University Project
My Roles: 3D Modeling and UV Mapping
Brief: Create an Indoor Space in Autodesk Maya with Interesting Lighting and Objects
I chose to create Arnold's room from the 90's cartoon, Hey Arnold. As a kid, I watched the cartoon all the time. Like most 90s-2000's kids, I wished to have a room exactly like his in the show. He lived in a fun house with skylights over his entire room, CD players, TVs, and foot holds on the walls. I was excited to model this room as the architecture seemed really interesting and fun to me.
Reference Photos
These are the reference photos I used to create the room. There were a few other Nickolodeon resources that showed more angles of the room, like the red couch that you can see in the far left photo, but I decided this angle was best as it had the most reference. I also discovered that trying to get references for an older show would prove to be more difficult that expected. I was able to find some really cool drawings from the animators though!
What Did I Learn from this Project?
From this project, I was able to develop my skills in creating large 3D builds. So far in my 3D journey, I had only made 1 3D object in its entirety, a Walkman, so this was a significant step up in difficulty.
In terms of concrete skills, I learned a lot about using reference images for environments, creating bendy wires, simulations (for fluffing up the pillow on the bed), more complicated UVs, and sky boxes.
If I had the chance to redo this project in the future, I would do the UVs for a single book and duplicate it afterward. Instead, I made the book and duplicated it for as many books appear in the scene. Then, I had to go back and do the UVs for each one. It wasn't too difficult to do but very tedious and a waste of time that I don't plan on doing again.
I also want to practice doing more irregular objects. Everything in the room was pretty simple shapes: cylinders, cubes, and spheres. I want to challenge myself to create more complicated objects too.
