Welcome to Open Arms! It’s a day habilitation center that works with Game-U’s Ohio Accelerate program. Every week, instructor Anthony heads over to the center, armed with Unity, Maya, Project Spark, and lots of other cool game design tools. Then, together, he and students like Tony, Nancy, Robert, Stephen, Jeremy, and Christian explore how to make their own games!
Game development incorporates many different skills, including modeling, animation, sound design, art, writing, and coding, and Game-U loves to give its students the chance to practice with each. The latest Open Arms class focused on 3D modeling with Maya, an industry standard software for modeling and animation. For the first hour, Anthony introduced Maya’s objects and camera controls. He, Tony, Nancy, and Robert imported a standard cube object into their workspace and practiced using the W, E, and R hotkeys. The hotkeys work with the object and its face, edge, and vertices, to allow the modeler to quickly access and shape important pieces of his or her project.
Later, Anthony helped more students with their ongoing Maya projects. Stephen and Jeremy, with big game plans in mind, use Maya to build the characters and furnishings they’ll need to populate their levels. Stephen’s detailed Dragon Soul sword now looks ready for battle, while Jeremy’s boss enemy and Southern Saloon will make cool additions to his multi-level Unity game. Christian, another modeler, as well as a budding artist and storyteller, is turning his character artwork for Buddy the Lab’s Animal Squad (a team of animal heroes) into full-blown models. Check out the work these guys are doing!
Clearly, there’s a lot happening over at Open Arms. Thanks for giving us a window into your lessons, guys! Stay in touch – we’re excited to see what else you and Anthony come up with as you continue exploring game development in all its aspects.
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