Maya 3D painting -- DINOSAUR

Software: Maya 2008
Subject: 3D painting on a dinosaur with bumpmap texture for it's skin
Mode: it was premade .. i only painted on it.
Issues: I couldn't paint on the dino! i still dont know exactly why but me NOT adding the blank texture first actually worked .. it's very strange but the book said add texture first then you can paint.
Comments: how important is it to know the why ... damm i might need to figure out why if not for my own curiosity

Maya: Mesh Tea Pot

Subject: Mesh Tea Pot
Software: Maya 2008

Issues: none - I actually dont remember much about this lesson except that this tea pot is suppose to have the same qualities as a plant. Main Stem = round pot, Leaves = spout, Flowers = Handle. Surprisingly modifying those features will change zee pot. ok enough talk here's a pic.

Maya Painting: Underwater Scene

Subject: chapter 11.2 Maya painting - underwater scene
Software: Maya 2008

Issues: Zero another very smooth lesson. I think this one was the most fun ..and lazyiest too because I didn't have to do anything but click on premade models.

Ball and Planks (GRAVITY)

Subject: Dynamics with soft/ridgid body and contraints. aka Gravity!
Software: Maya 2008
Issues: none this was one of the smoothest lessons ever.

Maya Flower:

Subject: dynamics and particles
Software: Maya

Issues: just a minor one where the colors would only go 1/2 way up. But that' was something i figured out in about 1.5 hours. Fix? frames needed to be set to 200 and not 24 .. clearly at frame 24 the color would flow part way and not up to the end which it would at frame 200. It took me about 5-7 redos before I noticed that I forgot to set it for 200 frames.

This flower pattern is actually animated.. but again i can't get my fraps up to youtube. This animation starts out blank then colors flow out this order from bottom up: Darkgreen,green, light green, yellow green, yellow, orange, red, and dark red, almost black

Lights, Camera, and ACTION!

Software: Maya 2008
Subject: Maya Rendering -- Working on lighting

Mostly it's practice on observing how ligth hits a natural object and then using the maya tools equivilant of it to duplicate the same thing. It's a bit boring to look at and my tech capped self STILL can't figure out how to upload my fraps to youtube .. I am starting to wonder if it's a compression thing or what not.

So the only way for me to make a video for now is to take my webcam and pointit at my monitor and shoot. Result? .. a jerky video that recorded all the background noise along with me dropping the webcam a few times. Hehe i have made it a habit to turn webcam around when it's not in use you konw just in case one of these days i'm trying to get changed and dont realize webcam is on and broadcasting somewhere.


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Maya: Textures: Mayakist ?

Mayakist anyone? This is another premade sphere shaped fruit I colored and textured into an orange .. again I didn't build the wireframe. But fruit doest look eatable. I used: brownie 3d texture and phongE surface.kk that's it.

One of the problems I ran into while working on this one was that I could not find the bump mapping thing but i found it. lol and I accidentally clicked off my menu bar the one that has File, Edit etc ..its kinda important ... so I took a short google break as someone out there must have made the same mistake and got an answer to it. The answer is: CTRL+M a toggle command get back your menu bar and CTRL + Space to toggle on and off all shelves, menu bars etc. I learned it the hardway .. after accidentally clicking off my UI, menubars and had to figure out how to get it back with no teacher to ask.

The side benefit of learning the answer the hardway is that you'll not forget it.

Software: Maya 2008
Lesson: Rendering & Textures

Maya: Red Apple

Red yummy apple!! it looks eatable. Ok again I did not make the apple but I did the coloring which was what this lesson was about. Oh yah it was this lesson where I had the eureka moment on how to fix my problem of box texture not showing up and it was because my PSD file (photoshop file) was missing the alpha channel .. and to test it i wrapped this same apple in a nyc map and naruto wall paper. Awesome

Software: Maya 2008
Lesson: Rendering aka Coloring

Maya: Naruto Flavored Apples?

