RLJ 3/10/12

Today we learned about 3D animation and several techniques to use in 3D animation. On my last course I had to do a little bit of 3D animation, but I am not terribly experienced with it.

Neil showed us how to animate using Maya by setting key frames, and moving several objects. I made a pyramid do a backflip and made a cube sneak under it.

Neil also mentioned the graph editor, which is a very confusing way to animate objects using Maya by using a graph to move and manipulate objects. This reminded me of an animation technique used in a software that makes games, Unity, a computer programme I used on  my last course, and I'm sure I'll have to use it again on this course.

Our next exercise was to bounce a ball down some steps. I remember doing this exact exercise on my last course, so I found this quite easy and relaxing, and this took me about 5 minutes up until morning break.

After break our next task was to create and animate a tennis match scene. I found it quite easy to animate the ball, but I couldn't think of what or who I wanted the players to be, so I was struggling a bit with this task. This, along with other work I've seen at my level, has made me doubt my own ability in the quality of my work and my 3D models, despite what my support for today, Linda says. Maybe I'll need to talk to Neil about this, and see what he thinks. He seems happy with what I am doing, but I'm not sure myself if the work I'm doing's at a high quality.

After lunch, we continued with our tennis match scenes, but Neil wanted me to move onto practicing using the graph editor, because it's apparently quicker once you get used to it. So I practiced animating a hula hoop using the graph editor.

This is what the graph editor looks like, which is another way of animating in Maya. I used this to animate a ring moving around a square.

I haven't found today too difficult, however, I feel I would like to improve my skills using Maya, as last week, when we were set to finish texturing our classrooms, I found it quite tedious and some parts didn't really look right. I've also seen what other people have done at my level, and I feel that they're so much better than what I can do now. I've also seen what other people have done at my level, and I feel that they're so much better than what I can do now. I think I will want to talk to Lisa, my support about what’s worrying me tomorrow and Neil in our 1-1 next week.

On a more positive note, however, I did notice a few things today: First of all, the lecturers seem much more friendly towards me since I’ve been on the Foundation Degree course. Neil seems much more relaxed teaching this course than Interactive Media, and even the other lecturers, such as Mark and ‘Chelle, don’t mind talking to me when they see me walking around college.