Learning Maya: first polygon modeling exercise

Enough of computer science for a while here, i will be posting a modeling exercise we did in class before christmas.

I've been practising to gain speed but each time I repeated the exercise I bumped into new problems, I guess that's part of the higher learning. My teacher is quite convinced this is good, moreover he deals with the exercises in class in such a way that we will find "unexpected" problems.

From my point of view I think it's cool because it enriches the class. The easy way to go for him would be to do things straightforward but then little we would learn!

3D requires a constant practising effort because one always runs into problems we need to solve to get the job done and often there are several ways to do the same thing but not all of them are quick and when you find yourself in a rush it's fairly good to know the best way.

The exercise consists of a hard surface using Maya polygon modeling tools. It's the first and the last we have done of its genre because we needed to begin with animation and so the modeling classes were interrupted.

It's a hamster wheel done in approximately 1 h 30 min. This includes importing the image plane references and adjusting sizes to make sure the images match from the three cameras. I had a little trouble with some unexpected behaviour when converting NURBS surface to polygon when doing the "feet" that sustain the wheel. Hopefully I will get faster with practice.

Here is the image reference:

And here is the turntable i did with playblast.

By the way, I'm gathering ideas aimed at my demo reel. I have some things in mind but i need to check up on them with my teacher, as I suspect there might be any not suitable at all.