Neelz' Maya Fundamentals Blog

Update bobupdate

2005-07-10T16:01:00.000+02:00

It's been a while again, but it's been a good while now. Because normally when I don't post, I'm not doing anything. But now I've been working my ass off. Well a little bit anyway... I modeled the mech, textured it, modeled the antenna array, textured it, rigged the mech and made the custom UI for it. So YEAH BABY, I'm all ready to start animating. Isn't life wonderful? :D

Zen-VTM

2005-07-08T10:14:00.000+02:00

First things first. I finished my Alien animation, lighting etc... the beast is rendering as we speak... or as you read and I type. Well as I type, because you're not reading this right now... but you know what I mean, right? No? Oh shut up.

So yes, the mofo is done, or as good as done anyway. I modeled my mech yesterday, did it in one go because if I had some experience in Maya, it was in polymodeling. So it went rather fast. Submitted my model and passed the assignment so all is good.

I started watching the texturing videos and yes, thank god, for the first time ever in the history of 3dbuzz the turned off all the crap they did not need. Like the helpline, timeslider, range slider, toolbox, channelbox... You have no idea how frustrating I found it to watch people model with all of those things on. You can't see anything in those tiny viewports. Now they're gone, I can watch the lesson in piece... Zen-VTM

Let's get ready to REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR

2005-07-06T20:41:00.000+02:00

fff-yew... I'm done with project II. Well beside the fact it still has to be rendered, but that's all. So I'm happy. No more fucking alien to stare at from now on :) I don't anything else to report, I'll make more regular updates when I start on the mech.

But do take a looksy at my pink tractor beam of DEATH!(tm) though...

http://82.110.105.14/nielsvaes.com/MFC/pinkie.jpg

The whole kittenkaboodle

2005-07-03T12:00:00.000+02:00

So obviously when you change something, it's going to affect the whole kittenkaboodle... whatever the whell a kittenkaboodle is. /me looks around... whatever

Soooo...animation is DONE. YAY. HOW fucking happy can a Belgian be? Well let me tell you. As happy as I am now. I actually finished animating yesterday, but I didn't update my blog. Now on to more fun stuff: lighting. I'm somehow falling in love with the whole hypershade/light/color in your viewport thing. I remember a time when I thought color in viewports was something that shouldn't be talked about among normal members of the human race. So now I'm either abnormal, or I've grown up. I opt to choose for the former. The whole lighting experience, from what I've watched, is so fucking cool. The videos are even more entertaining, mainly because Buzz and Zak tend to sing while waiting for renders to complete. Very amuzing, very nice. An oppinion shared by my mother also. I'll probably begin lighting my scenes tonight, or tomorrow, depending on what mood I'm in.

Random newsfact of the weekend: Broomsticks are the shizznack: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-07-01T141652Z_01_L01363711_RTRIDST_0_ODD-CYPRUS-ROBBERY-DC.XML

I did it myyyyyyyyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaaaaaaayy

2005-06-30T11:24:00.000+02:00

You should hear me sing that song under the shower, it's quite breathtaking.

Anyway, I was animating my happy ass off, only to find out my little alien ship didn't have a tractor beam. I kinda forgot to add it in. So I went back to the tractor beam videos and... well I couldn't care less about them :) Buzz started talking about controlling the curves and expressions and blah blah blah. So I was like "What the fuck? I can do it in 2 minutes, without any crap". So I thanked my lucky stars I payed attention in the Maya Architecture videos and made a very simple, yet effective, network.

I put some custom attributes on my alienControl to control the length, width of the top curve and width of the bottom curve. Then I connected the length attribute to a multiply divide node, multiplied the input with -1, plugged that output in the Ty of the bottom curve and voila. Then I plugged the width of the top curve into Sx, Sy and Sz and did the same for the bottom curve. Then I lofted the two suckers and voila... instant tractor beam.

I'm sure Buzz' way has its advantages, but why should I do everything the way Buzz does, right? I'm a unique snowflake, I'm special.

Other news includes: my DVDs arrived, my parents bought palmtrees to put near the pool, I ordered two expensive tickets to David Copperfield and I almost threw my BlueTooth stick out the window because the son of a bitch was acting like a fucking idiot.

oh and I got sunburnt the other day...

It wasn't me! I didn't do it!

2005-06-26T21:12:00.000+02:00

I really didn't do it... work on my animation that is. I've got the snimation for my ship done for shot one. Snimation, hmm, cool word. I still have to work on the snimation for the other shots but I just haven't been able to do so. A lot of other crap going on, but I hope to get something done tomorrow or tuesday. It's been fucking hot, and no airco + heat = not a good working atmosphere.

