Coffee Break

Time flies by when you have fun, and 3D is a lot of fun. As polygonal modeling is quite a big subject, we got another week to play around with it. We were assigned a project, always fun.

While I was modeling this week, I started paying attention to which of the tools I was often using, then I found or set a key-binding for them – time saver! I wish we had a mouse at school with a lot more buttons on it though, maybe I will start bringing my own mouse (Logitech G700).

Navigating in 3D space

The viewports in 3Ds Max is navigated the middle mouse button, and with the combination of  the ALT key you can rotate. This is quite an impractical navigation method, but its the best you can do with a 2D mouse I suppose.

With this in mind, I decided to invest in a 3D mouse: 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator.

If you haven’t used one of these before, you might think that the 2D mouse is sufficient – but you don’t have anything to compare it to. If you get the chance to try a 3D mouse like this one, I would highly recommend it.

The best way I can explain it is: Flying like a helicopter, or holding the object in front of you. You can use all the axis at the same time, giving you an innovative, fluent navigation. Oh, and you can animate it, creating realistic camera paths.

If you got the money however, I would advise you to purchase on of its big brothers. The lack of keys on this, is the only downside I can find, but this forces you to jump back and forth between a keyboard – if you had keys along with the navigator, you could put away the keyboard while modeling.

This weeks production

As the title of this entry might reveal, the model created for this week is a MoccaMaster (they produce great coffee.)

I had all week to finish this one and I am quite satisfied with the result. There are some areas that could need a little more attention and details though, and the textures are thrown on for presentation purposes.