Model and Texture a Posh Living Room Scene in Maya – Day 1

Sep 21st in Autodesk Maya, Lighting, Mental Ray, Shaders by Alan Monroig

In this tutorial you will go through the process of modeling and rendering a Living Room in Autodesk Maya. You will also learn to use Mental Ray (along with the new architectural materials), create realistic fur, and implement studio lighting to create nice and soft shadows and highlights.

PG

Author: Alan Monroig

I am currently a student of Visual Effects and 3D animation, with 2 years of experience. I have used Maya, Photoshop, After Effects, Boujou, Zbrush, and Mudbox, and have created work for such venues as: magazines, cover pages, motion graphics, and catalogs. My goal is to be a professional VFX artist.

This tutorial is Day 1 in a series - Go to Day 2

Final Effect Preview

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

Step 1

Create a primitive cube.

Step 2

Go to the 'Attributes' editor of the cube, and change the “Subdivisions Width” to '20' (this will give us enough geometry to deform the cube).

Step 3

Go to “Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop Tool”.

Step 4

With the “Insert Edge Loop Tool” selected, create 2 lines around the cube.

Step 5

Select all of the faces that go around the cube.

Step 6

With those faces selected, go to “Edit Mesh > Extrude”

Step 7

Extrude outwards, just a little bit.

Step 8

Select the small faces that go around the cube.

Step 9

Go to “Edit Mesh > Extrude”.

Step 10

Extrude the faces outwards a bit.

Step 11

With the cube selected, press number 3 (the entire cube should smooth out). It it should pretty good now, but the corners are not sharp enough yet.

Step 12

Go to “Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop Tool”.

Step 13

With the “Insert Edge Loop Tool” active, create 4 edges to make the corners smooth out.

Step 14

With the “Animation” menu active and the cube selected, go to “Create Deformers > Nonlinear > Bend”. This will create a deformer to make the curvature of the sofa.

Step 15

With the 'Bend' deformer selected, go to the 'Attributes' editor and change the 'Z' rotation to '90' (this number will vary depending on the position of your cube).

Step 16

Go to the “bend1” attributes and change the following settings:

  • Curvature: 1.700
  • Low Bound: -0.600
  • High Bound: 0.400
  • Note: These settings will vary depending on the shape of your cube and how you want it to deform.

    Step 17

    The result should look something like this.

    Step 18

    Select the cube and the deformer, and rotate them to position the sofa. The sofa is almost ready now. You are only missing the legs.

    Step 19

    Create a cylinder.

    Step 20

    Go to the 'Attributes' editor of the cylinder, with the “polyCylinder1” tab active, and change the “Subdivisions Height” to '36'.

    Step 21

    Select the cylinder, and using the scale tool, squeeze the cylinder on one axis.

    Step 22

    With the “Animation” menu active, go to “Create Deformers > Nonlinear > Bend”.

    Step 23

    Go to the 'Attributes editor, and change the 'Y' rotation value to '90' (this setting will vary depending on the position of your cylinder).

    Step 24

    Go to the “bend2” tab of the 'Attributes' editor, and change the following settings:

  • Curvature: 0.750
  • Low Bound: -0.300
  • High Bound: 1.500
  • Note: These settings will vary depending on your cylinder, and how you want it to deform.

    Step 25

    Make 4 duplicates of the cylinder, and position them to match the size of the sofa.

    Step 26

    Select all of the cylinders (including the deformers), and move them into position.

    Step 27

    Now that the sofa is finished, select all of the objects and go to “Edit > Group”.

    Step 28

    Under the 'Attributes' editor of the new group, change the name of the group to "Sofa".

    Step 29

    With the side view active, go to “Create > CV Curve Tool”.

    Step 30

    With the “CV Curve Tool” active, make a curve.

    Step 31

    Duplicate the curve, and move the copy to the other side.

    Step 32

    Select both curves, and with the “Surfaces” menu active, go to “Surfaces > Loft”.

    Step 33

    Duplicate the "Sofa" group, and position both sofas.

    Step 34

    Go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Pipe” and create a pipe.

    Step 35

    Rotate the pipe into position.

    Step 36

    Go to the 'Attributes' editor of the pipe, and change the “Subdivisions Axis” to '6'.

    Step 37

    Select some of the vertices and start modifying the base geometry of the table. When you are finished, press '3' on the keyboard to make the table smooth.

    Step 38

    Under the “Polygons” menu, go to “Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop Tool”.

    Step 39

    With the “Insert Edge Loop Tool” active, add some edges around the table to make the corners sharper.

    Step 40

    With the table selected, go to “Mesh > Smooth”, change the “Division Levels” to '2', and click “Smooth”.

    Step 41

    You are almost done modeling, but you are still missing the table top and the vase.

    Step 42

    Go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Cylinder” and create a cylinder.

    Step 43

    With the top view active, scale the cylinder to match the size of your table.

    Step 44

    With the side view active, go to “Create > EP Curve Tool”, and create a curve that matches the silhouette of one half of the vase.

    Step 45

    With the curve selected, go to “Modify > Center Pivot”.

    Step 46

    With the “Surfaces” menu active and the curve selected, go to “Surfaces > Revolve”.

    Step 47

    If your object does not look improperly deformed (like the ones in the image), skip to “Step 49”.