Now we bounce to the left... and we bounce to the right... bounce bounce bounce

bounce

Dooooobidoooodahdah...dahdahdahdooooobidoooooooooooooooo DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

2005-06-23T20:46:00.000+02:00

It's been a while, hasn't it? And I don't even feel like writing right now, so... Submitted my animatics for project 2 (please read "project 2" in the voice of your favorite evil character) and I passed. They were a bit stiff... but hey, they were just animatics. I took a glimpse at the lighting lessons and they look very cool, can't wait to start on them. The paint effects videos were cool too, a nice little sidestep to have some fun. Haven't had the chance to make my SKULL OF ULTIMATE FUCKING DEATH(tm), but if I have a moment to spare here or there, I'll go for it.

Speaking of moments to spare, I played the Battlefield 2 demo. I'm torn between acting like an american soldier or sculpting a skull.

...

what's that?

The world needs my help?

Roger, sir!

Sorry guys... have to go... some incident in the middle east... :)

FUCK SHIT BITCH ASSHOLE CUNTSUCKING WHORE

2005-06-18T14:02:00.000+02:00

Yes you read that right. FUCK ALL OF THIS FUCKING SHIT YOU FUCKING PIECE OF FUCKTARDS!!

Yesterday I had my harddrive formatted... the wrong one. So my partition, with EVERYTHING ON IT, is gone. ALL my .psd files, all my photographs, all my drawings, all my Maya files... gone. "Oh but just recover them from your back up...". Excuse me? FUCK YOU YOU FUCKER! I never made a backup. Dumb, I know, but I don't want you bitching about it. Go die in a FUCKING SHITFILLED HOLE under a FUCKING nuclear powerplant, CUNT!

:)

Yeah so I'm not really all that pissed, because I can't do anything about the fact that everything's gone now. It's just a wise lesson to remind me to make a backup, already ordered an external harddrive for that so I'm in good shape for the future. It's just a little sad to see everything you worked on for the last 5 years disappear because of a small mistake when selecting which drive to format.

How will this affect my progress in the MFC? Tuhduhduuuuuuhhhhh (dramatic music). It won't, trust me, I'll be right back on track before you know it. Zak was nice enough to send me back the model of my spaceship, so all is well. Getting it back to something I used to have shouldn't take too long.

Is there something you can do to help me? Yes! I enjoy being adored. I love getting nice emails telling me how great I am. You can give me back and footrubs, feed me grapes and threat me like an ancient greek deity. If everyone just works a LITTLE harder, you can all make MY dream come through.

And if you don't want to... fuck you, bitch.

In other news, new files were put up to our FTP folders. Great, so I grabbed the first one, about a 100 Megs, only to find out there was another 577 meg file. No problemo, download that one too. Problemo uno: download stop for no apparent reason at 150 MB or so. So I started the download again. Problem duo: forget that this damn computer was downloading something when I turned it off last night. Fuck. Started a new download this morning. Problemo tres: download stopped again. Are you fucking kidding me Buzz? Started the download again. File downloaded succesfully. Yay. At a whopping 58 kb/s... sigh.

:)

So I watched some of the animatics videos, mucho coolio of course. Much more interesting and entertaining than the weighpainting. I think Zaks presence somehow helps to lower the IQ of the avarage viewer to make it more entertaining :)

Anyway... I'm off to see what's else in the big 577 meg file.

June 14th... nothing to report

2005-06-15T10:01:00.000+02:00

It's 10:01 AM at the moment and nothing is going on :) I've watched all videos, completed everything, and now I'm playing the waiting game until all videos arrive in the mail... It's fun, try it yourself :)

Cool movie in the making

2005-06-14T21:16:00.000+02:00

I just stumbled across this movie poster and WOW... can't wait for this one!

RIGHT HERE!

:D

Done and done

2005-06-14T16:29:00.000+02:00

Phjew... I'm glad I made it through this part. I am no officially done rigging, skinning and making control systems for my alien. This has been the least favorite thing for me to do so far... I guess I'll never be a TD :D Now I just have to wait for the DVD to arrive with all the lessons and I'm on my way to making animatics.

Yay :)

I'm not alone!

2005-06-14T12:17:00.000+02:00

I was just talking to some other students on BuzzNet and it looks like I'm the not the only one who finds rigging not as fun as other stuff in Maya. I'm glad for that, because I was starting to feel like an ass for not enjoying the riggin and skinning videos as much as the shading and animation ones.

