Overall I was really happy with my final project. I decided to stay with the same idea as the mid term and improve it as much as I could. Both projects consist of a scene of a garden of flowers and a bee that flies through the scene. When comparing my midterm to the final, I was really happy. I made a huge improvement with modeling and making things look more realistic. I learned easier and more efficient ways to achieve the look I wanted and it really paid off. I also played with a lot more lighting, textures (for parts of the bee and the grass) and made the overall aesthetics of the overall piece much more appealing. As far as the animation aspect of it goes, I decided to keep it simple but added more life into the bee and its environment. Although I did not focus on the animation aspect as much, i came a long way with animation as well. I also finally masted rendering my scene. I had a lot of issues throughout the semester but I have finally mastered it. This class overall was a challenge. Learning an entire new program and interface is not easy, and considering I started as a beginner (I had never even heard of Maya before!) I believe I have really got a solid grip of the basics and am capable of figuring things out.  I am really happy I took this class and am proud of how far I have come. The first day of class I was freaking out thinking how was I ever going to get through this class but now being at the other end of the spectrum I am really happy with my overall outcome and achievement in this course. Unfortunately hthe actual movie is too large and will not post to the blog.

Maya Expo 4/25/12


The Maya expo was really interesting and the work that was shown was really impressive. I liked Prof Claire's presentation the best as she presented on ambient diffusion. She showed us how to bring 3D into composite in order to organize our files. You can export your animation to pre composition file in which it runs a script (weither default) or your own based on your preference and organize you file.
This is really helpful because you can move things around and edit them in the container and connect and disconnect certain parts.

I also really liked Kevin presentation. He explained things really well when he came into our class and he did really well here at the expo too.

He showed us how to re-typologize in mudbox to our mesh by adding polygons and geometry to it.

The most important thing I think he taught was that you should use quads instead of triangles because the quads use algorithms while triangles do not react properly.

New Bee Model. Made it more realistic looking rather than a cartoon.

Much better modeling this time around with my flowers for the final compared to the midterm. Very excited for the final outcome!