Here in LA, it's been quite a struggle to keep up with my internship, donkey, and thesis all at the same time. Some quick samples of what has been taking up my time.
I've been doing a little research and have come upon a couple interesting things. Firstly, I found the blog of a man named Duncan Brinsmead, who is, in his words, (prepare to sh*t your pants) "the creator of Maya Paint Effects, Maya Hair, Maya Toon, and also worked extensively on Maya Fluids and nCloth." I found a little tutorial he did in which he demonstrates how to use nCloth to make a book with flipping pages. The video for this is here.
Secondly, some great dragon pics from Patrick McGlynn, who I have asked to sketch concept art for me. I really like the last image he did.
Thirdly, some great artwork from this woman named Ruth Thompson. Her web page is http://www.tarnishedimages.com. I love the dragons: http://commerce.idmi.net/ecommerce/catalog.asp?CID=153&CI=1490
They all kind of look the same. But it's a nice design, nevertheless. A little too stylized for animation, I think, but they look great as still images.
Another cute web site: http://www.worldofmaya.com/index_2d.html
Got lots of quick tutorials for special effects and stuff.
I've also been poking around a tutorial for smedge, the rendering farm software NYU is currently using. If I'm lucky, I'll be one of a few that know how to use it for this semester. We're all going to be fighting for render time, as is tradition at CADA. Demetri, Vanessa, Nicolette, Caroline, Maria, Slava, Charles, Moki, Ryan, Claire, Min, both Steves, John, and perhaps a few others if I forgot anyone.
I've also managed to get Maya 8.0 installed at work, so I can now work on much more thesis stuff. Laddoo I just recently got working: first I used mayaFileConverter (a tip from Omri) to convert Laddoo back to a Maya 8.0 file (I had been working on it in 8.5). Next, after it kept creating the same warning every time I opened it, I figured out that the offending unknown nodes were from TurtleForMaya, which was apparently used to create shaders for Laddoo. Deleting the shaders didn't work because it left behind a few TurtleDefaultGlobal-type nodes, I just searched for anything with turtle in the name and deleted them all. Of course, that didn't work, so I went back to mayaFileConverter and converted to 6.0, a version prior to Laddoo's original version, 7.0. Lo and behold, after deleting the same turtle nodes, I was able to save as a .ma file, SUCCESS!
So now, after all that junk, I've hopefully gotten files that I can open to work on my 3D animatic. Here's a couple screen shots from what I was working on before:
Other goals this week and the next: model the well, start book page textures, start matte painting for background, play with paint effects for forest trees, look for fluid solutions. Yeah right, I know, but it's best to have lofty goals, right??!