I'm going to get started on rigging the aliens tentacle now though, so I can get everything out of the way before the animation videos arrive.

And I smell nice, no matter what the radioshow wants you to believe!

We have some activity on the eye

2005-06-13T11:44:00.000+02:00

Painting is fun. Painting weights is not fun. I rigged up my Alien-Dude-Mega-Darth-Eye-BadAss 2005 and all is working well. Then I proceeded with painting the weights for my eye and Buzz was soooooooo right when he told us that painting weights is not for everyone and that it takes practice.
In short, I suck at paiting weights. I either had my value up too high or too low, so I had to flip flop between both the upper and the lower eye lid, and my damn values until it drove me nuts... Kinda nuts anyway. But all is good now in eyeblinking land. I managed to get a pretty decent result, and I learned a crapload of things I didn't know before, so all is good.

Nothing done today

2005-06-11T22:36:00.000+02:00

Didn't get a whole lot done today... Nothing to be more exact :) I had a great weekend so far though, hope to get working again tomorrow or on monday.

In the mean time... don't eat yellow snow.

And no matter what a stripper tells you, there's no sex in the champagne room. None.

Alien bobalien

2005-06-10T15:32:00.000+02:00

Finished the texturing of the ship and the alien a few hours ago, forgot to post an update here. Nothing all that special, but the pink glow is a must of course :)

Butt hole 1, 2 , 3 , 4 and 5

2005-06-10T10:24:00.000+02:00

Zak: please note that "botHull" sounds A LOT like "butt hole" when you're repeating it all the time... just wanted to let you know :)

8 somewhat am on the 10th of June

2005-06-10T08:03:00.000+02:00

Just woke up, had a terrible dream about a giant spider. And since I'm a huge arachnophobe (spelling? dunno if that's a word) it wasn't all that fun.

I just watched a part of shading up the spaceships... kinda tedious with NURBS. I think it would be so much easier to stitch it all together, convert to polies and be done with it. But I'll try to follow along with the video... you never might now when it comes in handy. But it's not how I would do it.

I was thinking about the second project the other night, and I came up with, what I think, is a cool story. If I see someone ripping me off, I will personally dissect your stomach area with a blunt blade.

Opening shot of the Earth, Alien-dude is hitting the controls on his keyboard like a maniac. As he passes the Earth, something lights up on his control panel. We see a shot of his control panel which reads something along the lines of

Planet: Earth
Population: 6 billion
Action: Take along planet for inspection

Our little Alien-dude thinks this is a great idea, but is a little confused on how to do it. He starts a scan, find a beachball with a texture of the Earth and decides this would be the next best thing. He flies over to the backyard, does his little tractorbeam action, and shoots off again.

Just a little extra because I don't want to overcomplicate it... The extra animation should be do-able I hope.

Other news of the morning: headache, no shower yet, maid hasn't said a single word ever since I got up, maid believes that she can whistle without making my ears hurt, got the good coffee again, found out the battery of my cellphone went dead and the thing has to recharge for 4 hours, dog is superhappy for no apparent reason, brother is coming home after being in Spain for 2 months, right wrist hurts because I'm typing at a very unfortunate angle, too much mess on desk is the key reason for unfortunate angle, thinking about watching an episode of 24 while maid cleans up desk, found a spoon that has been lost for 3 weeks, found a DVD that had been missing in action for 3 days, neighbor thinks we can't hear it when he's screaming at his kids, sun is shining a little bit, planned out what needs to be done for the Maya class today.

first thing on the to-do list: es ejtsh oh double you ee arrr

A productive day

2005-06-09T23:51:00.000+02:00

It's 11:52 pm and I'm about to go to watch a movie in my bed... It's been a very productive day. I managed to shade my Earth and learn A LOT about shaders. I really think this is one of the coolest thing in the entire 3D production pipeline.

I played around with my Earth a little more and managed to whip out a quick wallpaper like render:

Here you go

at this point I don't know if I'm imagining the edges on the left side, or if they're really there, but I'm too tired to take a closer look at it. Maybe tomorrow...

goodnight

Ye Ol Blue Two

2005-06-09T17:51:00.000+02:00

On my neverending search for higher texture maps for the Earth I found 4k cloud and citylight textures. Mucho coolio, because now my blue pearl in space looks a whole lot crisper :)

example (preview rendering quality):

cool huh? :)

And no effort to tweak it because of the awesome network Buzz and Zak made us make :)

478 layers of explination

2005-06-09T17:07:00.000+02:00

Ok Buzz, I know you're going to read this so pay attention :)

Remember that one radioshow where I asked a question, and you guys made fun of it because I explained it in like 3 layers? I just watched the Switch Utilities node and well... I think you and Zak explained it like 478 times. It's not longer beating a dead a horse, it's poking the pulp of the dead horse :D

It's all good though, just needed to get that off my chest :)

5 hours later...

