Sigh. Another vacation has come to an end. I would say this was a successful and somewhat satisfying vacation. That’s not always an easy thing for me to accomplish. I usually have a whole list of things I want to get done while on vacation and if I’m lucky about 3 of those things do actually get done. This one was a bit of an exception. That is in part due to the help of my Dad who assisted in the completion of a number of projects around my home at the beginning of my vacation time. That left me with very few things
that I kept thinking I “should” be doing instead of whatever I was doing. It’s a bit of an odd feeling. Kind of nice, though.
So I started my time off from the day job with technicians in my home replacing my air conditioning system. It’s not a process that is very conducive to study or learning so game playing and dot placing were my main activities on those days.
I did get more dots placed on the Ovation guitar painting. I have even, I think, figured out the problem with the vibrancy of the flame red as compared to the crimson. It’s a dot density problem. If I make the dots more dense then the color gets more vibrant. With that in mind I have mainly focused on getting the crimson pattern down on the canvas. I will 
add the flame red after. I am considering, after the flame red goes in, to do a thin layer of all flame red across the entire red body, even over the crimson. Not enough to over power the crimson, just to blend it all together. If I do that, I think I will use a very tiny pen point so that it’s more like a haze. I’m going to wait until I get the rest of the crimson and all the flame red done before I decide.
One thing about getting the crimson dots denser is that it has made me aware that the wood looking leaves around the sound holes may need some additional density as well. I thought I had them more dense than they are turning out to be. This may be a little bit
of a pain since those colors had to be mixed. And no, I didn’t write down what I did to get it. So that’s going to be fun.
I’ve started working on my holiday decorations. I haven’t got very far. But at least I’ve started.
Last week I mentioned that I had decided to take this time in between card projects to start learning Maya. I have begun doing just that. I started out with some tutorials to get a feel for it and refresh my understanding of the interface. It’s a little different than 3DS Max. From there I watched a beginning tutorial on character modeling in Maya. That got me enough information to try to tackle my Worm Guy concept. I had already decided I was going to have to start over on it in ZBrush so I figured Maya would be a good program to try him in instead. At least for the moment. I may still take him back to ZBrush. For now, he’s in Maya. And this is as far as I have gotten with him.
Not long after I closed out of the Worm project and sent off renders to share with family, I decided I wasn’t done playing. I opened Maya back up and started on another character 
that I have had in mind to work on. That could be a good sign for Maya. Or just for my getting busy. Either way, I’m starting on a Penguin character. More of an interpretation as opposed to an entirely realistic look. It will be more suited to a cartoon than a nature documentary. I’ve had it in mind for almost a year. It’s inspired by a holiday card I received. Working on the Penguin is where I ran into my most frustrating moment in Maya so far. After I puffed the cheek out to give it chubby cheeks, I needed to be able to see just the head part and not the beak bits. It took me a 
lot of searching to find the ‘isolate’ option so that I could isolate just the head and not see the rest. I finally found it but I think I went through all the menus and a few twice so I’m not sure I will remember where it is the next time I need it.
One of the things I do like about Maya is the ability to smooth everything out and then un-smooth it to go back to working on it just by hitting some keys on the keyboard. I find this feature very convenient. I have not used the Arnold renderer yet. These are all rendered with the Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer. It was easier to set up for quick W.I.P. pictures.
I did say I would try to address the question of ‘why learn Maya after so much time investment in 3DS Max’. Mostly it’s personal and experimental. There are legitimate industry reasons. Maya tends to be used more in animated films where 3DS Max is more often used for games, architectural rendering, and some VFX work, at least from what I remember. Since I am working and learning entirely independent of industry and can use any program I want, at the moment the industry reasons don’t matter, much. Now, the part where Maya has a bit of a reputation for being more of a creative artist tool versus an engineer artist tool. That, has a little more impact. Oh, ok. Industry does have a little influence, but not too much. The creative artist tool part is a big reason for me wanting to learn Maya. I am hoping to find a tool that bridges the gap between what I have training in, though some what dated, the more ridged thinking associated with engineering and what I want, something more free flowing and unexpectedly creative. That would be the 3D sculpting programs such as ZBrush and Mudbox. With it’s different interface and approach to tools, transformations and deformations and how models are built, I think it could do that. That in turn could help me get to where I can more comfortably and maybe more quickly, create. Create characters and scenes and hopefully even some animations. So that’s the why for me, for learning Maya.
With such a satisfying and successful vacation done, I’m really hoping to see some of the momentum continue as I get back to the day job. I’ve picked up a good bit of progress on the Ovation painting and have a plan and approach to the next steps with it. I’ve started working in Maya and making pretty good progress for about 3 evening’s worth of work. And to go with that I’ve got the beginnings of an idea for another card that I might try to do in Maya instead of 3DS Max. In addition to all that and the air conditioning installation, I finished reading two books. Which, while it doesn’t put much of a dent in my reading stacks it still feels good. Oh, and I managed to see a movie. Whew. Wonder what the next week will hold.