'll get to that later though), However at some point along the line of frustration and near madness, i discovered one of the crucial bits that i had been unable to find the other day in order to complete my screwdriver. So i saved my progress on the guitar and re-opened my screwdriver file, ready to see what surprises maya had for me at the end of this tutorial. I was not dissapointed.

Iv developed a new kind of respect for this annoying program. Frustrating as it is at most times, i cant help but stare in awe at the power it just unleashed before me. The Image Based Lighting function. From what i understand, this function enables the user to input a high resolution photograph into the 3D environment, and then from this image, maya calculates the lighting values given off by the surroundings made by the image. It took me about 7 minutes to render.

It literally takes one click of a button to get from this...

To This...

Just Wow. Well done maya developers. I salute you for this amazingly powerful function you have bestowed upon us.

So anyway i would highly recommend anyone on computer arts to give this tutorial a go:

http://www.creativecrash.com/tutorials/how-to-model-a-screwdriver-and-render-it-with-mental-ray#tabs

At the time i didnt notice that the readership level was "advanced" but i think thats entirely due to the last bit about the image based lighting. It took me something rediculous like 2 or 3 hours to find the right menus and such for that part but now that i know them it would only take minutes, so if anyone needs a bit of help to find them just ask. The making of the screwdriver is simple enough yet very well worth your while for learning a few good techniques

As for my guitar heres a few photos of how its coming along.

The body was made from a cuboid, where i set a quite large number of subdivisions and then scling those i changed the shape.

At this point i tried something that didnt turn out as planned, but the result looked quite cool anyway i thought.

After that i used a cylinder and booleaned it to make the sound hole, and then duplicated the body, scaled it down a fraction, and booleaned that as well to make the guitar hollow.

I then created the neck from a long cuboid merged with a half cylinder, this bit posed the most problems as maya started to act up and do some pretty strange and illogical things. But hopefully ill get back to it in a bit and itll work out.

So thats my work in progress, at this rate i could expect myself to be decent at 3D modelling on maya by the time my glasses arrive and i can draw properly again!