Week 5

 This week I've finally completed the Boy figure pdf and I'm moving on to the boy's features. I'm feeling pretty confident with Mayas basic functions and navigating around the model. 

During our tutorial this week I pitched my Elden Ring stone sword statue idea and I think it became apparent that it might be too difficult with all the negative spaces. I have been sketching loads of ideas that might be more achievable.

This is a Stone Clock idea I had.

A garbage bag paperweight.

A piggy bank that shoots a coin out when you drop it in.

I realise that the first assessment might call for a biped figure but I'm hoping at least one of these will be suitable. 

 

Week 4

 I spent Monday afternoon getting my model caught up and back to where I lost it all. I got back into the zone and everything was looking good. This time I was saving regularly and everything was going great. Looked at my phone to check the time - it's 2:56pm. I have 4 minutes to get to my tutorial and I live 13 minutes from campus. Great... After finding parking I was only 20 minutes late to class. Leo saw me setting up my laptop and asked me how I was going with it all. I must've had a look of pain in my eyes because he knelt down next to me and with a knowing look he just "Yeah....".  But it was a good opportunity to ask a few questions about Maya that I was having issues with. The second time going through the model has been a lot smoother.

I've also come up with a few things that make using Maya a little easier. My gaming mouse has lot of extra buttons and I programmed one them to be ALT. Now I can navigate around the screen with one hand and dry my tears with my free hand. 

I'm not sure where I went wrong but I started having the double extrude problem in the palm again. Leo showed me how to select the palm and merge in all to avoid the headache I had in Week 3. Everything is going good and I'm hoping to have this boy model done and dusted by the weekend. 

I think I've also decided what I want to do for my assessment task. I have been playing this game called Elden Ring with my geek mates and there is an object called a Stonesword Key Statue:

You stick a key in it and it gives you access to areas you might want to explore. I was going to make a miniature version you can stick a set of housekeys into and keep it by your door. I need to run it by Leo and see if how achievable he thinks it is with all the complex shapes and negative space. But if I can get it printed I'd like to make 3-4 of them and give them to my geek mates as a gift.

Week 3

 Lesson learned - Save your work...

I started using the PDF in from the OneDrive resources folder and everything was going great. I was getting more comfortable with the keyboard shortcuts and getting the hang of tumbling around the screen to view the model from the angle I needed. I got as far as the hand portion of the model and it was time to start extruding the fingers. I noticed there was another plane sandwiched in-between the upper and lower sections of the finger. No big deal I thought.. I'll just delete the plane and hold the V key to snap the vertexes together like in the week 1 exercise... wrong. Maya started behaving strangely... it was most probably user error. The wrong vertexes were connecting and it started to get worse so I figured... undo.. no problem. MAYA CRASHED... Still wasn't worried.. no problem it's the year 2022 and I'm sure autosave will save me a headache... everything has autosave right? Did you know autosave isn't enabled by default??? Why not? I wish I knew. 2.5 hours and the blood in my face... GONE! My model was gone... my initial thought was to drop the class and rid myself of Maya all together. I walked away from my laptop and turned on my PS5 to play Elden Ring. After 40 minutes of being killed by EVERYTHING I thought 'You know what? Maya isn't that.' I got back on my laptop and started again. 

Take 2:

Step 1: Save scene as....

  

Week 2

 This week we went over the basics of Maya. How to navigate the UI, navigate around the scene and some of the basic tools. We worked with primitive shapes and learned to join them in the correct way using grid snapping. It was very basic but I really want to focus on getting this right. As a mature age student it can be intimidating working with students half my age with 10x the knowledge so I realise I have some catching up to do.

I want to go over the basics again to really solidify them in my mind so I'm able to move onto the next steps more efficiently. I found a great course on linked in learning that very thoroughly went over the basic navigation again as well as show a few more features of Maya that may be useful later on. 

The linked in course came with a 250gb exercise file that is useful for following along and its really helping me get comfortable with Maya.

I have also been using the built in Maya tutorials to get my head around everything. They even have this small game to really help you get used to everything. 

I know it's probably a bit over the top but I really want to take this seriously and do a good job for myself. Going back to school at 37 was a big decision and I know why I'm here. I really want to acquire as many skills as possible and better myself.