Ball bounce

I have no idea how to post earlier than the others, or move the blog posts around so this will have to go here.

I did originally practice with ball bounces as Kelvin told us to get used to animating, with simple things.

This is what happened.

Finished piece (Hole in one)

Ok, so after twitching about with everything imaginable, i decided that it being to dark would just have to be that. I'm really not confident with lighting in maya and ask many times as i've tried it looks ugly (I guess that something to work on in the future), the fact is the contrast of the movie isn't THAT bad that it renders it unwatchable, it's fine.

Just a little darker than intended.

I will admit picking up maya again was enjoyable aswell as highly infuriating. Sometimes things work the way you want them to, other ways the program screws you over. Be it closing on you for no reason (Week 1 i think)? Or not allowing the camera to move the way you wanted or rendering problems (Like now).

The camera on the other hand i think came out well, i wasn't going for the "amatuerish" kind of new cameraman motion, but i really do think the whole " WHERE'S THE ACTION" camera seems to work. I don't think there is ever a static camera shot (apart from at the end) it's always moving. Be it swaying or trailing behind so a quicker swing has to be done to catch up with the focus (The ball after the book topple).

Doing this though, has made me question what type of animation i really want to do, i mean CG animation is fun yes, but the problems i had with it often annoyed me beyond belief. I understand that if i want to go into game animation Cg will have to be my foundation i will NEED to be good at it, i also understand that if i want to go into animating for tv/movies because of the evolution animation is taking CG will also be a huge part of my career either way.

Overall i'm reasonably happy with the result, having NEVER and i mean NEVER worked with 3d programs before, especially not just modeling but animating the piece it was a huge learning curve that i had to overcome but i think i did it...(I hope i did it :D)

Enjoy (Even tiger woods couldn't hit a shot like this).

Eye candy?

I must of done something with the render settings because what came out wasn't what was planned :|

Still looks nice, almost like someone poored jelly sweets into your eyes.

Take your broken camera off me, you damn dirty maya.

A perfect example of how the camera likes to swing about. I was sure to go back and see if it could somehow be broken in the timeline, but from what i can see nothing is wrong.

I almost forgot to explain the Orange ball!

I attemped to texture the ball using a tga i created in photoshop, like the golfball it was a simple halftone to give a "bumpy" texture, the black didn't work however, so i decided to leave it a plain orange ball, aslong as people know it's a ball nothing was really lost by leaving the texture out.

I THINK i have the problem sorted (The rendering problem) even if the camera is still being rediculous.

Test 1 -

Soooo, ive started to attempt the animation and the actual PROCESS is fine, the only enfuriating part is the camera really not doing what i want it to do, Seems to be ignoring the posistion i put it in and throwing itself in the air for no reason.

Ill keep at it, but the camera is doing my nut in.