Hey, you too can learn Maya from your own home! Have you ever considered the exciting world of computer effects graphics? Does your computer have 6 GB of memory? Do you want to make your neighbors and relatives cry with the beauty and depth of your creations? Autodesk Maya 8.5 has all you need and more to build your own stunning universe (with physics!)!
*Takes a DEEP BREATH* Anyway, so I made a bouncing ball the other day. It was strangely satisfying. Omid is going to eventually teach me and Jake to model, so in the meantime I've been perusing a somewhat baffling book called THE ART (cough) OF 3D COMPUTER ANIMATION AND EFFECTS THIRD EDITION, which has a picture of Shrek reaching out towards you on the front. It's very general and its a good introduction to various techniques and jargon, some of which I knew from my brief encounter with 3D imaging from Bryce, some of which I am vaguely familiar with through various television shows on Industrial Light and Magic, most of which I had no idea about and still don't. As I'm itching for something a bit less general (I want to pull on polygons, but I don't even know how to pull them in Maya), I was looking for tutorial stuff I could watch from the comfort of my room so I at least had some vague idea of what I am doing before going down to ASH and trying it out on my own. The Maya website is shiny and proclaims that you can now purchase Maya ULTIMATE 8.5 for 4,995$, a 3,000$ discount. It also says I can download a FREE version which puts watermarks on my images, and I considered this for a minute.
My laptop:
CPU Intel, 1.73 GHz
RAM 1014 MB
yeah, not going to try at this point. I at least need another gig worth of memory.
31 March 2008
26 March 2008
"the Throes of Artistic Appreciation"
I'm back with Omid, and working with the largest of the visual arts group on creating puppets produced in Maya that can be controlled using a Wii-Mote. Jake is our art lead, and Omid is the master-mind. Omid and Jake decided that what we were going for was something that could be picked up and used easily, something simple and intuitive. Chris is our benevolent over-lord and when he came by to check in on us he got on some long-thought-out tangent about creating a fine-tuned interface for Maya that would allow for immediate response to the artist and allow for more subtle and nuanced movement. I sort of glazed over at this point and while we all thought this was a neat idea, we summarily dismissed it as soon as he drifted away.
"The head bobbing is very compelling," he said.
I'm mostly excited by the prospect of actually learning some small chunks of Maya. Omid's enthusiasm has much to do with this, as he says modeling is fun. Of all of the things I've heard from the computer animation people, the most frequent complaint is that actually animating in Maya sucks. I guess that is the reason for Chris's starry -eyed vision, putting some physicality back into it.
On Lee's side the largest group is Max and Kat's insane hyper-instrument-integrated-light-visual extravaganza. There is a sound-room project as well, and both of these should prove to be very interesting.
"The head bobbing is very compelling," he said.
I'm mostly excited by the prospect of actually learning some small chunks of Maya. Omid's enthusiasm has much to do with this, as he says modeling is fun. Of all of the things I've heard from the computer animation people, the most frequent complaint is that actually animating in Maya sucks. I guess that is the reason for Chris's starry -eyed vision, putting some physicality back into it.
On Lee's side the largest group is Max and Kat's insane hyper-instrument-integrated-light-visual extravaganza. There is a sound-room project as well, and both of these should prove to be very interesting.
09 March 2008
In Which Tatiana Is Shown that Synergy and Cartoon Foxes are the Same and Contemplates Stereo Lithography
So I've decided that if I don't get to print something 3D, then most of this class has been a waste.
Well, that's a bit harsh. But its true that in the groups I've been in, the programmer calls the shots, no matter how brilliant (or not) the conceptual work. That being said, what I want to do for our last project is to print or cast computer-generated objects based on some sort of socially-salient data collected from the internet. So I at least need a programmer that knows web-interfaces and a few people that can model in Maya and/or are decent at the 3D library in Processing. The fundamental problem in this is that I personally contain none of the skill sets required for this project apart from having the idea itself. So, if my pitch was well received and I was able to go forward in my hare-brained object-generating escapades I pretty much wouldn't be doing any of the work, unless someone was kind enough to teach me modeling in Maya.
*Taps foot*
Well, that's a bit harsh. But its true that in the groups I've been in, the programmer calls the shots, no matter how brilliant (or not) the conceptual work. That being said, what I want to do for our last project is to print or cast computer-generated objects based on some sort of socially-salient data collected from the internet. So I at least need a programmer that knows web-interfaces and a few people that can model in Maya and/or are decent at the 3D library in Processing. The fundamental problem in this is that I personally contain none of the skill sets required for this project apart from having the idea itself. So, if my pitch was well received and I was able to go forward in my hare-brained object-generating escapades I pretty much wouldn't be doing any of the work, unless someone was kind enough to teach me modeling in Maya.
*Taps foot*
04 March 2008
In Which Several Bizarre Things are Discovered
In Digital Art we broke up into East and West groups. Appropriately I was in West with Adam-owns-your-face-at-everything, and with Chris mediating and falling ever towards madness with his pantomiming. If I get to work with Adam I would be ecstatic, mainly because he seems to be interested in representing data in completely inscrutable but aesthetically pleasing ways. I just want to make physical widgets to live in the ASH lobby, things that would be both baffling and engaging. Most of all it must be things. Things that would filter the data out of the air like coral filtering food particles out of the ocean current. It is all well and good to program, but the world behind the glass cannot be touched, no matter how detailed your modeling.
Adam and Max want to make something completely ridiculous with the controllers for Rock Band. I guess it would be something like Anti-Rock Band, in which instead of being rewarded for playing the right notes you would be rewarded for not... for making as much sound as you want. They would reprogram the controllers to play back different sounds, and to complicate things further, in true digital art style, the buttons would also control a visualizer and a light show. Through our long and convoluted discussion of music we learned that Chris plays music by tapping on different bits of his car, that Ratatat is really just a programmer and a guitarist, and that John is the least practical-minded of any of us, even with Adam. His idea really had nothing to do with music (so that was a bad transition), but he wanted to do something that would represent and record frames of animation in a different way. His example was a group which laid down thousands of frames on a road and then drove over them in a truck equipped with a video camera. That idea was awesome. His involved something I could not visualize involving glass tubes, slices and shooting things through the tube. Mostly it just sounded dangerous.
If we had unlimited resources, no doubt would we come up with the most hilariously convoluted and overly complicated projects ever.
Adam and Max want to make something completely ridiculous with the controllers for Rock Band. I guess it would be something like Anti-Rock Band, in which instead of being rewarded for playing the right notes you would be rewarded for not... for making as much sound as you want. They would reprogram the controllers to play back different sounds, and to complicate things further, in true digital art style, the buttons would also control a visualizer and a light show. Through our long and convoluted discussion of music we learned that Chris plays music by tapping on different bits of his car, that Ratatat is really just a programmer and a guitarist, and that John is the least practical-minded of any of us, even with Adam. His idea really had nothing to do with music (so that was a bad transition), but he wanted to do something that would represent and record frames of animation in a different way. His example was a group which laid down thousands of frames on a road and then drove over them in a truck equipped with a video camera. That idea was awesome. His involved something I could not visualize involving glass tubes, slices and shooting things through the tube. Mostly it just sounded dangerous.
If we had unlimited resources, no doubt would we come up with the most hilariously convoluted and overly complicated projects ever.
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