    Step 48

    Select the curve and move it to right or left until the object looks right.

    Step 49

    Congratulations, you have reached the end of the modeling stage of the tutorial! Stay tuned for part 2...Materials!!

    This tutorial is Day 1 in a series - Go to Day 2

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    User Comments

    ( ADD YOURS )
    1. PG

      mads September 21st

      looks really awsome.. Im looking forward to the texturing and rendering :)

      ( Reply )
    2. PG

      Modisana September 21st

      Hail Maya Tutorials

      Thanks for the tutorial.. looks cool, cant wait to try it

      ( Reply )
    3. PG

      Web 2.0 September 21st

      Really high quality… and great to be able to model it with 2 years of experience!

      ( Reply )
    4. PG

      kris spelce September 21st

      really cool

      ( Reply )
    5. PG

      ankush September 21st

      i m ankush and this tutorial is amazing i love maya wowww cool wowwwwwwwwwww cg tuts are also great

      ( Reply )
    6. PG

      ankush September 21st

      where is the next lighting turorial

      ( Reply )
    7. PG

      Matthias September 22nd

      Why u don’t make a tut for the carpet? Looks awsome!

      ( Reply )
    8. PG

      frankeehm September 22nd

      Nice tutorial, i’m looking forward to the next part!

      ( Reply )
    9. PG

      Sergio Ordonez September 22nd

      I´m hoping to see the next step :)

      ( Reply )
    10. PG

      ankush September 23rd

      where are the next steps

      ( Reply )
    11. PG

      iCreator September 23rd

      I’m Going to guest the carpet is just fur or hair. It would be good if we were shown how it was made??

      ( Reply )
      1. PG

        Alan Monroig September 23rd

        I will show how to make the carpet on the second part of this tutorial.

        ( Reply )
    12. PG

      Alan Monroig September 23rd

      Thanks!!! to everyone

      The next steps will be on the second part of the tutorial.

      ( Reply )
    13. PG

      Matthias September 24th

      Great! Thanks mate!

      ( Reply )
    14. PG

      dronix September 24th

      Great tutorial! Would be nice to see this in video though. No need for a voice over, just the video included with the text explanation.

      ( Reply )
    15. PG

      Deer Workshop September 24th

      cant wait for the material one!!!!

      ( Reply )
    16. PG

      Domingos September 25th

      waiting the texture and rendering too

      ( Reply )
    17. PG

      lechatnoir September 28th

      eagerly awaiting for the texturing part. Muchos gracias amgo

      ( Reply )
    18. PG

      Chris Martin September 30th

      Nice work!! I need to pick up Maya again at some point…

      ( Reply )
    19. PG

      Alan Monroig September 30th

      Thanks!! to everyone I really appreciate it.
      Stay tuned for the texturing and rendering part.!!

      ( Reply )
    20. PG

      ADQ October 2nd

      Hey I saw that exact chair on a poster once! Really cool tutorial, hope to see more from ya!

      ( Reply )
    21. PG

      Andrew October 28th

      Great tutorial. It took me 5hrs to render it though. I have a good PC so I wonder if there is a setting I didn’t change?

      ( Reply )
      1. PG

        Alan Monroig October 29th

        It took more than it should, with my PC it took 2 hours:

        -Intel Quad 2.8 GHz
        -8GB Ram DDR2
        -nVidia 9800GT 1GB GDDR3

        ( Reply )
      2. PG

        Stephen Eggers January 22nd

        Took me about 20 hours to render 960 frames at 1280×720 pixels. I also left out the fuzzy rug, perhaps that was the killer?

        45-second High-Def video of this furniture here
        http://vimeo.com/8545649

        Intel Quad 3.0 GHz
        4 GB RAM

        ( Reply )
    22. PG

      Antônio October 29th

      Fantastic tutorial. Thank you so much.

      ( Reply )
    23. PG

      Antônio October 31st

      Could anyone please help me on this question?
      The chair looks so square after rendering, even if I have smoothed it.

      Does anyone knows about it?
      Thanks a lot.

      Greetings from Brasil.

      ( Reply )
    24. PG

      Mohammad Al-men'a November 11th

      Merci

      Fantastic tutorial

      ( Reply )
    25. PG

      borja November 15th

      when i use rotate tool the bend deformer deform all.

      ( Reply )
    26. PG

      Liliek November 19th

      Great tutorial,

      because i am beginner in maya, may I have your .md file.

      please send to my email,
      Lirusme@gmail.com

      thanks

      ( Reply )
    27. PG

      Nagendra Gaonkar November 20th

      The final rendered scene is looking awesome and finishing is great. Though high quality architectural modeling tuts for 3ds max is plenty, its very rare for maya, is anybody know other sources like this for maya?????

      ( Reply )
    28. PG

      akshay December 1st

      grate ….plz make a vedio tuts dude

      ( Reply )
    29. PG

      Sergi December 2nd

      I love maya . I love you

      ( Reply )
    30. PG

      val December 28th

      great…. thanks to this tutorial… cuz I’m having dificulties in rendering using maya.. coz i’m making a interior design for my thesis and i’m using maya…Thanks paL.. Its realy one big Help for me.. looking forward to master this software…

      ( Reply )
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      December 28th