Monday, September 20, 2010

Schnikeys!

It has been two and a half months since I last posted! Yikes! Well, a ot has been going on since then, so let me clue you in.

So, term 10 ended with me getting 2 As and 1 B (the B being in my core class, Texture Mapping for Games). I have learned quite a bit about game engines, and they are really REALLY cool. The first thing I learned is how the engine can be used for things other than games, such as a virtual walk-through for a house. It made me think of an idea of modeling a house before and after a fire as a training tool for insurance agents. Well, guess what? They are currently working on that at State Farm. I spent an afternoon with the project leader of this program. She is anot a modeller, but everything passes through her. The modelling itself is done through an external company in Dublin called CANDO. Well, there are still other jobs in the Creative Services Department that look interesting, so I will wait and see what pops up. I could be a shoo-in for one particular job if I could teach myself a programing language called ActionScript2, which is an older version of the software that is currently available. The problem is that this doesn't hold my interest like modeling books do. I tend to be able to read only 2-3 pages on the ActionScript book and fall asleep ... LITERALLY! Modeling books I can read until I am ready to fall asleep and have to make myself stay awake.

So anyway ...

It is a new term that is almost over, and I currently have 2 As and a B again. And once again I have a B in my core class, Animation for Games. I had a massive meltdown in week 5, when my first project was due. It was 5 animations that I had to do over the course of 5 weeks, then export them from one program and then import them into another. With the project due on Sunday at Midnight, I got up early Saturday morning to do the final steps, exporting and importing. Well, my animations would not export. All 5 of them had the same model, and it was the model itself that was giving me issues, so it wasn't that the files were corrupt or anything so I could go back to previous saves. I was in panic mode when I went to work at 1:30. Fortunately it was the holiday weekend, and we were dead at work, and I got to leave 5 hours early. I spent most of the night trying to save what I could, and came up with nothing. I got up early the next day and cranked out 5 animations using a different model that I had tested and knew would export properly. By 6:00 in the evening, I had them all done, exported and imported, and I had verified that I had all of the correct files and file types all associated with animations all nicely compressed and uploaded to my professor. I even had a note explaining to him what had happened. I had checked at least 4 times for what I needed, so imagine my surprise when I saw my grade listed for the first project was an "F". It turns out that I had totally missed that there was a written portion to go along the animations, and I hadn't done it. With this "F" the best that I could get in the class would be a "C" and that was harsh for me to take. Meredith suggested that I go ahead and do the written portion anyway and submit it just so that I didn't leave anything incomplete and to show the professor that at least I could do it ... so I did. Well, the professor appreciated the effort and said that he wasn't here to fail me and understood the pressure of what happened, so he gave me full credit for it, and I ended up with a "B" for the project. YAY!!!

The current project that I am working on is animating a clip from the movie "Gettysburg", which happens to be one of my all time favorites. I am currently at what is called the "First Pass" stage where I have the basic movents and camera shots all set up, and then I will get to the lip synching this week. Hope you all like it!


3 comments:

Skip said...

Very cool. Keep it up. Sorry about all the trouble you had with that export. It happens.

melynn said...

Good job! Seems there are always bumps in the road but they can be smoothed out. You made good out of a bad thing.

melynn said...

Good job! Seems there are always bumps in the road but they can be smoothed out. You made good out of a bad thing.