St. Paddy's and a Bike

So I haven't written in a few days. 98 percent of the reason is because I have been really busy lately. The other two percent is that interesting things don't really happen too much to me. Most of what I do is go to school, stay at school all day, come home and sleep.  BUT, on Thursday a few of my classmates decided to go to an Irish pub to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. I was still working on my bike and almost didn't go, but I decided that it would probably be good to have a break and to get to hangout with my classmates.

At first I was regretting going because when we got to the bar there was a cover charge of $15. I only had $5 in cash. So I was about to leave until my buddy Phil said he'd spot me and that he was buying the first round of drinks. So Phil payed for my entry but once inside I had to check my backpack (I had come straight from school) which cost me $3. I was pretty mad that this was costing me more money that I had intended on paying that night.

The pub was pretty big, and they had live bands playing Irish music (or stuff that sounded like Irish music) and it was PACKED.  We could barely hear each other. If you know me well then you know that I am not really comfortable with that kind of environment when I am not with people I know. Sure I knew my classmates but I didn't know them too well.  But that changed rather quickly. Phil had ordered 4 pitchers of beer, a platter of nachos, one of fried calamari, and one of poutine (which is the greatest thing I have discovered in Canada and will be importing to the US).  If you don't already know, poutine is the delicious combination of fries covered in gravy and topped with cheese curds. I seriously don't know how we don't have this in the US since America is a land of fatties.  But I digress...

Everyone started to relax and we all started having fun, talking, joking. It was pretty great.  Also, I am not much of a beer drinker but since it was the only drink that was free I decided to have a go at it. Phil (a native to Vancouver) told me that the beer he ordered was a Canadian brew called Mosley Canadian.  I had enough of it to get a slight buzz.  Later I would have another cup of beer that was tinted green.  I've heard of this practices but never partook until then. Obviously it didn't taste any different but in my mind it was kind of weird like that time when Heinz decided to dye their ketchup green or purple (remember that?).

After about two hours and a half I thought it best go back to school and finish my modeling project. At which point I decided that it would be fun, once we learn how to speed model, to get a group of us together and get good and drunk and try to speed model something. My classmates agreed it was a brilliant idea.  The rest of the night was boring in comparison. Got back to school and sat at a computer until 3am finishing my project.

Well, I finally finished modeling the bike I have been telling you guys for the last week and a half or so.  I would like to share with you what I did.  The next two images are images of my model in the default gray material.  First the side view. (Click on the image to see the detail better)

This next one is a closer look at some of the detail.

So you can't really see all the smaller details on the bike because since all of it is gray some of it blends. Also, it looks mighty boring in just that color. So I took what I learned in my first Surfacing class and applied it to my bike model.  Surfacing is when you give the surface of your geo (short for geometry) or objects properties as in terms of how they interact/reflect/absorb light.  This is basically giving the model properties of the material they are supposed to be.  This is not to be confused with Texturing, which is giving the model properties of touch (i.e. bumpiness, softness, roughness, graininess) and other smaller fine details.  We still haven't learned texturing.  Anywho, here are a few images of my bike freshly surfaced.  The environment in the background is just an image that I put there so that the metals of the bike (and other materials) have something to reflect.

Well I hope you guys liked it.  This bike project was fun but extremely tedious and time consuming.  A lot of this process was learning the tools in Maya (the 3D program we are learning).  After hours of working with this project I started learning tricks and techniques.  It has been a really good exercise to become comfortable (or at least a bit more comfortable) with Maya.  Let me know what you guys think.  Sorry this has been such a long entry, but I hope you enjoyed it.