Maya Tutorial Egg Cups

NURBS cup (far left), Rough Polygon cup (centre left), Sub-divided Polygon cup (centre right), Smoothed Polygon cup (far right)

I'm pleased with my first practice with Maya, though I recommend completing it in the course room, and not having a go on it on your own like me. It was really challenging without having someone there to guide me along as I did make a lot of mistakes, but Alan's tutorial helped teach me about the vital to know components of this software. 

The most challenging was creating the NURBS cup (Non-Uniform Rational basis spline) as it depended my skills to construct and shape without creating lopsided areas. I had trouble in creating a neat shape because it was slightly more difficult to snap to the grid using my own computer, so being a good reason to work it out on the Universities computers first. I had to find alternate ways to work around the problem.

The three polygon were created from a single polygon cylinder with limited axis divisions, meaning having less curve to it and more of a block shape. I tried to model it after the fist NURBS cup, though I didn't get the proportions quite the same, constructing the cup using polygons was a neater as it mostly involved manipulating the edge loops of the object. The sub-divided cup and the smoothed cup were made to represent the difference between the computer automatically calculate the smoothed edges and the smoothed cup, which allowed to physically smooth it by creating as many division levels as I wanted.

A representation of the division count

Side view to display the hollowed centre of the egg cups