Journal II (Mock)

I have gone through the lessons in IN3D and they definitely helped me in progressing and working MAYA. For the small "homeworks" we need to complete everytime we go for lessons, and the major animation assignment II which contributes 35% of the whole subject. The lessons I have learnt help me ease and progress through them smoothly.

However, I encountered problems along the lessons, and asked friends to help, and vice versa. Some problems I encounter are the rigging and animating the floursack and the animating of legoman. For the floursack, rigging for it must be precise and accurate, or else when animating, I will face problems when rotating and tranlating according to my will. If not rigged properly, the shape of the floursack when moving will be awfully out of shape, like jagged areas, where I have to "weight" and smooth it down. "Weighting" is definitely not an easy process as it need experience and skilfulness to master it. Though difficult, I've heard that in sem 2.2, we have an animation course which requires this.

Animating the legoman is easy, however, making it realistic is difficult. Legoman lacks certain joints such as the elbows and knees to allow more detailed movements. Also, translating and rotating legoman's limbs are restricted in many ways. Some rotations around the X, Y, Z axis would give the legoman unrealistic movements, thus making a poor animation.

However, there are good encounters in making the animation, as well as during the lessons. Making the stretch and squash for the ball provides exaggeration for animation, thus increasing its realism for audience. The tutorials are also interesting and allows me to project a good animation if there is, in the future.

Animation itself is also one big problem I faced, when doing Assignment II. Set Key Frames is the MAIN MAIN MAIN thing, as well as the MOST FRUSTRATING thing in animation. As the objects in our animation, such as the legoman and floursack, have their respective parts, such as L_Arm, R_Arm, L_ArmIK, R_LegIK, Root_control, once I forget to KeyFrame a part, the whole animation before the current Frame will be affected, and no matter how beautiful the front part is, it will be destroyed! Though irritating, it still teaches us a lesson to be cautious and careful about our work. The run-time errors also remind us to save our work constantly, which is extremely important. But no matter how many tragedies we have gone through, at the end of the day, at the end of the animation, we WILL FEEL SOOO GOOOD!

Also, MAYA has a great user interface and many functions, such as having a smooth camera flow when animating or viewing my projects. The functions provide MAYA users with an easier access for complicated movements and animations.

I feel that having the chance to learn this subject will definitely help me in the future. MAYA has provided me with another option in my future career paths and life, opening more of a designing route for me. I will treasure the lessons I have been taught and will make it useful to my life, for now and the future.