Planning. I feel I didn’t do enough in the beginning of this unit. I didn’t really have an idea of what exactly I was going to be producing to be graded. This in turn meant I was having to come up with plans and ideas later into the unit when I was supposed to be producing said things.
Design. I think I left the designs a little later than I probably should’ve, despite having them in time for the modelling. I feel I should’ve started them sooner as that would’ve given me time to be more creative with the designs. In the future I will be drawing designs before writing up their character profile because writing a profile puts a certain image in my head that I then find hard to deviate from when designing.
Modelling. I definitely needed to spend more time modelling than I did, especially if I want to have a more detailed model next time. I also need to practice modelling more as I’m alright once I get into the groove, or if I’ve modelled something similar before, but I struggle to know where and how to start something new. This struggle is probably why I don’t realise things such as putting the faces of a cube onto a cylinder instead of rounding out a cube until after I have finished modelling it. I also need to learn to be ok with things not being absolutely perfect to begin with as I think that contributes to the starting struggle. I made one model for a blend shape but I should make more next time as I feel that would incite me to actually try to use blend shapes in the final render.
Rigging. Setting up the skeleton went well. I had no problems with that. Weight painting was annoying as I would finish painting all of the joints and then would find they had repainted where they shouldn’t when moving joints around. This was frustrating as it meant I had to spend so much longer than anticipated trying to fix this. I can see how inverse kinematics are useful and I will definitely use them in the future, they just didn’t work with this particular model.
Animation. Having a plan for the animation before I reach the animation stage would be a good idea. This would allow me to use a mocap studio effectively. Even if I have a model that isn’t humanoid, I could still use the studio to get motions for specific parts of the model instead of forgoing motion capture and keyframing everything. I could also use the studio to film actions and use those as references for keyframing to get more fluid and lifelike animations.
Overview. All in all the finished render isn’t too bad, in my opinion. The main improvements look to be about planning early on and extra time management for more detailed areas.