This week has been pretty bad. On Monday and Tuesday myself and Dan Ryan made low poly models of the main garments of clothes our characters would be wearing. We had a massive problem on Tuesday when the model of the body we were working on went a bit crazy. Dan's was basically ok but mine was going a bit biserc. None of the edges would smooth or harden, if you went to save at any time the whole programme would crash, neither Dan C or tutor Alex could work out what was wrong with it or how to fix it. Dan worked it out eventually and fixed Dans, but the work I had made for that day was lost. This was bad but I've had worse so I planned to start again the next day. However, we spent Wednesday doing our After Effects project. Arghghghghghgh, we've got quite alot of projects to multitasak. Still, not too bad. Jake was having trouble though, with this project. His main strength was on technical effects and modelling and he was struggling with the animations he had to create. Dan C went over with him a few times but he was still struggling.
We decided that for Thursday, Friday and the weekend we would work seperately at home as myself and Dan Ryan had to use Zbrush and he had got it installed at his own home now so we didn't have to take it in turns round mine. We would all stay in touch using MSN. Sounded like a good idea at the time. Oh the lies.
Working on Tala's face in Zbrush had been hard enough but now working on the clothes was torture. I must have spent about 10 hours each day working out that stupid programme. It is so depressing by the end of the day when no work was completed. The level of work I was producing was just not good enough for what we needed. Dan R sent me a few screen shots of how his work was coming which made me feel worse because they looked so good! The whole point of learning Zbrush was becuase we wanted to work enventually in the games industry and we needed to keep our models as low poly as possible, with the normal mapping adding all the detail. I just felt I had maybe gone out of my depth this time, with the deadline appraoching rapidly and hearing from other groups how far ahead they were. Jake was also still struggling with the animation side of things. Dan R works pretty slowly and was worried about time as well and Dan C, like usual was way ahead, and worried how far behind we were falling. It was time for a desperate plan of action.
We couldn't change the production schedule as it had to be followed strictly due to time, but we could change who did what. Me and Dan R decided to take Jareds advice and stop being so precious about the village. Yes, we desperately wanted to model it, becuase we both see the same designs in our heads and thats what we enjoy, but our characters had to be the main priority. Dan C would now take over animation and Jake would model the village. However me and Dan are still being a little stubborn and told Jake a list of things to model last becuase we still have some vain hope of catching up and managing to model some of the village. Argh and we've still got texturing to do!
That night though was pretty bad even with the action plan. Zbrush and me were still at war, so Dan C came over and we practised on a sphere. Then he went to show me something saved on his memory stick but it was empty. Animations lost. Urch what a night. Luckily he managed to get most of it back later.
So I've spent the rest of the weekend watching and attempting Zbrush tutorials, making more objects in Maya that Tala needs and doing work for the other projects that we've been set :S Tomorrow we are all meeting at Uni to show work and have another group meeting. Argh, pressure is on! I would put up screen shots of my failiers (or 'learning process') but I don't want to look at them at the moment. I'll probably put them up next week, depending how good/bad things go.
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