Evaluation of Project

Maya Project Evaluation

Beginning with the bouncing ball.  I had to follow every step from the instructions to produce the bouncing ball.  It took a few attempts before it began to flow more naturally. There was also a small issue with the co-ordinates which originally caused the ball to cut through the base on landing, this matter was sorted by adjusting the figures slightly.  As it was the first project I also had to learn how to do a batch render.  The project looked fine until I tried a single frame render and it showed that the lighting was quite wrong.  It took some time to fix, changing light direction and source.  The Graph Editor at this point was quite straight forward and I found it very useful.

The Flour Sack was the first rig I had used so I practiced a couple of times just changing the shape and moving it about.  One issue I had with this was trying to move keyframes.  This still needs some attention.  The Graph Editor was very different with this rig, I found it easier to use the manual manipulators.

The Moom Character is a rig which we were asked to produce some facial movement's, a blink or a smile.  This wasn't too difficult but I had to re-arrange it a few times .

In the initial stages of working with Maya, setting the project was causing some difficulties.  This changed the more I used it and I became comfortable with it after a few attempts.   Assigning new materials took some practice, and trying to find a texture that was genuinely seamless.  It still can cause some problem, not every image comes in.  But as I'm now familiar with how it works I can usually find a solution.  Knowing what should be happening, makes it easier to notice if the problem is a glitch or my error.  Unfortunately, I do not always know how to fix the glitches.  This seems to be the most time consuming part of working with Maya, a ten minute job could take an hour with nothing to show at the end due to malfunctions.

I have learned a lot during the last few projects with this software programme.  However, I do need to gain a better understanding of the graph editor and how to separate its functions.  I've been relying on the manipulators on the rigs mainly because I haven't gained enough control of the Graph Editor.  Also, I need to take all of the elements from each of the projects done so far, and combined them in one project and continue to practice using them in order to keep up the skills already developed.