2005-06-09T14:41:00.000+02:00

Here we are, 5 hours later and I have what I believe to be a pretty decent Earth. I used my bigger color, bump and specularity map because... well why wouldn't I? I even found another map of the Earth called "of.jpg". I have NO IDEA what it stands for... it's a grayscale map, that kinda looks like a bump or a heigthmap, but it also has bumps and whatnot in the oceans. I used the best of two worlds and combined the bumps in the ocean with the normal bumpmap. I don't know if I'm going to keep this, as it looks a little fake, but those are worries for later.

A picture of Ye Ol' Blue:

With that... I'm going to take a little break before I start working on the ship.

Shading of the earth has begun

2005-06-09T09:33:00.000+02:00

After an intense 5 hours of watching the "5 hour make a sphere VTM", I managed to model out my earth. I feel so proud :)

Anyway, I'm just waiting right now until my textures are downloaded. I figured I'd just follow along with the video, and then plug in my superbig textures once the shading network is built. Because let me tell you something boys and girls... it's not an easy network :) Well not THAT easy anyway. Everything Zak did in the videos made sense, and I think I can make it on my own without watching the lessons, but it would take me the better part of 4 days I think. Eventhough Buzz was kind enough to extend the course with 3 weeks, I want to stay right on schedule.

Anyway, I just heard the "ka-dink" of my download being ready, so I'm going to get back to work.

Next post will be when the network is complete, so until then you'll have to do without me... don't cry... it's ok... really.

:)

10k earth texture file

2005-06-09T08:55:00.000+02:00

AHA again... I knew I had it. I found a 10k color texture map of the earth on a back up DVD from 2003. This beast is 10800 pixels wide and 5400 pixels wide. I don't have any bump or spec maps to accompany it though... but I can maybe paint those myself in Photoshop. I'm planning on making a huge "realistic" render of the earth once this is all over, should make a cool wallposter. (get your signed posters for only $859.99 by pre-pre-registering in advance, just mail me at neelz@3dbuzz.com)

Other news of the morning... the maid is still afraid of me, I had a shitty dream about my ex girlfriend, I woke up lying on the floor - not in my sleeping bag anymore, just drank the last cup of the good coffee, just noticed that the good muesli cereal is gone, have to run an errand later this morning and I had my mom whine about my hair. All in all, a normal morning in the Neelz-cave :)

160 euro for just 1 piece

2005-06-08T22:53:00.000+02:00

Lemme tell you... hey.. I'm about to tell you something, don't look off to the side.

FOCUS!

Ok... you with me now? Good. So I'm making my way through the advanced shading lessons, and I'm up the part where they're shading the Earth. This part alone is worth the 160 euro I payed. Really, this is so far the coolest part of the entire course I think.

I found 1 4000px wide earth texture, I'm going to try to make the other maps from that one colormap to make a highres earth.

Thanks again Mr Busby, Mr Parrish :)

VICTORY!

2005-06-08T21:52:00.000+02:00

Looks like I managed to download the RIGHT rar file this time.

Ain't nobody can stop me now!

ahem...
so uhm

...

I'm going to watch em... mmmkay?

Err... what the fuck are these files called?

2005-06-08T21:03:00.000+02:00

Hi Buzz, hi Zak, hello Logan, wassup Joel, greets Angela, Robyn, and various offspring.

Who, in the name of Zeus' asscrack, named the files in our FTP folders? I mean... seriously... I was watching the advanced shading video's and all was well. Until I noticed I was missing like 9 videos. Not a problem, I think to myself, I'll go and ask the friendly community. So I did, and someone told me to check my FTP folder. Because I'm such a nice guy, I opened a FTP connection an lo and behold... new files.

Now I don't know what crackhead FTP client the rest of the Maya class is using, but FileZilla give me an error about not being able to list any files and/or directories and I'm not going to spend money on buying a FTP client. So I use the trusty Windows Explorer to get the files aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallll the way across the ocean onto my computer.

