Putting the talentedBall to rest.

Well I have to call it quits on the talentedBall assignment. I know myself and I will never be happy with it and although there is so much I want to do, I am learning way too much on my own here and need to get back on track with the assignments. One of the things I am afraid of at this point is getting into bad habits as the things I have learned are coming easy now and I find myself quite comfortable with the graph editor, but I am struggling with a lot of new stuff that I am sure will be covered in what is now 75 hours of video. So although I am having way to much fun I know its time to turn it in and move on. The thing I am most unhappy about is that I really want to break up the monotony of the repeating bounces more, but like I said, I must move on...

So I write this as I sit waiting for a hundred frame render test to finish to make sure the particles, glow, and lighting all work well together. Adding that in was a little bit of a disappointment as I got this really cool looking hardware particle system going, but the PLE does not let you render out hardware particles. Oh well, Switched it over to software, added the glow and I am as happy as I am going to be at this point… So I say it again, time to move on.

Really I am happy with the fact that I have learned a crap load about Maya, and the first assignment did not come out all that bad. Mostly I just want to polish it up and add the ending to it. Perhaps I will come back to it after this class is over with all my new found knowledge as I must say that there is something challenging in animating a simple ball to act like a character.

Oh well.. On to the next assignment…

Lessons learned:

Well, my whole animation is at 24 frames a second and when I tried to change it over to 30 fps it screwed up all the timing of the dancing and talking. Not sure where I screwed up and left it at 24, but hopefully it is not something that will earn me a failing grade. But it did drive home the point to make sure you are animating at the correct frame rate.