Quote Originally Posted by Nekomata View Post
We did! Took about 2 months for a group of 6. xD Ton of work, but always worth the final. I've got some older studio projects, but this one was the best one so far that I had a decent hand in. Last fall's studio I didn't contribute as much cause of control-freak group leader. Spring was a 2D thing we sorta did while running around Europe... wasn't our priority. xD

We mostly use Maya for our animations. 3DS max is actually used more on the gaming side of things if I recall. Texturing was the hardest part for us. Even so we had a few issues. If you look VERY carefully you'll notice a few issues with the animation. I'm not the strongest modeler or texturer, so I struggle on those sides- which is why groups are awesome! Everyone has their strong points and we place roles on that. My area of specialty is Lighting/Post- which go together quite closely, so it works out. I'm taking a rigging/animation graduate class this semester to strengthen those skills... and you heard my rant about the hell class? That's a modeling/texturing heavy class. Go figure. xD Once we get in groups for that though, I'll get to shift back to the areas I'm strong in- but it's solo for now. RIP me.
I have heard of Maya, but I haven't ever worked with it. I'm curious to know what it's like, but I'm sure the overall setup is probably something similar to 3DS max with a few minor differences. For me, it took HOURS just to design the layout of a room. And I mostly used shape primitives with textures. Trying to do serious modeling was asking to die a little inside.

The modeling I did involved a LOT of anchor points. So many of them. Messing around with them in a 3D environment was like performing surgery, but if you were willing to spend a good chunk of time into it, you could set everything to actually be modeled into looking like something coherent. But it was definitely a lot of work and not for the faint of heart. It was the element that took the longest amount of time for me, and there were plenty of times where even after spending loads of time into it, I felt like "this is still awful, delete." It's no wonder that during the credits of 3D animated movies done by Pixar and Dreamworks, there's a gazillion people involved. I believe it! And I know what they must have gone through! XD It does make these 3D movies very easy to appreciate when you are aware of some of the behind the scenes work that goes into these things. You start to feel like they deserve congressional Medals of Honor. XD

But yeah, basically we started with a sphere (or some other 3D primitive shape) clicked on the setting that revealed all the anchor points, and you had to pull out or push in each anchor point one by one to get the exact shape you wanted. It was pain. It took forever. It made you question your life choices. But if you were diligent about it, you could make something seriously cool.

Applying textures was kind of a trial and error thing sometimes. Sometimes you had to try different textures to see what would work best and to make sure it didn't stretch too much or have weird cutoffs that made it obvious something screwy was going on. The bigger the texture, the better chance you had of it working. You HAD to experiment. You had to go against gut instincts to at least try to see if there was a chance of it working. And you had to be open to trying and trying again because you wanted to kick this thing in the butt and make something awesome.

It's been a really long time since I've done 3D stuff though. But yeah, I can appreciate the work that goes into it. But you've got the skills and the diligence. I think you can do it if you really take a solid plunge into the stuff.