Today during Animation 2, we continued working on our final project.
Pain. If I had to describe my experience working on the project today in a single word, that would be the word I choose. I say this because I have been working on this during most of my time today, and it has been extremely painful. Between dealing with symmetry not functioning properly, to realizing that the topology was WAY more messed up than I thought, it was all very painful to deal with. I ended up fixing a lot of stuff, and this was INCREDIBLY time consuming, as I was using the symmetry tool for almost all of this. This is the reason it was time consuming because, as I said earlier, symmetry did not function properly. Instead, it decided to do things on one side, but did not repeat them on the other side. As a result of this, I had to go back and do what I did on one side again. All in all, it was very painful to deal with. I am starting to dread working on this tomorrow, but I am sure that I will be able to figure it out.

Today during Animation 2, we continued working on our final project. I have finally been able to get the body of the ship to a point where I am satisfied with it. After soft select effectively ruined the shape of the ship two separate times, I manually moved each vertex to shape it. The ship still looks a bit odd in some parts, but for the most part it looks good. Other than this, I have not had any problems with this. I look forward to working on this tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, we continued working on our final project. So far, Michael has made some props for the pirates, Mitchell has been making the zucchini kraken, Madison has been working on writing what all will be happening in the pitch for the animation, and I have been trying to make the pirate ship. I intended to work on it yesterday after school, but ended up completely forgetting. I ended up remaking it today, but that has not turned out well. I would say that it came out arguably worse, and I think I have another method for making it that just might work. I am going to model it again after school, hopefully getting it to turn out how it needs to look. Other than this, I have not had any issues, and I look forward to working on this again tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, we continued working on our Sailing the Seas group project. So far, I have finished making the side view of the pirate ship. I am more than likely going to just make the top view and reference colors, because I doubt that we will be looking at the ship head-on. Then, after I finish this, I can move on to modeling the pirate ship itself, which I am looking forward to. Other than this, I have not had anything really notable to say, and I look forward to working on this when we’re back in class.

Today during Animation 2, we continued working on our Sailing the Seas project. So far, I have started drawing concept art for the pirate ship. I have been basing it off of images of the Black Pearl. It has been taking a while to draw, and I feel like drawing this may take a while, especially if I have to draw a top and front view of it as well. Either way, I’m sure I can get this done in a good amount of time. Aside from this, I helped a bit with setting up one of the new drawing tablets that our school received. With that said, I look forward to working on this project tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, we finished animating the Plugged In logo. So far, we have finished animating the logo and should be ready to render it. There has been one main issue so far, but it was resolved relatively quickly. This issue was that the scene seemed to be getting foggy when importing the word part of the logo. We found that this was because of a fog shader that also was imported. We found this when looking in the Hypershade menu, and the problem was resolved when we deleted the shader. Another problem is that since the computers restart for updates over the weekend, the long render time of the project would mean that, chances are, we would not have the full render after the weekend is over. The way we got around this is by uploading the project to Google Drive and downloading it onto my computer, where we will render it. Other than these, we have not had any problems with this project. With that said, I look forward to continuing to work with Maya.

Today during Animation 2, we continued working on the Plugged In Logo project. So far, we have almost finished animating the plugs moving along the wires. We have also animated the light of the play button turning on. Now all that we should have left to do is to add and animate the words for the logo. We have not had many problems with this project, with the biggest one being that we improperly keyframed the plug at the first turn, which made it not follow the wires. This, however, was an easy fix, and we adjusted it to where it works properly. Other than this, there have not been any problems, and I feel like this has turned out really well. I look forward to working on this tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, I finished following a tutorial to make a syrup liquid. I have not had many issues with working on this, but I did have to worry about managing my time to work on the Plugged In logo as well. Thankfully, this was not difficult to manage, and we are pretty close to finishing the logo. The main issue out of the few that I had was the Bifrost cache taking a long time to work, and then seeming to have done nothing but make Maya run slow when I worked on it. Other than that, I have not had many issues with this. With that said, I look forward to working in Maya again tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, I continued following along with video tutorials explaining how to use Bifrost in Maya. So far, I am on the last tutorial video in the folder, but I do not know if we will have any more tutorials to follow through with for this subject. I would assume that we would not have anymore to worry about yet, considering the fact that the SkillsUSA trip to State is approaching rapidly. I have not had any problems working with this that have prevented me from working, and I look forward to working in this class tomorrow.

Today during Animation 2, we started learning about using Bifrost to create fluids in Maya. So far, I have gotten through the first video tutorial and am playblasting the result now. I have had an “issue” where any time I make the smallest change to the colliders or fluid properties, it starts automatically caching, which has been mildly annoying to deal with because of how slow it makes Maya run. Other than this, I have not had any issues and I look forward to working in this class again tomorrow.