HOW-EVER

I open an FTP connection and download, what I thought to be, the correct file. Turned out it was something I already had. No problemo, I thought to myself, I'll just clickedy click on this one and life will be good. The file downloaded, and disappeared. I sighed... then I sighed again. Clickedy click on the file again, watch it download and unrar it. AGAIN, videos I already had. So now I change my pictograms over to a detailed list, to see which were the most recent files. Apparently the FTP server decided that all files were made on june 4th, at the same time.

Grmbl...

I've started a new download a few minutes ago, if these aren't the videos I'm missing, I'm going to throw something at my monitor.

Arrogance and amazement on my part

2005-06-08T11:36:00.000+02:00

Downloaded some more videos today, all about shaders. Something I had absolutely NO experience with other than playing around a little bit in Vue d'Esprit in my younger days, but never in Maya. I must say that my earlier experiments in Vue helped me understand these lessons though. Using black and white textures to control the transparency for example is something that I know not everyone understand right away... but I didn't have a problem with it right now :)

Moving on to the arrogance part... Up until now, I've seen Buzz and Zak show and teach us some modeling, some animation, some slapping on materials and so on and so forth. Both in the Maya Fundamentals Class as in the normal VTMs on the site. HOWEVER, I was one of those people who didn't realise that they also knew a great deal about shaders. I assumed they kinda knew what shaders were and were able to explain something about it, but nothing more.

Boy was I wrong...

I just watched a "quick" lesson where they slap together a toon shader and I was truly amazed. I would have never figured that out just by myself. And it proved that those Maya architecture lessons are really helpful when doing just about anything in Maya.

So, a huge thank you and a minor apology to Mr Busby and Mr Parrish from me :)

Just for you Tagger

2005-06-07T10:58:00.000+02:00

This is just for Tagger to prove I passed all 3 assignments... so shut it, k? :D

Please keep pen and notepad with you at all times

2005-06-07T08:00:00.000+02:00

It's 8 o'clock in the morning now, I just woke up and I realised I did something stupid (again). I figured out the 9th assignment last night. Just to clarify that it's not something extremely simple... I'll post it here

Create a sphere in each quadrant of the grid. Make a locator that you can move about the XZ plane, such that a sphere is only visible when the locator is in the same quadrant of the grid. For example, when the locator is in the (+X, +Z) quadrant, only the sphere that resides in that quadrant is visible.

Please note that if the locator is on either the X or Z axes, it is technically not within a quadrant, meaning that no spheres should be visible. This would also hold true if the locator was at the origin.

Make sure that the locator has an Override attribute, allowing the effect to be switched off. When the override is active, all four spheres must be visible. Also, the locator must have an Invert Effect attribute, which will make all spheres visible EXCEPT the one within whose quadrant the sphere currently lies. While the Invert Effect attribute is active and the locator is either at the origin or on the X or Z axes, all four of the spheres will be visible.

RESTRICTION: You may only use up to SIX (6) Utility nodes!!

So there you have it. And I had it too... until I lost it. I was in bed last night thinking about it, and all of a sudden I started making connections in my head. But I was thinking too fast... I saw the solution in my head, I just couldn't retrace my steps to get there. And I was dumb enough to NOT turn on the light and write at least something down, so I woke up this morning with an empty head and no idea how to do it.

Why me... ?

sigh...

:)

3 down, 5 to go

2005-06-06T21:52:00.000+02:00

Okidoki... djeesh I can't believe I just typed that. Buzz just took a look at my second assignment submission and he passed me, which is good news of course. I'm now just waiting for more content to be put in my FTP folder or to be sent by mail.

I started to take a look at one of the optional assignments, I think I should be able to complete at least 1 of them, but I'm not really in the mood for it right now.

Stomach problems?

2005-06-06T20:08:00.000+02:00

My heart stopped this morning.

Remember how I was so happy I finished the colorwheel assignment? Well apparently there were people who asked for MORE node assignments. And Buzz, being the weak man that he is,... caved. So I went to bed yesterdaynight, feeling all good about myself, only to wake up to extra node assignments. Dunmatt was nice enough to poin them out to me and make my heart stop. So after Jenna Jameson (she spent the night) gave me CPR, I listened to Buzz' announcemt and he told us the new assignments are optional. Which is a good thing... because I don't want to break my head on them again.

In other (good) news, I made my way through the second project. Well... through the content that's available anyway. I modeled my spaceship, modeled the alien, modeled the backyard and slapped some material on and I turned in the second assignment.
Funny thing about the videos though... I think someone had stomach problems :) I listened to the videos with my headphones on and I could constantly hear someones stomach growling and making funny noises :)

Anyway, this is a quick render of my spaceship. I slapped some global illumination on it so it's kinda bright... but you get the idea.

