Maya Vs Blender

Hello everyone, over the past few days i have been trying out two different 3D modelling software's and have come to a conclusion on which software to use, now the two i had a choice of using where Maya made by Autodesk its professional, industry standard and used by all the big companies and in the other corner there was Blender a open source bit of kit that was just as good as the professional stuff and didn't cost a penny. "Hurray for open source software!"


Now lets have a lookie at these two programs in some detail:
Maya:
So made by a company called Autodesk who make lots of other bits of software useful for creating 3D models etc, and all the software can interact with each other so for example i could create something in Autodesk Maya and export that to another Autodesk product for example 3DS MAX where i can edit it some more with different features, this is one of their biggest selling points because Autodesk have a lot of products as a animator, 3D artist etc you are spoiled for choice and have a lot of tools at your disposal. Now the catch with Autodesk products "Surely there has to be one?!" if you go to their official website which shows all their products and take a quick look at the price for their software manly Maya you may have a small heart attack (See Below WARNING THIS MAY CAUSE YOUR WALLET TO SHUDDER)

3,050 pounds WTF!!!!!!!!!! DUDE

As you can see that's bloody awful and not cheap at all,all right for big companies who have huge amounts of money to spend on company licenses so they do work out a bit cheaper but still expensive to them that's nothing, but to a young up and coming animator, 3D modeller 3,050 pounds is a hell of a lot of money and this day and age something a lot of people wont be able to just go out and buy its far to expensive.
But fear not behind the big shitty company known as Autodesk they do actually care about people and students so if you are a student you can actually apply and get free student editions of all their software which is totally the same as the normal versions expect it cannot be used for commercial purposes and if they find out it has been they will hunt you down and gut you like a fish "True story" On a slightly more pleasant note if your wondering why its called Maya its named after a Sanskrit word by the same name and is the Hindu concept of illusion which is quite funny when you think about it because the big illusion is that you think its gonna be priced reasonably then BOOM 3000 pounds please.

So long story short i got the student license played around with it for a few days and came to the conclusion its very very hard to learn at first the interface although being customizable there is alot of stuff going on, lots of buttons,bars and all sorts which for a beginner coming into it can be a bit overwhelming to say the least, so i stopped a went off to have a lookie at Blender before i made my decision on which software to use.


Blender:
Now this made me happy, after searching around for the official site and looking at things people have made in it i was blown away not only was Blender 100% free it was just as powerful as Maya is and you can produce totally the same results also being open source its always getting updated, bug fixes etc more than Maya does because its made by a big company and it takes them months to patch things, also Blenders user forums and help sections and support are much much better than Autodesk's support. After installing Blender i start mucking about it in a found its interface to be alot less confusing than Mayas and a lot more user friendly.


After somemore searching a came across a very very helpful website called Blender cookie with i started using to help me and teach my how to use blender, it was then that i finally decided to use Blender instead of Maya manly because 1. its free, 2. there are lots tutorials a help guides out there for it, 3.open source so its free and updates are frequent 4. no license so you can use it for commercial work as well as personal work 5. much more beginner friendly than Maya. I strongly urge any other beginners out there to give Blender a go its much easier and simple to use and work with for a beginner than Maya is i cant wait to start making advanced things in it! :D  

<3

Till next time.

Sources used:

http://best3dmodelingsoftwares.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/blender_logo.png

Polygons & Nurbs and other such animation sorcery

Hello everyone, after setting up the wonderful blog your are currently chilling on i went back to research into 3D modelling as this is going to be the first skill i need to learn to actually create the final model well looking things up and finding things out i came across two different things using in 3D modelling these are Polygons and Nurbs, now you may know what a polygon is but i hear you cry "WHAT THE HELL IS A NURB!" I had no clue until about 10 minutes ago allow me to tell you lovely people out there what the hell a nurb is and what a polygon is and comparisons between them.


Polygons


You all may know about these they pop up in maths a lot, so a polygon is made up of the following things....

