A few days ago, I was doing really good progress when it came to rigging and animating the dino plushy in Maya 2023. At this point, I was super close to completing the rigging, i just needed to combine and weight paint everything. This was actually right before I encountered the big bug of Maya 2023, but luckily I was able to get passed it when I got there. Progress was coming along well, I was a bit behind when it came to making it, but I was still ahead of everyone else (who were also all behind) by a big margin since I started a day earlier than everyone else.

Today, I was able to rig, animate, render and finish the Dino Plushy Tutorial in Maya. Despite the short time we had to work on the multiple 40 minute tutorials, we were given almost two weeks to work on the 3 10-minute tutorials. The hardest part was probably rigging the legs, as somewhere the IK Handles broke beyond redemption, but luckily just removing them entirely solved the problem. I did like certain parts of this assignment, my favorite being the Xgen. I would say that I would like to do this again, but due to how everyone in the class is super far behind on this assignment, I don’t think it would be the most beneficial idea.

Today, I was able to finish the Xgen tutorial for the Plush Dino in Maya 2023. For this, I didn’t have any big issues at all. The only small problem I had was that the plush was a bit too shiny, but that was my fault and I was able to fix it relatively quickly. I really like how it came out with the fluff and even the stray strands, making it look pretty realistic. I definitely would not mind doing more Xgen in the future, it gives good results and it’s not overly hard or confusing, definitely something I could see myself spending good time on doing.

Today, I finished Part 2 of 3 for our Dino Plushy tutorial in Maya 2023. Today has gone pretty well with only minor issues. One problem I had was that the knit texture wasn’t showing as good on my end as it did on the tutorial, and trying to fix it resulted in it looking worse, so I reverted that and just went for what I had. Luckily, Xgen wasn’t hard at all, and is thankfully working this year, so I shouldn’t be having much issue with it moving forward.

Today, I completed the beginning model for our plushy dinosaur. So far I do like this assignment, but the tutorial has some issues and hard to follow things, so it’s slowing me down and making me take much longer than it should to complete. I really like how my dinosaur has came out so far, it does look like a plush currently and after the UV Mapping and texturing is complete, hopefully it should look even better. The only thing I’m a bit worried about is the Xgen, since last year it didn’t even work as an option period, so I don’t have as much experience with it that I should.

Today, we finally completed and submitted out Ball Bounce Animation Project in Maya 2023. If there’s anything we should take from this we will need to rush a lot more in projects in the future, and i mean a lot, what we have here was rushed to all hell and it was still submitted a week late. While around half of our little plans got scrapped, I’m very happy with the ones we were able to get in. Seth was the one who focused on the animating, which he did a very good job on. He gave me the renders afterwards and I compiled them into Adobe After Effects. We were supposed to have sound in the animation, but we had nowhere near enough time for that, and we already have other assignments so we just need to submit what we had. I think what I liked most about this assignment was the concept we had. We took the original Ball Bounce and decided to shift it into new areas with portals, allowing for a very creative use for physics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7DfdLsuMWvywXJYPufJKcAeyrq8t0ue48gYf7ZFdHs/edit?usp=sharing

Today, a lot more progress was made on the Ball Bounce Project, but a lot was also scrapped. My partner and I tend to add as much detail and quality as we can, but as we unfortunately learned today, we have to rush if we want to finish any of our projects this year. A few things we had to scrap were the custom lights, replacing it with a skydome light, and the door textures, simply replacing them with a wall that moves downwards. What was able to be done, and almost completed was the animation of the ball, as well as the finalized texturing of the environment. I would have loved to continue adding more to this assignment, but we are already late at this point, so we have to rush what we have currently and submit what we have.

Throughout the past few days, Seth and I have been working on the Ball Bounce Animation assignment we were given. So far, we have no started on the animation yet, and are still building the scene. Seth has been able to make the scene and the placement of where things will go. I have been making the textures and models for various things that will show up in the Animation. We’ve had fun so far and haven’t encountered any issues other than Maya having some issues with itself.

Today, I was able make, render, and compile all my Animations into one video and finish it up before we ran out of time. I’m really happy with how some of these came out, I think they are some of the best I’ve made to date. My favorite one to work on was Exaggeration. The part with the hammer floating out was actually a mistake, but it ended up looking cool so I left it in. This was a really good introductory assignment for this year and I’m really looking forward to doing more.