Fuckin' Chairs, How Do They Work?!?!

So, I made a chair in Maya.



I've been using tutorials on Youtube to re-learn how to use a 3D modeling program, and it's weird how many things are coming back to me. Like at on point, the dude I was listening to/watching said "don't forget to set the group to center pivot!" and I had a flashback of one of my teachers from a few years ago saying the same thing in her distinctive, high-pitched voice and accent.

I'm also remembering the things that screwed me up last time around: Things like how important it is to work in the center of the ground plane. Objects being in the center mean that you can scale and duplicate them easily. If you work all messy like I tend to, duplication is a matter of guesswork and frustration. The really kickass thing about 3D modeling as opposed to digital painting is duplication. You spend hours working on a spaceship engine, for instance, and you spend two seconds duplicating it a half-dozen times when it's done.

This chair is made of stretched cubes, and none of the edges are trimmed to fit properly; they're all just mushed together, so I still have a ways to go. On the plus side, getting to patio chair level skill took me a few weeks last time around, so I guess I'm ahead of the game.