As seen in the class notes, the Maya program has many capabilities to manipulate polyhedral forms. Review the operations seen in those notes. For this exercise, we work with polyhedeal forms only, starting with the Platonic Solids. Some useful operations to practice are Move, Rotate, Scale, Bevel, Chamfer, Extrude faces, Poke faces, and Boolean operations (Union, Intersection, Difference). Get comfortable with these operations, and also the method of selecting individual faces to operate on.

Wentzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585) was a goldsmith who worked in Nuremberg. His 1568 book Perspectiva Corporum Regularium is full of excellent models of geometric design, that are still well worthy of study.

1) Study the images here. Be sure to see all seven series. (Depending on your browser, the images may not display full size unless you right-click on them and choose "view image".) Notice how most of his forms are derived from Platonic solids, with various beveling, truncating, poking, and/or hollowing operations applied. Think about how you could make such forms in Maya.


2) Create the above construction with Maya  Study Jamnitzer's polyhedral construction shown above. Two concentric hollow tetrahedra stand on a base that is assembled from various components.  Reconstruct this structure using Maya, including the base, but not the wide table at the very bottom of the image. Use your judgment concerning proportions and parts of the object not visible from this viewpoint.

3) Something Original. Study again Jamnitzer's Series 6 images. Using similar operations, create something which is somehow suggestive of Jamnitzer's polyhyedra-on-a-pedestal style, but which is your own personal design.

Have your Maya files that answer #2 and #3 saved somewhere where you can access it in class to show everyone thursday, March 12. In class, hand in on paper a full-page screen shot of #2 taken from a similar angle.  And hand in a full page screen shot of your answer to #3 with a paragraph briefly explaining your design choices and techniques.