11 Second Club - October Work In Progress

Well, after not performing up to my personal standards in the August contest, and then moping for a month, I've picked myself back up and am entering the contest again.

This month's character animation includes lip sync in English, which should make my life easier. I've also decided to use someone else's rig for a multitude of reasons. I want to get used to using assets created by other people, in case I'm ever called upon to work with files and not create everything from scratch. I can definitely imagine situations where my company would want to save time on the production turn around of a piece. The second reason I'm using a pre-made rig is because I'm using Maya, with which I'm less familiar than SoftImage or XSI. Maya's price tag is significantly lower than XSI, and it interfaces well with 3DS Max, so it's worth improving my fluency with the software.

Here's my work in progress for the contest:

New Animation Idea

So I had an idea the other day. Actually it's about a week old now, but every time I try to think of the whole thing in my head, I get these weird tingles of anticipation and excitement. It's tied to animation, to creativity, to storytelling, to programming, to artistic design, to everything, really.

Here's my idea. In my spare time, I'm going to create a real, 3D world video game.

It sounds so much smaller than it is. But I have high hopes. Although I've always wanted to work on animation exclusively, I have a brain that seems to pick up programming languages easily. I have no problem wrapping my brain around the more abstract programming concepts. I have some ideas that haven't been tried yet. I think it could be a success.

And of course, it COULD be a miserable failure.

But at least it will give me a target to really move through the design process and add some art to my website, seeing as how there's been a distinct lack of it lately. Another hurdle is that my home system is completely dead right now. The motherboard gave me the finger, kicked my shin, and then quit.

But by far, the biggest obstacle is that I have never used a 3D game engine in conjunction with a programming language before. I'm evaluating my zero-budget options, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be grateful.

Anyway, I'll post concept art once I've made it. It'll be fun to follow the progress. All other projects have stopped in honor of this one.

3ds Max - A Journey

So I've started pedaling my way up the learning curve of 3ds Max, the industry standard software for video game companies who create 3d characters, and have a need for character animation. There are a lot of tutorials available online for the general concepts of modeling a face, a person, a plane, etc. What I'm not finding are portability tutorials.

For instance, I'm very well versed in using Softimage XSI. I've been using it since XSI 2.0, up to it's current version. Both of my hands are moving constantly when I use it, hitting hotkeys and clicking mouse buttons. I've spent the last 10 years learning and using the general concepts behind modeling a particular object or character. I can intelligently discuss the benefits and drawbacks of choosing different modeling methods.

What I don't have, and what is making me feel like I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, is that hotkey/function name knowledge. If I want to create a face, on polygon at a time, I know immediately what to do... in XSI. I hit the 'n' key and I begin 'drawing polygons'. I know to hit the left mouse button to plant a vertex, and I know to hit the right mouse button to end my current polygon. I know that hitting my middle mouse button will end the current polygon and start a new one immediately. I know to press 'u' to select polygons by raycasting, and 'y' to select polygons with a selection marquis.

And then I turn to 3ds Max... and drool. I don't even know what Max CALLS these functions. I'm sure polygon is in there somewhere, but is it polygon creation, drawing, modeling, crafting, editing, or something completely different? Every key I press is wrong. I might as well curl my fingers into a fist and type with my knuckles... or a club...

What I'd like to see is some tutorial for XSI users to learn 3ds Max. I need beginner level instruction, but expert level concepts. I've found the exact opposite. High-speed videos of people modeling in 3ds Max with no explanation of how they're doing what they're doing. I do not need to watch what method you chose to create your airplane or manly face. I need to know what keys you're pressing for each action.

When I learn this program, I'm going to start producing tutorials that actually make sense.

And then I'll tell people to go see my website.