You'd Think It Would Work Better

I ended up having to go to ER last week. Luckily nothing seems to be seriously wrong, but further testing and orders to watch for key symptoms means I'm not 100% in the clear yet. If I hadn't had that benefits termination fiasco of the past 3 months, I would have set up a regular appointment earlier in the week and it would have cost zero (no copay). My copay for ER was $100!! Someone at IHSS owes me a reimbursement. Okay, pissedness aside, there was some good news: Apparently, my benefits are either already reinstated or were never actually terminated to begin with. ER could have cost way more. I go back for some tests this week and hopefully a) I'm fine and b) benefits are still in effect then.

I've been way, way, WAY out of the right headspace to animate and it's been a real drag. Every key I've set has seemed like garbage and I've been downright unproductive any session I've tried to work. I've got far too much on my shoulders right now and it doesn't put me in the best mood nor motivate me to create. I'm not ready to be the head of the family beast, but I'm responsible for every last thing, and there's no comittee of two (or more), just me trying to choose smart. It's all making my head spin. But tonight I took out some time for my AM short film, even though there are other more urgent things I need to work on.

One thing that irks me is, since I know 3ds max, but not Maya very well (except animating) I have to build parts for the car in my film in max and go through an elaborate process to get it all into Maya. Over and over. Even though I figured out the one and only workable solution for my sitch (save out to .3ds, then import to Maya 6.5 using bonus tools), it's kind of a pain. The interior of the car model doesn't have key features that I need for my short and each time I add new parts I have to re-export/import the car to Maya. Things don't always go well. In this latest version the windshield wipers flipped the wrong way and somehow I attached them to part of the window, which is now floating a bit to the left. (I've been trying to fix the wipers since the first export). You'd think it would work better than this since Autodesk owns both programs now.

There are things I can't animate w/out putting these props in. Luckily some of the shots are very quick cuts where the props just get bumped with a hook. But all this exporting and importing business slows me down, and is delaying my actually animating even more. I'm already so far behind.

They told us at the start of AnimationMentor it was not necessary that we know Maya, and they did show us how to animate in Maya. But on a short film where you work solo, so many things come up and you really need to know the program inside and out. I haven't had any chance to go through tutorials other than the ones AM provided, so I am pretty much clueless about everything in Maya except animating! My advice to any Maya noobs considering AM is you'd better learn the program well by the time you get to Class 6. It is an extreme handicap not being proficient in all aspect of the software you're using. Unless you have a lot of friends who know those things and owe you favors (I don't), you're on your own. I'd love to start animating, but now I have to go work on my hearing.