Given that I came into this class with no knowledge of Maya or 3D modeling in general, I think I've come a long way. When I started my first model, which was the penguin, I never thought that I'd be able to model actual, real-life items. I would see examples in class and pictures on the internet of things people modeled in Maya and be completely blown away. I never thought that I could make anything like what I saw in these examples. But now, even though most of the examples are still way beyond my experience level, I no longer feel totally incompetent. The learning curve was very steep, but I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere.
The first skill we learned that really helped improve my models was how to edit CVs. It took me some time to get used to this, but now I find myself pulling or pushing CVs in pretty much every NURBS model that I make. CV editing is a useful way to shape objects and make them feel organic. The one thing that bothers me about CV editing is that I'm a perfectionist and it's really hard and time consuming to get things to look exactly how I want them to look. One wrong move leaves you with an asymmetric mess and then you have to backtrack. But when used correctly CV editing can be used to makes some really cool models.
The next big breakthrough in my Maya learning experience was how to work with curves and surfaces. I feel that knowledge of curves and surfaces plays a pivotal role in making realistic models. I find the fact that I can revolve a simple curve around an axis and then have a glass or a light bulb to be amazing. Another thing that went well with this was when I learned how to import an image plane. Combining this with my knowledge of curves and surfaces further helped me improve my models. This gave me the ability to trace the general shape of everyday items and then turn that tracing into models that look even more realistic.
Overall, I still have a lot to learn and a lot of room for improvement. My models are getting better but they are nowhere near the professional quality that they would need to be if I chose a career in animation. Maya is such an extensive software, so the learning process is going to be slow and steady. I constantly hit snags along the way, but I'm learning how to fix them. For example, when editing CVs I used to have an issue where I would go to select one CV and 20 would get selected. I now learned that this was because Soft Selection was turned on. Turning Soft Selection off allowed me to be able to select one CV at a time. I also have a tendency to overcomplicate simple processes. For example, when making the faces for the body of my guitar all I had to do was copy the curve on the front, move the duplicated curve to the back, and loft between them. Instead, I projected curves on planes, trimmed them, and did a lot of unnecessary steps. But now I know for the future how to simplify tasks like this.
All of these mistakes are an integral component of the learning process because they help me learn through experience. One of my goals for the second part of the semester, in order to help further facilitate the learning process, is to spend more time outside of class learning with my peers and through online tutorials. I feel that by doing this and more independent work, I can really help improve my animation skills. So in short, even though Pixar isn't knocking down my door and asking me to animate a movie for them, I'm progressing and I'm happy with my progress.
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