Today was not the most productive day, to be honest. I got here a little bit early, so I started modeling a TARDIS to practice my Maya skills, but I didn't do much than that. I brainstormed for my SciVis a bit. There is a small brainstorming post on my other blog, but that isn't what I did today. I kind of added to that post, and I'll put that up tonight after some more work. By Wednesday, I need to have a list of everything I need to research and a synopsis of exactly what I want in the story. That's almost done and I'll put it up as soon as I finish. JediPlatypus out.

Ketchup has too much sugar in it.

It really does. One tablespoon of ketchup has four grams of sugar. This doesn't seem like much until you realize that the average person should only have 24 grams of sugar a day. One tablespoon of ketchup has 1/6 of your daily sugar intake. That's ridiculous.

This post is really called ketchup because today I had to "ketchup" on my projects. There was a whole other part of the Hole project that I just forgot to do... Same with the beveling project. Anyway. Everything went smoothly, aside from my forgetting about these assignments, and here they are!

Scratching the Surface

Today I scratched the surface of beginning to research for my personal project. I found some websites and saved them in a google doc to that I can find them easily. My deadline for choosing my SciVis topic is Sunday, so I am still open to ideas, but at the moment I think I am going to choose bionic arms. I still want to do some research on designer babies and SCNT  this weekend. I want to see which would have the best story.

Duplicate Special

I found this duplicate special project to be quite fun, it was really cool to see how my group of shapes would duplicate. I also experimented with colors, as you can see. I tried to make different groups different colors, but evidently, that did not work. So... yeah that was cool.

Hole

This is the hole assignment. I think that I did something wrong, but I can't figure out what... Also, when I started the project last week, something was weird with the beveling and I would get some weird inside-out thing. I double checked the options and I was on the absolute setting and everything. Thankfully, I got it right today (I think...?). Time to start the duplicate special assignment.

Spaceship

This is the Blackbird. Not very fancy, but hopefully I can make improvements after learning some new skills. I definitely want to make improvements because I named the ship after the stealth ship from Battlestar Galactica (2003 one) and I want to do the name justice. I tried to add text, but that didn't work so I think I'll experiment with that in the future. Anyways, here is the spaceship assignment!

Beveling Exercise

And here we have the beveling exercise. I am sorry to say that this assignment does not have an interesting story like the others. This assignment was quite normal, which is good for me, because it means that I am getting used to using the Maya software. I followed the instructions and was successful , meaning I knew what I was doing. That's always good and I'm very glad that this project lacks a catastrophe. Let's cross our fingers and hope for good fortune on the next project.

Extrude Curve Along A Path

This is the "extrude curve along a path" assignment. I saved it as "thirdAttemptAtThisFrackingAssignment" for... reasons. This is the story of the assignment:

I started the assignment and felt like I understood what I was doing. All of a sudden, I was trying to close my linear curve shape and was confused. Upon asking for help, I discovered that I had done something quite odd, and unfamiliar even to the local experts. After 5-10 minutes of trying to figure out what I had done, I was told to save the anomaly (another project for another day) and start again on the project. I was fine with this, because the anomaly that I had accidentally created was actually kind of cool and I looked forward to playing with it in the not-too-distant future... Anyways, I had to restart the project. This was my second attempt. I struggled with this project all the way until the actual extrude part, and Maya crashed. Being the inexperienced 3D artist that I am, I had forgotten to save the project and had to start over. Again. This resulted in my having to make a third attempt at the assignment, and thus, the file's name. After saving, Maya continued to crash and by the end I had attempted the project many more times than three. The end.

Ah well, the project is done now so all is well.

Temple

This is the infamous temple, the temple that took me so long to make. The reasons this took so long are as follows:

• It was the first project assigned to the class. I was very confused the first time I made this.
• Yes, you read correctly. I said "the first time". Due to my extreme overall confusion in this class, I did not save this temple correctly, and when the computers crashed, the temple was not saved.
• I had to redo this assignment in between other assignments, and the other assignments took a really long time.

So there you have it. The temple that drove me insane.

Ehhhhhh I guess it looks kinda cool...

Re: Temple and Spaceship

Well this is embarrassing. Regardless of the simplicity of the temple and spaceship assignments, I still do not have them done. I know, I know, It's the third week of school. Time to stop slacking! The good news is that I am pretty sure I am (finally) getting the hang of using Maya and those projects should be done soon. I think that the trick for this class is to not listen to music until you are 100% sure you know what you are doing. I suppose this goes for any class, and am not sure why I thought otherwise for this one... Anyways, I'll finish the temple and spaceship ASAP and have them up here in the not-too-distant future.

The Project In Which Maya Finally Makes Sense.....

Today, I completed the "Extrude Exercise" in Maya. I was very surprised that I could complete this, because prior to today I was completely lost in this class. However, today I think I had an "A-ha!" moment, which was awesome. (As you can probably tell from the title, address, and description of this blog, I am a bit of a nerd/geek/dork/queen-of-the-realm-of-awesomeness, whichever term you prefer.) Anyway, as I was saying, I really felt that I understood the assignment and that I knew what I was doing today. Oddly enough, I am quite proud of this piece, even though it looks kind of like an alien from Parasyte. The point is, it looks like what it's supposed to. I now have confidence that I can succeed in this class.