Week 3 - Getting Deeper

Week 3!!!!  It is over, but it wasn’t too bad.  I finished my environment on Monday so the rest of the week was a little slack.  The lessons are getting more in depth now and we are really close to the meat and potatoes of what XSI has to offer.  I also found some time to watch a movie while I did some work.  I decided I would check out “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.  It was a pretty good movie.  I didn’t expect much but I was surprised at how cool it turned out to be.  I shall recommend it.  Alrighty, on to what I did during week 3!

In Modeling 100 Joe taught us some new tools to make our modeling move along faster while looking more interesting.  The rest of the class was used to work on our environments as well as a side project to take a premade character and change him to make him look a little more custom.  I went with a Deadpool theme for mine.  Deadpool is awesome.  So here is my finished Interior Environment.  My apologies for the lighting.  Still tryin to figure out XSI's system.

And here is my wonderful friend, Deadpool!  We are going to rig him eventually.

Next was our Classical Animation 100 class where we started a new animation!  Now I’m not immature as I am sure most people would tell you, but this week we had to animate a sack.  Now our first sack is a rough animation to plan for our awesome, end sack.  My sack is amazing so far and some in the class would say that their sack is better than mine but I would have to disagree.  My sack is a perfect size and it moves and bounces very smoothly.  So without further ado, here is an animation of my sack!  We have 2 weeks to do it so this first week was the rough sketch.

After Classical animation we have 3D Animation 100 with Scott as usual.  This week was the beginning of another 2 week project.  We have our friendly robot character who is all pre rigged and he is standing at a bar.  On this bar is a glass.  Our job was to make Mr. Robot reach out and grab that glass using constraints and parenting.  Very cool lesson, it hasn’t changed my mind about what I want to do or anything but it did loosen me up a bit towards animation.

 I went with a very classy way of picking up the glass.  I'm like that.

In XSI 100 this week we went over our screen shots of the materials we used in our environments.  We only had to do a couple using clusters so here we are!  I found the materials very easy to use and manipulate because of the similarities between Maya and XSI but that similar theme didn't last.

The lesson was about texturing using projections in XSI.  It wasn’t difficult but it was different enough from Maya that I had to block out what I do in Maya so that I didn’t mix the two programs.  It went well enough but XSI seems to be a bit buggy when it comes to textures.  Not bad though!

Next was Production 100 with Scott where we worked on some new lighting techniques.  Our assignment was to light an attic style room with a point light that represented the sun and then two area lights that add some spec to the floor under two windows.  Easy enough but still very useful for a guy who wants to do environments.  I’ve never been very dynamic with my lighting so these are good tricks.  We finish lighting the attic this coming week.

After Production 100 is Digital Imaging 100.  We went over our creepy Frankenstein dudes and got some advice on how to better blend our pictures and how to add proper shadows too.  The latter was very important as our next project is to light a 3D screenshot in photoshop using some clever mask layers.  I am not done, but I soon will be!  Check out what I have.

We started with this.

And so far I have this.

Last but not least was our Life Drawing 100 class.  We had another nude, male model and we practiced more of the same techniques as we did in other classes.  It would seem my proportions are getting a little better but there is still no way I am putting any of it online.  Just imagine that it is really good, that’s what I do!  The class seems to be getting a little more loose which makes for a much more fun and relaxed atmosphere in a class that should be relaxing. 

So that was the week!  On Monday I actually had plans so that brought the weekend to a close and explains why I am posting this today and not yesterday.  Once I get my time machine working I can rectify these problems.  Next week we are starting our car models in Modeling 100 so that will be cool.  I promised my dad I would bust out a real nice one for him to print out.  Alright, that’s it!  I will leave you with a picture of the car I will be modeling as well as another reason why Vancouver is better than Saskatchewan.  I can see the ocean and mountains at the same time!  Its almost not fair.  Vancouver 3, Saskatchewan 0.