A Kick Up the Backside...

Twice ill + Christmas = severe lack of work.

However! Panic and worries aside I gave myself a swift kick up the backside and have just been trying to get my head around Maya.

These are all really generic and have only been roughly based on photos.  When I've got the hang of texturing and shaping things then I'll be making objects that look much more realistic.  Here's what I've been trying out:

Gas mask:

This was my first attempt at shaping something that wasn't a square or instructed on a video so it's really unconvincing.

The reason there's only one lens is because this distortion kept happening when I tried rotating it. When I remake it I'll try to make sure this doesn't happen again.

This was just me playing with the vertexes to try and make the rubber appear more fluid.  It's worked but before I got confused and a bit worked up I moved onto another object.

Dining chair:

 I'm going to have chairs in my scene so I thought this was a nice, safe start point.

 Success! Very basic and not properly textured but it definitely looks like a dining chair!

 Next step up, the sofa:

 

I did base this shape roughly on the Herculon 1950's sofa above so atleast it's a little more convincing than the dining chair. 

 I really enjoyed making this, I don't think it's a bad attempt at a basic sofa but I did struggle with the UVs and texturing.

The bump mapping and texture were a good first try but they were horribly distorted around the edges, I think my geometry and UVs were badly messed up .

A shot of the trouble areas for distortion.

 My first attempt at rendering it.  Horrible lumpy bits because of the distortion but I'm generally happy with the progress I'm making on Maya.  I should be okay with a few pointers and many more experiments.