Maya urg!

Ok so as I waffled on about further down I have a world in a room update! dun du da dum!

Ok so one of the things I forgot to mention about the world in a room project in my last post is that it is to be completed in two different media. One in the CG software Maya and the other is to be a stop motion puppet animation (sort of, there's a real set and an armature). This post is about learning to use maya and how annoying it is but how excellent it is when you succeed at something.

Last semsester I was taught how to do little things on 3DS max so I had minor experience in a cg software before. However maya is so confusing. I think I'm getting it now but I still have more than 100 questions for our other technician when he gets back from where ever on Earth he is. So why am I boring you with this you ask? Well because I have pictures of my modelling successes and a small screen blast or whatever maya calls it, to share with you!

so here are two screen shots of Norman (The CG model we were given) He's to be placed into poses that express how he feels at points in the animation. He's looking very dismayed in the second one there and very expectant in the first. In retrospect the first now kind of looks like he's asking for the forgiveness but he's not meant to do that at any point.

So here's my first piece of animation. It's a screen blast which means maya rendered it for me by taking screen shots of each cell individually and running it together to create a quick time. This means it still comes with Normans rigging which distorts the picture a bit but I like it because it shows the process. It's a real progress shot. Here you go!

 

so there's the video there. It's not long but I'm pretty pleased with it. I was trying to get things to be a little less synced with each other however every time I changed it Normans natural rhythm made it seem like it was all synced up again. I really can't see a solution to that problem so I will just live with it. It doesn't really bother me and It's not crucial to the animation at all. I just worried it would look like I wasn't trying. Which I am, he's just going to look really well synchronised with himself.