Tech Tutorial

       These kinds of blog posts are solely dedicated to showing you how to do stuff with things. Not specific enough for you? Yes? Deal with it. Today, I'm going to be showing how to make a basic pen in Maya.

        I'm making a certain pen that I own for my animation final in Maya myself, so all I'm going to do is go back and look at the past incremental saves I have, to show you what I went through.

        Let's just assume that you already know to set up a new file in Maya, as well as all the layouts and what every tool means. I also should have mentioned that this tutorial is for those who already know how to function Maya, and just want to make stuff. Fear not, let me be your guide!

Just a lonely little cylinder

        The base of the pen is the easiest part. All you have to do is make a cylinder on the plane

          And scale it to the proportions that you want your pen to be.

What's this? Cylinder is evolving!

Congrats! Cylinder evolved into a... Taller Cylinder?

        After that, move the camera so it's aiming down at the top of the cylinder, and hold Right-Click on your mouse. After that, select the "vertex" option, and you should see a bunch of purple squares where the "points" of the circular top should be. 

Points on a circle? How does THAT work?

       After that, move the very middle of the cylinder top up until you get it to where you want it. You do NOT have to put it in the same place as mine, mine is just placeholder for your creation.

NOW it's starting to look like a pen!

       After that, make another cylinder, and move/form it so it's directly in the middle of the pen, where the point is. There should be absolutely NO tip of the pen showing. 

Look, Ma! No top!

       After that, select the two cylinders. This part is extremely important, so pay attention. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE LARGER CYLINDER FIRST!!  If you accidentally select the smaller cylinder first, then the entire base will disappear instead of the cylinder. After that, go to the "Mesh" option on the bar at the top, and go to Booleans-Difference. After that, the newer cylinder should disappear, and you have a hole in the top to put the part where the ink comes out (I have no idea what it's called, don't judge me).

Where the ink comes out

       After that, the project is yours! You can make the pen and ink-distributer however you want! I hope your pen turns out much better than mine!