Week 4 Class Practical: Part 3 - Reference Images & Chess Piece

Part 3 of these weeks practical involves using a reference image, curves and the revolve tool to create a model of a chess piece. Using reference images is a useful way of ensuring that the model you're making is accurate to it's source. Inserting this reference into maya requires me to switch the view to the 4 window view, so I can see what I'm doing from multiple angles at once. To switch to this view you just press the space bar while in the viewport. Once in this view mode, we can import our reference images by clicking on the "View" option in the window for the perspective we want to load the image into. Once in this menu we have to select "Image Plane" and "Import Image". In this instance, I will be only be loading my reference image into the front viewport, however you can import different images for each viewport if you want to have a more detailed reference point for you model.

Using this reference image I will first create a curve around the pawn chess piece that I can then revolve into a complete model. This time around I tried using the "EP Curve Tool". This tool allowed me to plot points that would automatically join up and create a curve as I was plotting them. It seems very useful when working off of reference images.

Once I had created a curve, I ran into a problem when trying to revolve it. With the wine glass, the size of the glass made sense when revolved, however for the chess piece it ended up looking more like a circle outline as shown below.

I stumbled across the solution to my problem earlier on, when trying to move my wine glass from earlier. If I move the curve object along it's different axis, the shape doesn't move like normal while in curve modelling mode. Instead, the object created from the curve starts to close in on itself, creating a much tighter shape like the one I was after in my reference image. Below are pictures of the completed pawn chess piece. I feel that through this exercise I have learned a lot about how to utilise the revolve tool.

The only part of this model I am not sure about is a small hole at the top and the bottom of the model where it doesn't connect up perfectly. I have managed to fix this by selecting the parts around the holes using the "hull" selection mode and scaling them in so they are joined together. I will ask my tutor in my next practical if this is the correct way to go about fixing this problem or if there is something more simple that I'm missing when revolving the curve.