Creating a reference image for Maya modelling

This week I ran into some troubles but it did give me a good time to think about what I really want to do for my final project.

After looking at many different job openings for animators I noticed that the vast majority of them require experience in modelling, rigging and animating all in Maya.

Over this week I've been switching between computers as I keep running into problems I've been practicing modelling in Maya. I've also been creating a set of reference images for model a goblin and in this blog post I'm going to explain how I did it.

Excuse my poor art skills but I did manage to create a goblin which will greatly help me when modelling.

I created the following reference image in photoshop.

The first thing I did was create the image you see in the bottom left, using rough sketching lines then going over the lines that fitted the best in a layer in front of the rough lines.

To get an accurate drawing of the goblin from the side I drew lines across to the right so I could get the height of the top of the head, facial features, ears arms and legs. This way I could make the parts of the goblin the same height from all angles.

To create the top view I drew a line on the left image going to the red line, which is the border of the image. I then could turn the image 90 degrees anticlockwise and using the line I could make sure the goblin was the same distance away from the border after it was turned.

Once it was turns I drew lines from the bottom left image and the top right image up and across to the top left image so I could line up all relevant features of the goblin.

I can create flat planes in maya to make part of a cube and start building the goblin within it, by pasting the top view, front view and side view on each of the planes and line my model up with the lines to hopefully create a good looking model which I can then smooth over.

I used this process I learned from an extremely helpful youtube channel which has Maya modelling and reference material creating guides.




I had a lot more fun that I thought I would have creating these reference images and I'm really looking forward to modelling this goblin.

The next week will be spent modelling this goblin using the reference images and I'll be using the video guides I found to help me. But as for the rigging, if I have too much trouble trying to do it I may use mixamo's auto-rigger.

For my final project I'm not sure about creating a goblin model and animation but I'm positive I'll be wanting to create models and animate them because of how much enjoyment I've had just creating a reference.

Here is the youtube channel which helped me figure out Maya and also helped me to create a set of reference images.

https://www.youtube.com/user/misterh3d/featured