Day 87

I'm in the last chapter of my book so it's going over some random things. They showed me how to create a cartoon effect. I did something similar earlier but that was more of a final filter applied to the whole image. This method applies the cartoon look to the individual parts.

Next is the painting effects Maya has. You can paint two dimensionally like in any other art program but you can also paint three dimensional things. So here when I lay down a brush stroke, grass or flowers pop up. Also, you can easily animate them to sway in the wind which is a little hard to see in this video.

Maya has all kinds of weird brushes like buildings and lighting bolts.

And with that, I am officially done with my book. I am now a Maya beginner. Looking back, I would have liked to have gone through it faster. I tried to limit myself because I was ingesting a lot of information. However, I still think I could have gone a little faster. I did split my time with online lessons so there's that to consider. Despite taking my time, not all of the information will stick. Some of the details will be forgotten, but I have a good grasp of what's possible and can easily look things up. I didn't spend a lot of time experimenting on my own and mainly stuck with the book's lessons. Doing stuff on my own is going to be key to improving my technique and speed but I wanted to get a good foundation first. So where do I go from here? I still have a couple of online lessons to do. Then I already bought another introductory book so I'll be diving into that next.