endless learning

As marching to my dream career of technical artist, mastering of commercial software is a must. Since Maya is a excellent software of doing animation, 3D modeling and visual effects, I started self learning this software.

I used "Learning Autodesk Maya 2009: Fundation" for self study. Too sad I have to start from the fundation. This book contains five projects and each project contain several lessons. I schedule to complete one lesson every three days. Too bad I don't have enough time, I need to attend lectures for my master study at the nights and work during the daytime.

I began to self study Maya at the middle of September this year and I never know when I could finish this book, the thing even worse is this is only the fundation and there're still plenty of books like: animation, modeling and special effects...Okay, still, I have to start from the "fundation".

This is the first scene I completed, took me almost ten days. Well, I follow the book completely. It is project 1 in the book. It's a amazing software and it's so complicated.

At the first time when I looked at the content of advanced computer graphic subject I took this semester, I felt it was too theoretical, It was flooded by all the mathematical theories used in computer graphics. It covers little OpenGL and of course nothing related to commercial software, as the lecturer said, "this is a master level course and you have to self study the rest...". However I felt better when I discover that the node names (Phong, Blinn, Lambert etc) of Maya node used are the same as the different illumination model names. Okay, based on mathematic formula the specular reflection on each illumination model surface is different. here are beautiful formula:

Maybe someday I can write my own models :).