Added a few con­cept pic­tures.  I’ve had an idea that’s been kind of both­er­ing me for a while, so I decided to go with it.  Since I feel I’m more of a hands on learner, I thought it might be a good idea for me to cre­ate a 3D short, using every­thing I’ve already learned and hope­fully learn­ing a lot more in the process.  So, I came up with a story about a lit­tle fer­ret and his Granny.  (I love fer­rets, and I think they’re very expres­sive ani­mals, so they seemed like a good choice for char­ac­ters.)  I’m forc­ing myself to do this the right way and fin­ish all of the pre­pro­duc­tion before I start mod­el­ing.  It’s hard.  :)

I’ve got sev­eral prob­lems I need to work through.  The first is which pro­gram to use, but I think I’ve fig­ured that out.  Maya is sup­posed to be bet­ter for this sort of thing, but I really know noth­ing about it.  I bought a book for it and found some tuto­ri­als, but I think it might be a while before I can take on this sort of project with it.  So, I’m using Max for the time being.  This IS sup­posed to help me learn more about the pro­gram, and it doesn’t hurt to be pro­fi­cient in both.  Another prob­lem is with Max itself.  My knowl­edge of it thus far is lim­ited, and there are a lot of scenes I have planned that I sim­ply would not know where to start.  Hope­fully the project will help me rem­edy that by the time it’s fin­ished.  (You’ll never learn if you don’t try, no?)

Flip is the name I’ve picked for the main char­ac­ter.  I’m not quite sure yet if I’m going to keep it, but I like the ring of it.  I’ve added a con­cept draw­ing of the liv­ing room and some char­ac­ter concepts.

Added a new pic­ture and 3D model.  I’ve got sev­eral oth­ers in the works, as well.  I hope to have most of them fin­ished by the end of the month.  I’m really try­ing to push myself to learn how to use 3ds Max.  The classes are teach­ing me some things, but I don’t feel that it’s enough.  I chose a port town from my story and am work­ing on build­ing that up in 3D as prac­tice.  The boats are giv­ing me some trou­ble, but I’m sure I’ll fig­ure it out.

Work­ing with light­ing in the pro­gram.  It’s dif­fi­cult, but not for the rea­sons you’d expect.  It just takes so long for the lights to ren­der, espe­cially when you throw shad­ows into the mix.  I’m still play­ing with it, but this is what I have thus far.  It was enough to fool Ian into think­ing it was a photo, but it’s nowhere near perfect.  :)

Learn­ing how to apply mate­ri­als to objects in 3ds max.  My first attempt was using most of the mate­ri­als the pro­gram pro­vides.  Even­tu­ally, I got a lit­tle wiser and start­ing going around the house tak­ing pic­tures of var­i­ous wood sur­faces and some of the walls.  I don’t think I’ll ever use the wood mate­r­ial in the pro­gram again.  It just looks very, very fake.  Here’s the end result.  I’m still work­ing on more objects for the room, but it’s look­ing pretty good thus far.