“The house caught on fire in the winter, the bosses lay slain…”
I’m listening to Ocean Colour Scene’s Moseley Shoals album at the mo. It’s old but a fantastic album. I can’t say i’m an OCS fan as this is their only stuff i’ve heard but I would definately recommend it – great guitar solos and wicked beats=)
Okay I’m fed up with myself! I like too many things. I have too many interests that I just dabble. I’m a dabbler. I don’t commit myself enough to actually specialise in any one thing – probably why i’m still working in an office. No screw that, DEFINATELY why i’m still working in an office!
Let’s see…I love 3D animation. So you wan’t to be a 3D animator? So you try *deep breath* Anim8or, Rhino, MilkShape 3D, GMax, Truespace, Maya PLE, Lightwave…the list is endless. My favourite has to be Lightwave. I’ve just found the interface the easiest to get around. Maya produces spectacular results but I’ve learned more with Lightwave.
Yes, I have learned something. I know alot more about 3D animation than I did when I started (well duh!) but I haven’t as yet produced anything. Well, okay then, let’s dig out the old pitful attempts…
Exhibit A. What’s wrong with it? Well, you can’t see it in this pic but the nice border round the top isn’t nice at all. It’s stretched and at the time I didn’t figure out why so i’ve left it as is.
Exhibit B. Okay this one isn’t actually too bad. It’s unfinished obviously and I need to make a texture map for it – that was a roadblock I hit at the time as 3DMapper wasn’t free for awhile – but it’s fairly close to my original idea. Yes, I actually drew a design before I started this one – probably why it turned out better than my other attempts!
Exhibit C. Again, i’m semi-happy with this one. I like that I managed to get a nice smooth shape and, given my limited exposure to rendering, I actually managed to make it look a bit like porcelain. It did seem to have lines on it though and i’m not sure why. I don’t know alot about rendering yet as I was focusing more on modelling techniques so i’ve probably done something wrong. A simple object for anyone else i’m sure, but I’m a slow learner.
Exhibit D. Ha! Another very simple object but it didn’t turn out too bad. I spent alot of time getting the shape of the links correct – I’d just learned about creating piping by following some tuts – and it turned out I wasn’t able to show it off because it’s so small. Trust me, it did look like shiny metal..honest. The texturing is a bit hit and miss. I grabbed a royalty free wood texture off the web and splashed it all over the thing. it looks okay but I know it’s not. Never mind.
I think that’s all the horror stories so far. Told you I hadn’t achieved much so far. I’ve attempted to make various human-like characters but all ended up as something else. Character modelling is a whole other area of 3D Animation in itself and something you really need to study hard in.
I will study – don’t take this as a “oh it’s too hard” winge. I’m content to plod away at my own pace, study what I want to study when I want to study it. But I am acutely aware that I could be alot further forward if only I was more focused.
3D Animation led onto dabblings in Flash and 2D, I’ve messed around with programming and game creation (Again fruitless, despite using the fantastic DarkBasic program, no joke!). I’ve also played with Photoshop, editing photos. I actually did study this at college, along with Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Poser, and Bryce.
Bryce is a great program for the price. Not as complex as a full 3D modelling program but it produces amazing results…um where are mine? Heh, I did do something at college, honest…If I can find the Toy Story scene I created for a backdrop in Flash i’ll post it, anyway, it’s a really easy to use, intuitive program. I urge you to check it out if you can get your hands on it (I’m not sure if it’s still being sold as it’s changed owners).
Alot of the time, when I wasn’t studying tutorials – and I did actually do tutorials (a cool mansion scene, a glass bowl, spaceships) – I spent alot of time browsing other people’s work and 3D websites. While this is good for showing you what all these programs are capable of and giving you some inspiration (Check out Peter Ratner’s human modelling work! I can’t find the link as it’s lost somewhere in all my favorites=S), it also kinda kills imagination.
I’ve always been proud of my imagination. I used to conjuer up all kinds of stories and pencil drawings as a child. I used to think my pencil drawings were pretty good (I can’t find any i’m afraid) and I preferred drawing over painting. But the move to digital has meant i’ve drawn less and less (I don’t draw at all now really), and drawing, aswell as all the traditional art skills, is a real benefit for 3D work. It doesn’t matter how fancy the program is, if you can’t express what you want to create, the program won’t do it for you – as i’ve found out the hard way!
Anyway, I’ve not abandoned 3D, or any of the above interests. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. I’ll keep you posted. Anything that passes the maximum-security, shoot-to-kill policy of my critical mind will be posted here.
“…Well I used to think my freedom was a lot of things I’d give, demanding on my time but I had so much time to give, well I used to think that everything was a knee in what you are. But finding out the truth that hurts so I never went that far…”
Air guitars at the ready folks, the solo’s coming…
“…No I always get awayyy…….”
October 31st, 2005 at 11:26 pm
Hey! Well..your efforts seem good to me, I’m no expert and although I’m afraid of getting into gaming and stuff (mainly thru fear of failure =P), I’m sure I’ll try something someday and actually not feel too impatient about it. Anyway, there’s still loads of time to do what you want to do and I’m sure there will be a course somewhere that lets you do your stuff
Imagination is always important, not just for 3D stuff, I think maybe you could get back to basics and start drawing again? It could help! xxx