Node madness solved! :D

2005-06-05T20:14:00.000+02:00

w00t, I got the colorwheel project solved :D I can't even begin to explain how happy I am right now :) I started working on it again because I got bored, and to my surprise I managed to make the colorwheel change between colors. I even managed to make the thickness attribute work like a charm. Then schyzomaniac came around and helped me A LOT with making the color go darker and lighter. I think I would have found it without him, but it would have taken me a whole lot longer.

The colorwheel was one of the most dificult projects in the course and I'm so glad I already got it out of the way :D

NURBSphobia

2005-06-05T14:03:00.000+02:00

I knew this day would come. Really... I did. It's always been lurking there in the dark, waiting for me to venture outside the save realm of polygon objects to walk right into it's claws.

The Claws...

of the NURBS.

If there is something I have always hated, because I didn't know how to use them, it were NURBS. Polygons are simple. Polygons are easy. Polygons consist of faces, edges and verticis... that's it. NURBS consist of crazy freaky things called isoparms and cv's. Who the hell invented those names? While a "vertex" might be something not everyknow knows, and edge and a face are pretty straightforward. Isoparms and cv's ARE NOT! Trust me on this, I know all and you must obey me.
But I have used NURBS in the past. Oh yes, I played with fire and I clicked on the loft or revolve button. Only to quickly go to modify > convert > NURBS to polygons.

But I have now come to the part of the course where Buzz and Zak are going to teach us about NURBS. If you don't hear from me anymore, it means I have fought bravely but lost and perished on the battlefield. If I come out victorious, it will be a new milestone in my life.

With that... let's hit the play button and hope for the best.

Nodes made some sense + new project

2005-06-05T11:19:00.000+02:00

Nodes... the damn nodes... they should all die. Not all is bad though, I was able to make a simple network today and the logic I used matched the video for 100%. The way I did it only matched it for 95% because I took the input of something to output it. Just reading what I did makes me feel like a complete idiot, which I am :) I think I'm going to leave the nodes for what they are at this time and concentrate on.... drumroll... project II.

The new files have been put up in our FTP accounts and they're downloading right now. This will have something to do with modeling, which is more my cup of tea (note to all Brits: tea sucks and drinking tea will make you suck too). I'll try to squeeze in a picture or so when I'm done modeling.

Until then... peace out and remember to floss!

Maya node madness

2005-06-03T16:49:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I've just watched the Multiply/Divide video and I'm trying to solve the problem.

Only... it's driving me nuts because I can't figure it out. I have an animated ball that touches the ground on frame 0, 40 and 60. Using a Multiply/Divide node, the ball can jump twice as high. The problem is that is no longer touching the ground at those frames, it's 2 units off the ground. Buzz said you can solve this problem using nodes, but I think he's lying because I can't get it!

MADNESS I TELLS YA!

Passed the Talented Ball assignment

2005-06-02T21:17:00.000+02:00

So I passed my first assignment, w00t for me. I've downloaded the new content now, and I'm about to watch at least one or two videos before I head off to bed. I have to get up at 5 am again tomorrow... DAMNIT! Only for 2 more days though, after that it's 100% Ma Ma Ma Maya :)

3dbuzz Maya Fundamentals Class

2005-05-31T21:46:00.000+02:00

Since everyone is doing it, I might as well jump the bandwagon and make a blog about the Maya Fundamentals Class offered on www.3dbuzz.com.

I downloaded the first 15 hours and jumped right into the first project. Finished it after about 3 days, give or take an hour :) For the first time in my life, I made storyboards and actually sticked to them instead of changing around all the time. I've learned quite a bit by doing this project. Things like set driven keys and dynamics don't scare the living bejeezus outta me anymore and I can see how important it is to think ahead. A little planning can make your life as an animator so much easier :)

Right now I'm waiting for the class part of Buzznet to become active, and for a new download link because I need my videos! If I remember correctly, all the videos will be sent out around the 6th of June. That means they should be in Europe on monday or tuesday. I'm not quite sure where they will be sent though. Cleaner used his credit card to pay on my behalf, and the video watermarks show his name but my address. Maybe Buzz was just trying to ge the best of both worlds :) Anyway, I hope they'll be sent here, because if they land in Cleaners mailbox, it's going to take another 3 or 4 days for them to get here...