Study Task 1: Truck Modeling Exercise

Before starting to model trucks for our first study task,  we were reminded to create a project folder for Maya to use as we created our trucks. It is important that we don't move/mess with/lose this folder as the program works directly from it.

The first thing to do to make the truck was to create a cube as the starting shape. I turned interactive creation off because it is faster otherwise and I don't have to worry about getting my shape into proportion. I could just drag it out and scale the cube up from the centre of the grid and begin molding it. I had to insert edge loops before starting properly to give the head of my truck enough section so that moving particular edges would give me the right shape. I then used freeze transformations and deleted the history to get rid of any unnecessary information that Maya was storing.

After getting the shape of the first part of the truck right, I then created a new object to make as the back part of the cab. I could have used more edge loops to extrude another shape out of the front part, but this would have made the geometry of the object more complicated than it needs to be, and I would have to add extra edge loops to move the vertices of the back part inwards to make the slight gap on either side of the edges.

I think clicked on the two back edges of the shape and used the bevel tool to give it the curve needed. However, this only split it into a few segments, and I needed more than that to make the rear round enough, so I changed to segment value in the input box to '4' to give it a rounded enough edge.

I made another object for the chassis and used bevel again to get the shape right for it

 and attached that to the bottom of my object.

For the next I object I needed to make, I used a cylinder to become the front axle and rotated it so that it was in the right position for the rest of the truck. I used the same method to make the wheels and to stick them onto the axle. Using Ctrl + D, I duplicated them to use as the back set, which saves me time and makes sure that my objects are the same size and shape. I made sure to name these objects in the Outliner box for easier organisation.

I used Freeze Transformations and Delete History again on the object since it was close to finished, and then used the same methods as above to start on the rear part of the truck.

After using the same methods, I made the back half of the truck and put it in place. The second half went much quicker since I knew what the functions were and how to make the shapes. I found this task fun, and I would definitely like to try to do more complicated models in the future. I know how to make rounded shapes and how to make objects the right scale and shapes so experimenting with more complicated shapes and combinations of shapes would probably be good practice for me.