Toolkit 2, while I didn’t finish everything,
was a relatively decent experience for me. While I found that some parts of it
were particularly stressful, I learned from these situations and I know that it
will make me better prepared and understanding of important processes that I
will be using as I move on into the third year.
Maya has always been one of my
weaker points as I had no experience whatsoever with the program at the start
of the course and I have continually felt intimidated by it, but I feel like I
made a lot of progress this year and understand a lot more than I did by the end
of the previous year.
Jetpack Jones was possibly the
most difficult part of Toolkit 2, as I ended up going through the tutorials and
spending hours tidying up the vertices to make sure that my model was as smooth
as possible. Even though I had only started the skinning by the time that the
deadline rolled around, I am still satisfied that I learned a huge amount just
through the modelling tutorials and hope to learn even more about the rigging,
skinning, and texturing processes in the summer as I continue to finish the
outstanding tutorials.
I feel like much of the problem
with the Jetpack Jones tutorials and the reason I didn’t get them all finished
besides external issues I’d encountered was the fact that I don’t think I paced
myself very well and the fact that I started working on the tutorials a little
bit later than most people, and, again, I spent large chunks of time making extremely
tiny tweaks and trying to perfect the model as I was following along with the
tutorials instead of using them as a brief guide and spending a designated amount
of time cleaning up what I’d done at the end of each tutorial.
The lighting and rendering
tutorials, I think, were simple and easy to complete, though I had a couple of
difficulties here and there in regard to rendering (for example, the Arnold
logo appearing on my motion blur render and the renders of the model of the old
man not quite working and overinflating), but for the most part, I think that
it went well and that what I’ve learned will prove useful next year.
Animation was the second most difficult
part of Toolkit 2 for me as I find that 3D animation is another one of my
weaker points; I want to refine my work over the summer alongside finishing Jetpack
Jones so that I can improve my animation skills for when I come back. I do think
that I have made a lot of progress with 3D animation this year, even if I’ve
still got a long way to go and a lot more to learn.
My favourite part of Toolkit, as was
the case last year, was the Drawing segment. I find the drawing sessions very
enjoyable and I think that it’s nice to go back to basics and focus on improving
skills relating to getting something down on the paper quickly, practicing with
different materials, and working on how anatomy looks when it is drawn.
Mudbox work was a change of pace
and I found that I really enjoyed it as well. While I still have a lot of
improvement to do in this area as well, I liked learning about the new program
and even though I found it frustrating at times and I couldn’t get certain
things to work (specifically the ‘posing’ segment), I thought it to be a good
experience and may return to the program in the future.
Overall, I think that while
Toolkit 2 could’ve gone a lot better, I’m still somewhat proud of what I have
managed to achieve thus far and hope to improve even more over the course of
the summer by finishing outstanding work and doing other Maya and drawing work.
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