My slightly dodgy NURBS Coliseum…
I’m now in the fourth month of my 3D training course. We recently finished the module on animation where we built, rigged and animated a Luxo style lamp (as per Pixar’s first animated short). It took a few lessons to build and rig the lamp so by the time we came to the animation there was little time to perfect things. Personally this is the area of working in 3D that really interests me so it was a little disappointing to hear that we would not be doing much more on animation on the course. Still I feel I have enough of a grasp of the basics to go off and start experimenting.
Having plenty of experience with 2D animation in Flash and After Effects has definitely been useful in terms of having a grasp of timing, easing, frame rates etc. but it’s a very different environment so it’s taking some time to get used to.
When we reached the end of our Luxo lamp lesson our trainer Dan told us that ‘That is the end of your introduction to MAYA basics. Now we will be starting projects…’. Wow, what a learning curve! Those three months felt like we had covered a lot of stuff but it was just an introduction to the basics. At least we have made a dent in the nearly vertical learning curve!
Our next lesson was on NURBS modelling where we created a basic Roman coliseum. I’ve added an image of my attempt here. We didn’t cap off the back of the model so it kind of looks odd on the inside. I’ll add my version of the Luxo lamp when I’ve had some time to tweak the animation.
