Making of “The Tunnel” in Maya and Photoshop – Day 1

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a fantastic tunnel scene in Maya, and then add some final lighting touches in Photoshop. You will follow Abed Ibrahim through his process of modeling, texturing, shading, and rendering techniques, and finally arrive at the spectacular result that is shown here.

Final Effect Preview

Click on the image to open a High-Rez version.

Step 1

Create primitive poly Cylinder, name it “Tunnel”, and then modify the attributes as in the following image. *Be sure to name every new shape you create, as it will make selection easier later on.

Step 2

Rotate the “Tunnel” on the ‘X’ axis, and then scale it as in the following image.

Step 3

Select the face that is facing in the ‘Z’ direction, and extrude it to
a value of ’164′.

Step 4

Create a primitive poly Plane, name it “Street”, and scale it as in following image.

Step 5

Create another poly Cylinder, with a “Subdivisions Axis” of ’32′, and then
place it on the street near the “Tunnel” walls.

Step 6

Select the “Street” object, and the new cylinder, then go to
“Mesh > Booleans > Difference”.

Step 7

Select the inner face, and then pull it up and scale it in a little.

Step 8

Create a poly Cube, and scale it as in the following image.

Step 9

Go to “Edit Mesh > Split Polygon Tool”.

Step 10

Set the “Snap tolerance” (for the “Split Polygon Tool”) to
“100”, and then split the top face as shown.

Step 11

Move the new edge a few degrees on ‘-X’, and then extrude the face up.

Step 12

Move the shape, and place it exactly by the wall on the right side of the street.

Step 13

Now scale and translate the sides of the shape to match the length of the Tunnel.

Step 14

Create a poly Plane with no subdivisions, and then scale it as in the following image.

Step 15

Now align this long poly Plane exactly with the “Street” object, name it “Street Line”, and then go
to “Edit > Duplicate”.

Step 16

Keep on duplicating the “Street Lines”, until it looks like the following image.

Step 17

Create 2 poly Cylinders, and scale them to match the street length. They will be representing the car brake lights in fast motion, so name them “Brake Lights”.

Step 18

Do the same for the right side of street, but this time
create poly Planes instead of Cylinders. Now give them an ‘X’ Scale value of ’0.025′, rotate them to ‘-44.50′ on the ‘Z’ axis, and then extend them to the length of the street.

Step 19

Raise the 2 poly Planes a few degrees above the street surface, and then place them on the right side as shown.

Step 20

Create a point light with the following settings.

Step 21

Translate the Point Light to “8.500” on the ‘Y’ axis.

Step 22

Duplicate the lights along the length of the tunnel. You can press “Shift + d” after the first duplication, so that it will copy the transformation too.

Step 23

Now it’s time to create your “Render Camera”. Go to “Create >
Cameras > Camera”.

Step 24

‘Attribute Editor’ for the camera, enter the following values.

Step 25

Activate the “Resolution Gate” as shown

Step 26

Select the camera, and in the “Channel Box”, highlight the attributes by holding “Shift + LMB”, then “Right click > Lock Selected”. This will lock these basic attributes to avoid moving the camera by mistake.

Step 27

The modeling stage is now complete. If you render your scene in Mental Ray, it should look something like this (although I brightened it a bit in PS, so you could see the scene more clearly).

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