GAME PROJECT - BIKE

The smallest of the vehicles to be built next is the bicycle! This I thought would be the simplest but when I attempted it I was very wrong.

I started by gathering images and plans for bikes. The most complex part would be to create the gears so images that included the gears was important. Its important that the wheels of the bike can be animated but not necessary to animate the gears.

Bike plan

reference image BIKE HANDLES

reference image GEARS

One method I tried to build the frame of the bike, was to use extrusions along a curve. However I found the simplest method was to just use the extrusion method I had used before with the car and the tank, starting with a block and extruding the shape until it resembles the bike frame. This was effective but creates a blocky, square frame. Extruding along a curve, using NURBS circles, may have produce a smoother, rounder frame.

The handles and seat were created separately, as were the wheels. This was also to make the texture map editing simpler, when it came down to arranging the UV layout.

Bike frame UV

Handlebars UV layout

Gears UV layout

Wheels UV layout

Once again, the bike needs to be able to move along for the purpose of the game. In Maya I've been using locators and expressions for this, in expressions editor.

Gear UV texture

Once I lay out the UV's for each section of the bike I used Photoshop to create the textures that would then be placed over the UV layout. I was able to do this using the layers to see the UV outline and another layer for colour. Of course when placing the texture on the model in Maya, the outline of the UV texture shouldn't be included. Otherwise black outlines would show across the models texture. This is quite an interesting effect but not one I'm after with these models.
The bike had the most UV layouts and separate textures as this made it simpler when unfolding the UV layouts in the UV editor. Unlike say the tank or car which, though larger models were much simpler to unfold.