Manos’s class-VFX Fundamentals
week 1 (September 30th – October 4th)
The first week did not have maya practice, but mainly introduced the course setup and the location of the school.
Week 2 (September 30th – October 4th)
The main focus of the week was on project ideation, with exercises including conceptual artwork and 3D modelling in Maya.
Week 3 (October 7th – October 11th)
This week’s focus is on the use of various maya features, such as editing vertex displacement rotation and scaling, and the use of soft select functions.
Week 4 (October 14th – October 18th)
This week focuses on sculpting modeling in Zbrush, exercises on various techniques, and exercises on retopology. I practiced the role of move brush and smooth brush mainly by carving the human skull in Zbrush.
Week 5 (21 October- 25 October)
This week’s main exercise is maya retopology. There are two main topology methods, the first is the zbrush plugin automatic topology, this topology is suitable for models with a high degree of reduction, but the wiring can not be completely accurate. The second is manual topology in maya, this method is more time-consuming and labour-intensive, but highly controllable, suitable for models with high precision requirements.
Week 6 (28 October – 01 November)
This week’s focus is on the uv functionality and interface in maya. The main workflow is to build a model in maya, then expand the uv, then import the uv into ps for drawing, and finally, import the finished map back to maya. Finally, import the finished maps back to maya, this process is suitable for making some simple model maps with low precision requirement.
Week 7 (04 November -08 November)
This week, we have been using maya to split and export model uv’s, but unlike last week, the uv’s we exported this week were eventually converted to sp for texture mapping, a process that is suitable for texture mapping of high precision models.
Week 8 (11 November – 15 November)
This week focuses on rigging in Maya including creating skeletons and controllers for 3D models to facilitate animation.
Week 11 (02 December – 06 December)
The focus of this lesson is on animation. Firstly, I learnt about the 12 principles of animation production and deepened my understanding of animation production. Secondly, we watched a short animation film made by Pixar in class to further deepen our understanding of animation principles. Finally, I deepened my understanding of animation by creating small block animation and character animation in maya.
Week 12 (09 December – 13 December)
This week’s exercise focused on the use of Maya’s Arnold renderer and the use of aistandersurface. In this week’s lesson, I focused on the use of materials and the handling of lighting.