本教程是由SimplyMaya机构出品的Maya极速沙漠飞行器建模教程，时长：7小时56分，教程使用软件：Maya、Photoshop、ZBrush，大小：2.30 GB，AVI视频格式，共14章节，语言：英语。
Maya 是目前世界上最为优秀的三维动画的制作软件之一，主要是为了影视应用而研发的，所以在出世后不久就在《精灵鼠小弟》、《恐龙》等这些大片中一展身手。除了影视方面的应用外Maya在三维动画制作，影视广告设计，多媒体制作甚至游戏制作领域都有很出色的表现。初识Maya 是目前世界上最为优秀的三维动画的制作软件之一，它是Alias|Wavefront公司在论坛1998年才推出的三维制作软件。虽然相对于其他老牌三维制作软件来说Maya还是一个新生儿，但Maya凭借其强大的功能，友好的用户界面和丰富的视觉效果，一经推出就引起了动画和影视界的广泛关注，成为顶级的三维动画制作软件。
Simply Maya The Complete Sand Speeder Project
In this great hard surface modeling and texturing project we create the Sand Speeder based on the concept sketches made by Jason Edwards who is also the instructor you’ll be following along with in the tutorial. We start with a project overview taking a look at some references and how to organize your work in Maya with good naming conventions and display layers the way it would be done in a production environment.
We then start modeling with polygons and converting over to sub d’s for some of the detail work. The Sand Speeder has a high level of detail in the engine area so we look at references for different types of engines as we work towards the result we want. You’ll learn how to go from a very low res base mesh and gradually build up the detail and maintain quads.
Some of the modeling tools we use are the split poly, extrude, fill hole and EP curve tools for piping and you’ll learn a good technique for creating the fan blades on the engine which can be applied when creating any sort of fan or rotor structure on models. We also use booleans and show how animation deformers can be useful in hard surface modeling as well as pick up some other tips and tricks for getting quads back after boolean operations. For the cockpit and metallic body we use the sculpt geometry tool to create smooth surfaces and add bolts before finishing off the fuselage and make some final adjustments to prepare the model for UV layout. Because we’ve taken the UV layout into consideration while creating the model this process is very quick, and you’ll learn why it’s worth sometimes to take the extra time to lay out UV’s by hand rather than use plug-ins at this stage.
When we have the UV’s done on the model we move into Photoshop to create nice metallic textures, you’ll learn how to way to organize your color layers into folders and work with many different tools like gradients, rubber stamps and layer masks to get variations and avoid seams when working with tiled textures. The techniques shown in this part will teach you how to get a weathered look to a metallic texture and add things like rust and oil slicks. ZBrush is also used during the texturing process in part twelve, where we show you how to use a free plug in called zapplink to move textures between Photoshop and ZBrush and a technique for texturing in Zbrush using image planes. This part is more of a bonus track, so if you don’t have ZBrush you can still follow the texturing in this tutorial using only Photoshop.
We also make bump maps in Photoshop to add to the weathered look before bringing our textures together in Maya and light up the scene in mental ray where you’ll learn how to work with final gather light maps. The final thing rr-sc.com we do is add a background plate to create an environment for the model and achieve a more cinematic look and lighting in the scene, during this part you’ll learn how to composite a 3D model onto a 2D background to match the lighting and shadowing with the use background shader for a more interesting final render.