*whispers*: 3D Animation.
-world goes into chaos-

That kinda-sorta-maybe happened in my head when I realised I had to learn to animate in 3D. I mean, maybe it's just me– but, when someone requests for a flat drawing, it's easy. When they request for something to be drawn in 3-dimensional, that's when walls have holes in them and floors get flooded with tears.

Okay, for a second there I made it sound really awful, didn't I? The great thing about Falmouth University is that they actually teach you from scratch, which is fantastic (especially for me)! It didn't matter if you had top notch experience with 3D softwares or even better– if you have zero experience at all.

Before the practice session began, Georg gave us some links to some tutorials to learn about the Maya interface beforehand to save time on the practice sessions. The video that I found really helpful was on <Lynda> and it's a video called 'Maya 2017 Essential Training' by George Maestri. I can't seem to link the entire video here, but if you have access to Lynda, do try checking that video out. Apparently, the video didn't really appeal to some people that I talked about it to but for me, I felt really at ease George Maestri did the voiceovers as he explained the steps along with the interface rather clearly. Adding to that, the transcript section that is placed below the video helped in catching up with some of the stuffs that I've missed from the video.

So, when we had our very first 3D practice session with Georg, I was pretty excited. Why? Partly because I was going to learn something very new and also possibly try to appreciate the existence of 3D models that people go through lengths to create. Also, seeing a few third years making such complex and detailed 3D human models on the Cintiq in the studios make me wonder if I'll ever get to that stage of appreciating 3D modelling that much.

Anyway! Our first task was to animate two bouncing balls. One of which was the bounce of a light ball and the other was the bounce of a heavy ball. Here goes:


It seemed alright when I completed it at that time (which was about a week ago). Now, looking back at the video, the ball doesn't really feel like a ball, if you get what I mean. It feels like a floating balloon that has been forced to act like a ball.

I seem to have a problem with giving bouncing balls their natural rhythm, which to me, makes it very odd-looking. It's probably to do with the timing... I wonder. I'll have to do some test runs until I eventually get that Eureka moment. Until then,



Heavy ball bounce:


Definitely feels much better than my first attempt! So, so happy with this.

Have a nice day!