Why, When, Where and What the fuck!

School reports.
How many parents out there? If you a parent and you get school reports, all I can say is sometimes they are just an exerise done just to fill in boxes. I am finishing my reports for my class. Since I work at a private school I am expected to write more than I really need to. Each report is 11 pages long. All I can say is, I have better things to do. They have been a complete waste of time. The crap that teachers write is unbelievable.

Maya, I have been so busy I only completed one video. Not happy at all. Why can't I be a millionare?

Sorry not much more to say. My energy level is at 0.

Day 12,865,964

Time, do we have enough in the day? I am thinking of asking God if he can extend the day by 6-10 hours and night by around 10 hours. I like my sleep and I don't feel like giving it up.

I am really loving this course. last night I just chatted on Buzznet trying to solve the problem of animated textures. After about an hour of discussing we never came up with an easy way. I think you could just use files like the console shaders activity and then just keyframe what textures I want to use. I want to see if you could use an avi as a texture. I found that you could by using the movie node but I could not find for the life of me where the frame extendsion on button was. I need this to turn the avi file on. When I told it to run by an expression I had no problems to start the avi but I want to start the avi running at a set time. Any renders that I did with an avi just turned out very poor. As I am making this, buzz has not explained how to use the movie node I was really just shooting in the dark. In the end I became fustrated and just left it. I am sure to come back to this soon as I am going to need it for my alien project.

From the course all I did was the cluster weight painting. I had to restart it three times before I started getting the hang of it. I watched the video more than once and found the trick that Buzz was using. after that it was much easier. I am by no means am I now a pro but it is not as hard as I first thought.

Not sure what I will get done tonight as I have work to finish by Thursday. Since work pays the bills they have to come before enjoyment. Damn it, why can't I just be rich so I don't have to work. :)

My plan for the alien project:

Space ship comes into view over Earth. I am thinking about have two spaceships but we will see there. The alien looks at a sign bobbing in the air pointing towards the Earth saying "earth pop: 6,000,000,000" He gets an evil thought and speeds off to the earth. (I did want the hitchikers guide to come out but I want to finish this project this year so I canned that idea)

Cut to the yard. The beachball is sitting in the sand pit. In bounces the talented ball right up to the beachball. he looks at her lovingly. Cut to under spaceship, doors open. cut back to the yard. The light goes on the beachball. talented ball pushes the beachball out of the way and gets dragged up (fighting all the way). TB (talented ball) get sucked into the alien ship. the ship flys off ... alien not a happy as him and TB are fighting (scene above the earth).

I have cut many ideas from this as I have to keep it short.

The day after yesterday and the day before tomorrow

I have continued to work very hard on this course. I should get a picture of all the post-it notes I have through my note book. It is so much easier to read now.

I have seen some people not sure if they should take the course on the 3DBuzz forums becuase of the amount of time that this course takes. I can't lie, this course will take up a lot of your time but so far I have found it very do-able. I have a full time job where at this time of the year I am very busy but I have kept up with the work load.

I am working as hard as I can. I need to finish this course earlier than the given time. So to those that read this are worried about the speed that things are getting done, stop it and sign up now. If you think you can commit 3-4 hours a day then you will finish this course. I am not saying it will be easy but it will be a lot of fun on the way.

So far I have rigged the spaceship and rigged a lot of the alien. I just need to do a lot of tweeking tonight. At one point last night I found myself not understanding anything that Buzz was saying so I just went to bed. I guess doing 4 hours of learning can do that to you.

In the rigging videos it is just Buzz talking. I still find it interesting but I prefer to have zak along for the ride as they work very well together, it also keeps me awake after a hard days work. I'm not saying Buzz is boring, just that you get used to listening to 2 people, going to one if just different. Still learning, still much more to go. I'm dreaming Maya (damn you Buzz)!

I am loving this course.

If you are reading this and thinking of taking this course and you have a full time job, if I can do it so can you. Sign up!

This day is named after my fridge. Fridge Day

Weekend over and back to a place without Maya. I think I have competely fried my brain once again. As I study differently I find my progress has slowed down to a point where I am getting nowhere fast. The thing is I think I understand what I am doing. The worst thing about all the hard study is that my parents are coming over to Germany on the 5th of June so during their stay I most likely will forget everything. Damn parents!

I finished the shading videos this weekend, not as far as I wanted to but I will live with it. I am giving myself 2 days to complete the 4 hours of rigging videos. Lets hope I can do it.

I still have a to do good shading network for my little alien. I have a few ideas what I am going to do. I will try it tonight.

I will post a picture of my spaceship and alien tomorrow.

Captains Log: day 12.86909645a

I have now changed the way I wish to study for this course. In the first project I followed along as I wrote notes. When I look back at those notes they don't help me very much because I was just following along rather than taking good detailed notes. When trying to do many of the things that were taught in project one I felt that I have not learnt it to the degree I would have liked. Sure, I could go back and watch them all again but will I do that?

So I have a new plan. I must watch the videos first, taking notes as I go along. Once the video is finished I have to follow my notes to complete the task. If I am unsure of something I look back at the video and then update my notes.

Once I have recreated the scene I then start all over again trying to do as little as I can without the notes. After I have made the scene I do it all over again not touching the notes at all.

I have had two benefits coming from this. I am understanding what I am doing (nodes are ok I guess) and I am getting much faster.

The only con of this is that it takes a long time to do but I want to learn Maya, not just follow along what other people can do.

I spent all Saturday doing one thing, The Earth. Simple, many of you that are not on the course might be thinking but not when you find out what we have been taught. Firstly, this is not just a sphere with a full texture on it. It is layers of textures that I have control over. Below you will see an animation of what completed. Sorry about the speeding up at the end, I set it rendering last night and I didn't notice that extra key frame. Oh, the earth is the right way up!

notice:

- The earth gets darker and lighter and it rotates

- Mountain, cloud bump

- Specular only on ocean

- City lights that turn off at day time (they turn on at night too)

- The blue glow (atmosphere) around the earth.

The rotating Earth