-Vertices
-Edges
-Faces
-UVs

So if you haven't caught on by now a "Square" or "Triangle" or a "Pentagon" I could go on forever but i am sure you understand. "Well I say I could go on forever but I would start running out of shapes -_-"

And with that in mind you can use these to model with called "Polygon modelling" heres the quote taken directly from Maya's user guide on polygon modelling, "Polygons are straight-sided shapes (3 or more sides), defined by three-dimensional points (vertices) and the straight lines that connect them (edges). The interior region of the polygon is called the face. Vertices, edges, and faces are the basic components of polygons. You select and modify polygons using these basic components" - Maya user guide

So a polygon model is made up of all faces of the polygons and when you connect enough of them you end up with a polygon mesh kinda like this....

Creepy right.....

As you can see the faces of the polygons can be seen pretty clearly on the mesh, the mesh gives the model a base. The modeller can also set divisions, divisions are the amount of faces on a model or mesh etc. and basically the higher the division number the higher the amount of faces the smoother the model looks heres a useful image that's in the Maya user guide:

The middle sphere is more blocky looking than the higher division spheres.

Nurbs

Just like polygons, Nurbs are also used in 3D modelling after some digging though ye old guide i came across the meaning of the word Nurb turns out it stands for (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) and is used to create 3D curves "Hmmm curvy ;)"  "NURBS are useful for constructing many types of organic 3D forms because of the smooth and minimal nature of the curves they use to construct surfaces. NURBS surface types are widely used in the fields of animation, games, scientific visualization, and industrial design." - Maya user guide

Ah so smooth and curvy kinda want a doughnut now.....

And heres one more picture showing how smooth nurb models are to their polygon brothers heres the same model made one with polygons and one with nurbs.

And of course not just models Nurbs are also used to create wonderful geometry scenes so you can create pretty looking hills and mountains Maya has a useful tool called soft selection which lets you bend the Nurb mesh fluidly and naturely allowing the modeller to create nice landscapes.

Cool hill bro needs more trees and stuff

And that's, that for this post Nurbs and Polygons and all sorts we are learning fast right xD next time... well I am not sure what next whatever I start looking at just expect another post whenever :)

Till Next time.

P.S Because I used sources that were not mine in this post i need to credit them or the scary examiners could fail me for plagiarism so this section below is to keep them happy you don't really have to read it but if you want knock yourselves out.


Sources used in this post:
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/images/comp_snap01.png
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/images/comp_poly_primSUBDIVdefX.png
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/images/GUID-F60A5CAC-898C-491F-8F7B-3BEECBA7E8DF-low.png
http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/Polygons_To_NURBS/1.jpg
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/images/GUID-8B5CB835-D6EF-4767-B425-B5F911A13560-low.png
And finally the very very useful Maya 2013 user guide itself
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/

Introductions....

Well hello there, as you can see from the small description under the title of the blog, this is going to be a blog to track my progress during my time on the EPQ course. For those people out there that don't know EPQ stands for "Extended Project Qualification" and is a A-level course my college runs in which you need to complete a project on a subject of your choice it could be anything you wanted as long as you can put a title to it your good!


So i choose to do animation and 3D modelling because its what i want to do at university and its what i want to do as a future career more focused around games than animated films. At the moment i am not too sure how often this blog will be updated but it will be regularly as i am working on my project over the summer holidays so i have plenty of time to work on it. "I say that now but two months is going to fly past! :L" I will posting new stuff i make with screenshots i will explain it and how i learnt it so maybe you guys/gals out there that want to become animators and 3D artists can learn as well we can learn together! :D 


I also suppose i better tell you all why i wanted to become an animator, well for starts i love games, they are wonderful i grew up playing them and still play them to this day, they are one of the ultimate forms of media the player can lose themselves in this created world and become one and really get lost in the sometimes magical and wonderful story's that games bring.
I decided animation and modelling because this is what everyone sees when they play a game they don't see the code and the other things that make up the game they see the models, the characters I wanted my work to be seen by the masses and I wanted to create these wonderful characters that hopefully the player can relate to and form a bond with.


I finally knew i wanted to be an animator when I got a game called "Kingdom Hearts 2" on the Ps2 when I was younger and I watched the opening cut scene to the game and it was just so well animated I wanted to do what they did "Heres the opening to the game if any of you wanted to see it, its pretty epic!!" 

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

Till next time.