Again, this is a while ago and that's a shame because I like showing my work to you; I like this blog. So here it is again.
We're working on 3D this period and it's very hard work. Lately I'm used to the long days and working on anyway, but when I look at my social life I'm noticing the difference. Usually I had someone over every now and again, but now those occasions are very rare. It comes down to the weekends, in which I journey to my parents and usually the sunday is my free day, because I'm not really good at working at my parents home due to lack of technical support. My laptop at home just isn't that great in comparison to my computer in Breda.
Anyway the subject this semester is 3D, like I said before, and we're focusing on setting and character. We each had to come up with our own setting in one course. We don't actually have to animate something in that setting, we have to animate the camera, showing the public our setting, trying to bring across the atmosphere.
Besides this we had to create our own character, model it, rig it (give it bones and attaching the bones to the skin) and finally animate it! Everything had to be done in Maya, at least.. That's the software everyone uses. We could also combine our setting and character, but this was your own choice.
I chose a forest as my setting and some sort of hedgehog creature. I wanted to show trees with branches and that when you zoom in you get lost in the branches tangled and woven into eachother. My teacher finally told me I should make my own world and that everyone is capable of recognizing a tree, so conclusion; when I'm making this realistic tree I should make the textures special. I started painting and tried some things. Now, 2 weeks before the end of the project my setting is almost done and I should really start with the animating. I'm really getting into trouble with the time I've got left. Anyways.. I started rigging my hedgehog today, with some help from my teacher. I should start painting the weight in a few minutes. I've been doing to many things other then school.
The hedgehog figure just kind of grew because of a little doodle I did and I really liked it. So I sticked to it, although the feet would be to difficult. I altered it and gave it 2 feet in the end.
Here are some sketches of the proces, the forest and my hedgehog creature!
First doodle above! Next he's standing on his hind feet, making it easier for 3D to model and rig.
His stings were a lot of work, which was stupid useless effort in the end. My teacher told me I shouldn't use a simulation (automatic hair done by the software) because that's too difficult and it takes a lot of rendering (saving the frames) but after 3 weeks of trying other methods and making stings in different ways (which failed for several reasons), we decided to do a simulation anyway.. And that was done in about a half hour.
Somehow this proces didn't make sense to me and it still doesn't.
I really like my forest. These are stills, it's bigger than this and there are also darker trees.
So this is what I'm working on. I hope I will be done in time, but there's still some hope. Anyway, moving on! I have to finish it ;)
Oh yeah, I discovered a band and I'm listening to it all the time now :) it's called The Weepies. Such simple music, but really relaxing and definitely spring music.
Okay, bye!
