Plane Model

For the plane model project I decided to go with the book's plane modeling tutorial. Here are two of the reference pictures used:

Here are some screenshots from that process:

For my major changes, I wasn't really sure if that was supposed to pertain only to the model or in general (as in do animations count). I'm not really that visually creative, so I could only think of simple changes to the model such as to the shading/texturing and in the proportions of the plane. Additionally, I added a sky background and animated the plane. I also added ambient lighting to imitate the light of the sun (since the playblast tends to look a bit drab). Unfortunately, the ambient lighting doesn't show up in the playblast, so check back later for a fully rendered animation. In my animation you can see the propeller spinning as well as flying motion from the plane. It rotates side to side and up and down. The background also moves to give the illusion of movement.

As for improvements to what I've done, first and foremost I need a fully rendered product. I had some issues with it where I wasn't sure if it was running into errors or taking a long time, and I ran out of time to figure it out. Additionally, when animating I wasn't anticipating how slow the playblast would be in comparison to how the animation looks in Maya (about half speed), so this animation is pretty boring because the plane is moving so slowly. I also would change the upward and downward motion of the plane because the movements are jerky and odd.

Solar System

This is the Playblast of the Solar System assignment as directed by the textbook:

My next step was to implement changes. The first thing I did was give the sun a texture to look sun-like. I gave Earth a texture to mimic waves, since the planet is blue because of water. I tried to give Jupiter and Mars more realistic textures, but they didn't turn out so great. Next, I adjusted the planets' orbits to scale to how far (in degrees) each planet moves over the course of two Earth years. Of course, the planets still move in a circular orbit rather than an elliptical one, so this isn't entirely accurate, but now, for example, Mercury makes 8 rotations around the sun in the time Earth makes 2 rotations. Finally, I adjusted each planet's individual rotation around its own axis. They are scaled to the course of 4 earth days.

Here is a video showing Jupiter's rotation around its own axis, as scaled to 4 Earth days:

Here is a video showing Mars's rotation around its own axis, as scaled to 4 earth days. Mars's days are only one hour longer than Earth's, so the rotational amount is comparable (I included a video of Mars rather than Earth for ease of visualization).

This is my final product: