modeling and stuff

2D and 3D are both difficult to work with in their own way, but both of them combined is going to be a very different type of challenge, I can tell already. Modeling the ogre is going well overall I suppose, but the fact that I'm not able to allign the model with both the front/back view and the side view bothers me. I guess it doesn't matter so long as the finished model looks at least similar in form to the drawing, but I still can't help but think there's something I'm not doing right. I'm still not sure what I'm doing for my character, but I'll certainly be thinking more about it as the weekend progresses.

Slight render problem...

Last night I attempted to start rendering my animation at around midnight and leave it there until I got back, but when I logged onto the render account, Cinema 4D wouldn't start because it said the serial numbers were incorrect. I didn't want to just leave my account open, so I decided to go this morning and render. Unfortunately, I woke up a little later than expected and it's clear that my animation will not be ready by the time today's class starts. In fact it's 11:30 and the animation's not even halfway rendered. I'm not sure what can be done about it at the moment, so I'll let it render for as long as I can and see what happens.

Mostly finished. Also computer troubles

I think I've got the animation about where I want it to be, though I'm not going to try to render it until I know that this computer's going to remain unoccupied for an extended period of time. It took like half the class to render 100 frames, and this animation is over nine times that. I didn't have too much else that I could do during this time, so I tried to open Final Cut Pro so I could finally get around to adding sound to my droid animation, and sure enough, it won't open. Fortunately, Final Cut Pro seems to work on other computers, so all I'll have to do is transfer the file to another working volume so I can edit that. The same will go for my yokai animation if it still doesn't work on this machine by the time I have the movie rendered. There was also some slight trouble with logging out, so I get the feeling that I might not have chosen the most reliable computer in the room. Either way, it's certainly nothing I can't work around.

I think I got this...

Well, I figured out the gestures and I think I have all of the animation done, or at least most of it. I might add more to the wave gesture because it seems kind of stiff. The only thing that moves is his hand, so I think I can get more of the body to move so it looks a little more natural. Other than that, I'm basically ready to render. I have a pretty decent amount of effects in this animation, and it's my longest yet, so I have to assume it'll take a while to render. I'll worry about that later though. Right now I'm just glad that I could finally get this into some sort of finished state that I'm ok with, even if this isn't the end.

I need sleep...

I'm still trying to establish what I'm doing with my character. I know that after the walk cycle it'll do something, but I'm still playing around with what that is. I'm a tad sleep-deficient at the moment, so I couldn't stand to do much today, but I am at least closer to figuring it out.

A general success

I guess this took me a while, but I think I'm officially proud of my work so far. I've managed to create a walk cycle for my creature today, as well as create the environment and play around with how it renders. I'm actually pleased with how it turned out, which isn't easy. It still needs work though, obviously. I think there's a bit of a problem with the weighting on one leg, and I didn't really add a joint in the thumbs, so perhaps I'll play around with it to see if I can add them in, if I find it necessary for what gesture I will end up making my character do. Either way, this was a good day for me and I'm glad things are finally starting to work.

rigging the elephant thing

I started rigging the yokai, but I can't keep everything organized. Every time I try to rig this thing I forget something and everything gets crazy and I can't keep track of anything. Then again, that's kind of the case with everything I touch, so I can't say this surprises me. I'll get it worked out eventually though. Also I finished the droid rendering, but have yet to add sound. Again, this shouldn't be too hard.