Maya was initially really difficult to pick up, and I feel this was because we were chucked into the deep end for our first lesson so I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all. However this was probably a good thing because it meant as the lessons continued I got more used to the program, plus with making new models out of class I started to understand the tools and learn more of them to progress my work further. I feel my outcomes for Maya are good, although all of them could do with progressing a bit further but for my first tries on the program they are up to a level I'm quite proud of.

Spaceship

The final spaceship I submitted definitely wasn't my original one made on the first day, in fact I went through about 4 different designs of spaceships until I got to the final one. I could never quite figure out how I wanted my spaceship to look, and I feel with more time for me to prepare and design one I could have produced a really cool spaceship. However I am happy with the one I created, it might be basic but I made it with ease meaning I've learnt how to use Maya so that makes me proud of it. If I could change anything on my final spaceship it would be the material, I would adapt it further and make it more complex making the spaceship seem more realistic than it is.

Asteroids

I feel my asteroids turned out okay, although the main one I'm using looks more like a potato at the top than an asteroid but thats fine. I definitely enjoyed creating the asteroids from two different shapes because it helped me see how the base of the model can affect how it turns out. I am happy with the one that started as a sphere, this is because the material goes on perfectly and it looks like an asteroid. However the asteroid created from a cuboid was terrible, it just seemed too square plus the edges had to be blurred when creating the material because of lines showing up.

Moon

Creating the moon was definitely the most fun, this was because we were introduced to a program called Sculptris which allowed us to mould a grey ball into the shape we liked. I played around with this a lot within lesson and out of lesson, this was because I never quite got a moon shape I liked as they all seemed a bit flat in the end. However I ended up going with the original moon I created which turned out okay. We also learnt about different transfer maps which was interesting, it meant we could adapt a basic sphere to look like it had bumps like the moon. If I were to improve on the moon any further I would make sure to make the craters and bumps a bit more prominent, plus work on a material for the top to make the craters really stand out.

UFO

The final model we made was the UFO, this was simple to do because all the aspects of Maya we were using we had used before. I did however have a bit of difficulty in the beginning of making the UFO because I had chosen the wrong type of sphere, however once this was sorted it took me a matter of seconds to get the UFO shape everyone else had. We also learnt how to animate using keyframes in this lesson which I found simple, it was just like key framing in After Effects. If I could change anything on my UFO it would be the little cone on the top, I would add in a sphere and combine the shapes to make a more rounded top.