Hi hi,
Here I wanted to play a bit and see what other interesting skins I could give my apple. So I took a naruto wall paper, premade apple and put them together into a naruto apple! The lesson was on texuring so .. this was the result. Hey I think this is how the giant NYC apple scuptures are made! where they'd wrap the image or painting around the apple shape THEN have people copy paint that on the apple

Naruto Apple vs. NYC Applefest Apples: This is amazing!

my creation: Naruto Apple

NYC APPLEFEST (giant apple sculptures all over the city)

Maya: NYC Apple Anyone?

Hi again,
This was a side project where I decided to test my texture wrapping skills on this yummy apple. The original was red but i wanted to see what wrapping did .. apparently it inverted everthing see how teh words dont' make sense and you'd have to use a mirror to read it. haha another project for next week.

Maya: Polygon Texturing

what's that? that's a screenshot of my first attempt at this projecting i think the box packaging on to the box. This was the hardest lesson ever because everything worked except that in the perspective view "left" I could not get my texture to show up. I knew that my texture is there .. but I could not see it. Well this is a huge problem there's no way I can model anything w/o the skin or attempt to convince an employer that this really works but you just can't see it and I don't know why.

Good news is 5.5-7 hours later I figured out the Why and how to fix it. I concluded that either my software's broken OR the its user error on my part. It turned out that Maya's sample PSD file was missing the Alpha Channel. Whoever would have thought that 1 channel would have me redoing the same lesson again and again wondering what I missed. Oh the eureka moment didn't come right away I spent 2 hours Google researching the subject of Maya, texturing problems and reading various teachers' tutorials and assignments to see if i could get a hint on fixing my problem. This is where school comes in handy because I'd have asked someone and could have had the answer instead of struggling for hours on it.

i spent 5 hours on this lesson and moved on to the next one which was coloring an apple when all a sudden I heard a mental echo of something I read while Google searching for the answer. "all PSD files need an Alpha channel for textures to show up". That eureka moment led to find what an alpha channel was and how to add it into my file. so I did a test and wrapped my current lesson's apple with a map of the NYC subway map just to see if my hunch was right. And low and behold it worked so I went back into the original file and added and alpha channel to see if that was the key and tadda! problem fixed!

Wee I fixed it ! Erm nothing to celebrate about as that was probably a problem so simple that even Photoshop's help files didn't cover it or I didnt' know the correct wording to find it.

Maya: Animating Faces

Software: Maya 2008
Lesson: character set up

The model was premade by maya and my job was to learn how to move it's various face groups. that C you see there is the cluster control for the eyebrows. This lesson when very quickly probably under 1 hour.

Eyebrows up, cheeks up and lift! Walla a smile. A boom boom cha! a boom boom cha!

Photoshop CS 3 -- a break from Maya

I took a week off Maya and fiddled with Photoshop CS3 and erm other entertainment as a way to avoid Maya..yah it's that bad. The book i'm using is ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS 3 Classroom in a book. $54 and like 450+ pages. ISBN-10: 0321492021 in case you're ever that interested to see whats it about.

Today I had a refresher course on how to use photohshop what where and how to find my tools. I did all of the projects from chapter 1-6 of practice excersises, photo retouching, coloring, shading, etc. blah blah blah .. anyways chapter 7 onward is going to be a slow going as I'm seeing new material and have never used any of the features they're talking about. I will make an orignial project from each chapter

Box Moving Bot Completed!

Project completed at last .. each time i tried to fix it I'd get stuck with the same results where the crane moves and the boxmoves too OR box not move Or box moves but to the wrong spot. Granted everythign else works but this is important .. moving stuff only where it needs to go.

Anyways the problem was that I needed to "set" the arm movement separately from the box. I was trying to save time and skipped a few steps only to have to redo it 3-5x and finally figured out what my lazy ass self didn't do. I nodded off a few times so hence the question of eh? where did i leave off or worst did i just nod off ? so did I or did I not do step 12?

Anyways this is done! next! golly