Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

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Why I can’t stand Maya 0

Miscellaneous

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Why I can’t stand Maya

This is reply to one of my Animation Mentor classmates and I thing it could be usefull to other people. I was worried to post my grudge towards Maya since future employers could think that I am reluctant to use Maya but I now got used to its issues and tamed the beast

“I started using Maya with version 1 or 2, can’t remember, I also bought the book, bought the Tshirt ;-).

Being Power Animator’s successor I thought it would be an amazing software but very quickly came to hate it: Unix kind of ugly interface, no polygon modeling at that time (just Nurbs) and other weired issues that 3dsmax didn’t have. People were doing amazing stuff with it though, just look at Bingo!

So yeah, I went back to 3dsmax and have always been happy since especially for rendering and polymodeling work but I am not closed to other softwares.Let’s face it, Maya is king (or Queen) in the feature film industry.

After so many years using Max I realised that 3d softwares are so complicated nowadays that if you don’t have someone to show you which button is really usefull and which one is useless, you are gonna waste your time.

That’s why I am trying Maya again since AM provides training and support for that very ackward software. I give myself few more month to learn all the stuff I need for animation, then I will try XSI. There is more work in commercial and feature film on XSI in London and pretty much all the AM students based in London use XSI.

Maya really failed to impress me, so far, for the reasons I mentioned in the forum and in my workspace. Lack of full Avi and Quicktime support. Clunky default interface, inconsistents shortcuts (why can’t we move keys with a left click in Translate mode while in the graph editor?).

The funniest of all is definitely the fact that I had to define the front camera in the Global render settings when I wanted to render the side view for the Obstacle course.

Has anyone had fun trying to install LowMan rig? My impression so far is that Maya is targeted more for TD people than artists. If you don’t know Maya inside out before tackling a full project, you might run into a brick wall. I now wear a helmet, that helps 😉

One note before I finish my ramblings 😉 I am not saying Maya is a bad software, just look at Pixar’s work …oops no they use Marionnet, look at Dreamwork’s work …oops no they use Emo 😉 well any blockbuster, but once you know the software well, try to learn an other one with someone who knows it, and you could be surprised to see the the grass can been greener on the other side!

Maya is not a bad software, it just very clunky, I will put my troubling experiences on my blog when I find the time.”

Olive

106 assignement and 105 revision 0

Animation Mentor

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106 assignement and 105 revision


the animation looks okay, I am surprised Cassidy didn’t talk about the slight slowness of the base in his E-Critique.


looks pretty good, Cassidy gave me few things to work on, THIS WILL NEVER END!!!! ;-). Yeah, this is what I have experienced so far, learning animation is a never ending process. I have spent nearly 40hours on that animation so far… Could that be the reason why we, as Animation Mentors’ students, only upload our assignement at the last minute? It could be the fear of people pointing at our mistakes which would mean more work to do. Well if you only have 20 hours to devote to Animation Mentor a week, make the most of it and take eventual revisions in consideration. If you don’t have time you don’t have time.

Session 105 0

Animation Mentor

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Session 105


Version 1.01 was a little bit too adventurous, so here is version 2.01.
The rig also doesnt’ give us much freedom so I am gonna stick to something simpler.

Session 105 Q&A BB version 1.01 0

Animation Mentor

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Session 105 Q&A BB version 1.01

I know I look weired!! 6.30 am and I hadn’t slept yet!!! Cassidy demonstrating Richard Williams “stretch before landing” tip.

Planning for this week’s assignement, Bouncing ball over-achiever version 1.01

Animation Mentor 104 0

Animation Mentor

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Animation Mentor 104


Here is my planning for Session 104, Two bouncing balls with different weight.

And here is the animation….. As you can see….. the timing on the planning has NOTHING TO DO with the final animation 😉 This is I think what we call the learning process 😉

Animation Mentor 103 0

Animation Mentor

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Animation Mentor 103


Here is my revision for last week assignement, I won’t dare posting this week’s bouncing ball and Excited pose as both are pretty crap. Wait for this week revision;-)

Animation Mentor assignement 102 0

Animation Mentor / Drawings

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Animation Mentor assignement 102



Sketches for my assignement at various locations: Snooker Club, Kick boxing class, skilled people skateboarding and below is Stu pose, based on sketch 2. I went a bit over the top with Stu pose I must admit. I was looking for something very graphical and tried to draw S curves everywhere even on the spine which worried Cassidy a lot 😉 I will try to give him a more Health and Safety compliant pose then.

102 Q&A 1

Animation Mentor

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102 Q&A


stuff we talked about the Q&A today

“Simplified Drawing forPlanning Animation” is the book specific to Thumbnailing for animation.

Vilpu great life drawing and sketching courses, the guy is regularly holding Life drawing classes at Dreamworks, Disney etc.. Stephen Silver was mentionning him in his interview for all the articles and that one in particular http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=Columns&column=vilppu&article_no=375 (7 pages)

I was also suggesting the reading of Hillman Curtis (not related to Cassidy) to Maciek regarding how to get inspiration MTIV Process Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer

And finally exhaustive and maybe exhausting notes on AnimationMeat.com Walt Stanchfield notes