PROJECT 1
9/16/2025
In this project, I explored Maya's principled rendering tools alongside the tutorial provided in Derakshani's tutorial. Using Maya's Arnold aiStandardSurface shader, I created a physically accurate and normal mapped Earth and Moon. First, I applied a color map and normal map I got from NASA to my Earth sphere.
Next, I created a slightly larger sphere and used a cloud texture to animate clouds. I used the aiStandardSurface shader again with some subsurface to represent the clouds.
Finally, I created a larger sphere to represent the atmosphere. To make the gradient of the atmosphere, I used a color ramp.
Finally, I animated a close up of the Moon coming out from behind the Earth into light, inspired by a scene from the original Star Wars. Below is my original animation from the tutorial.
PROJECT 2
9/30/2025
In this project, I explored Maya's modeling tools to model a treasure chest. I also used Blender to render my turntable animation because I already have a setup in Blender.
First, I gathered reference images from the internet of the shape and textures I wanted for my chest.
Then, I blocked out the shape with a cube and cylinder. Using mainly the extrude tool, I modeled the shape of the chest. Then, I created a texture atlas from a wood and metal texture. Using that texture atlas, I UV unrwapped my chest to properly utilize the materials.
PROJECT 2
9/30/2025
In this project, I used the 12 principles of animation from Disney to create a bouncing ball animation.
First, I used the principle of squash and stretch to exaggerate the effect of my ball bouncing. I used the Maya squash and stretch controller to animate my ball squashing and stretching.
Then, I used the principle of staging to suprise the viewer with the trash can at the end. The viewer can't see the trash can that the ball is about to fall into until it already is about to fall in, creating a nice little suprise.
Finally, I used the principle of secondary action to add life to the hand trying to grab the ball. As the hand tries to grab the ball, the fingers grasp at the ball despite it not being there.
These are the resources I used for this project:
I storyboarded all of my animation before animating it. Here is the storyboard:
