more truck

feels good.

Screenshots and stills

Here's the house model I've been picking at. Not too much invested, a few hours at best. of course not textured nor lit just yet.



aaand here's a screenshot of the truck model I'm working on. only about 1 hour into this.



woo.

Oh, Maya...

How I love it when your license fails in the middle of my workflow.

Scripting and macros in MEL

Mmmm, scripting. I wrote a standard volume-preservation back stretch script (simple but a good first project) completely by trial and error. the first few times i had syntax errors like forgetting the semicolon at the end of a line or adding a space between an underscore and a word but it works great and shall be part of my rig.

Monty was retarded-ly closed for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th... thus prohibiting any kind of academic advancement. LAME. couple that with being closed on Sundays and I'm honestly not sure how they expect us to actually DO our work. bloody hell, y'all.

I'm going to go over to York hall after class today and sign up to become a tutor for Digital Form, Space, and Lighting, Animation 1 & 2, Survey of Computer Arts and Advanced Survey of Computer Arts, and Rigging. The requirement is an A in the class and a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or above... so basically I could tutor any of the classes I've taken except art history, that blasphemous pox upon my otherwise-perfect 4.0.
so if anybody out there wants a tutor for anything (Maya especially) pick me! You get excellent help and I get paid by the school at no cost to you. :)

*scurries off to learn macros*

More Production Stuff

Here's some images for you. My first 2 shots (stills, animatic, PVZ blocking) and the new overview with backdrop and some additional scene fills. Added the characters for 2 shots and the truck as well as the third cam. Since there isn't any character stuff in the third shot yet I have omitted it. BORING! :P







woot.

I'm Baaack!

And it feels darn good to be back in the saddle! 2.5 hours of work right there. I love hitting that groove, baby. BAM!

Maya? On MY computer!?

Thats right! I got maya. my friend didn't need it any more. So right now I'm unpacking SCAD's generous free download of Windows XP 64 bit so I can run a clean monty-compatible system before i do the maya install. i'm also going to pop over to Best Buy in a few hours and pick up a new mouse, as my current one (while awesome for internet browsing) doesn't have a reliable or compatible scroll wheel. since i'm running the two screens i can't use my wacom, it horribly distorts the strokes. it's dedicated to the right screen right now, and since i run maya on the left screen with all the menus on the right and it would be a huge pain to swap mice between screens i'm going with the new mouse. besides, i'm just gonna get the cheapest m-soft mouse... it wont be that big of a deal. XD

I had one of those crazy flash of inspiration deals when i was chilling in bed this morning. er, well... chilling is NOT the operative word. OK, being lightly toasted by the sun is more like it. i am now a golden brown and crispy, I swear. urg.
essentially i was contemplating my character designs. i can't very well do the characters like i did in my flash, they're not design-y enough. but I have to be muay careful to stay away from anything resembling ratatouille lest i be accused of copying, which limits me a bit. i'm going to play around with their designs on paper and see what i get. i like the chubbier look for the dad rat, i think i'll start there and see where it goes.

But anywho, once the XP ISO is done unpacking itself i'll burn it to disk and re-platform my system. then its on to the maya install and i'll be able to get to work!


wish me luck! :)