Over the course of this year I have been learning about many components of digital design, animation, careers that deal with these skills, and the software and hardware that is needed. During this time I have learned the basics of many valuable skills that I can use in the future like creating 2D graphics in both Photoshop and Illustrator, how to make animations in Animate and After Effects, and how to make 3D graphics and then animate them. These skills could be helpful in the future because I know people that work in different jobs that use these different programs. For example, there are people who work on medical research that use Photoshop and Illustrator to show their findings by taking the images they took and adding text to explain what is showed. Another example is that architects could use 3D modeling software to better visualize what the building they are designing would look like. Another reason these skills could be useful in the future is because currently there is a large increase in the use of computers and digital design and this is predicted to continue because of new technologies that are being developed building better, faster and more powerful computers. With the rise of use of computers there will be a wider variety of careers in the future that will require certain skills that i have already learned during this course. This course could also help me get a "headstart" on other people who could apply for the same jobs. The most rewarding experiences I had in this class are in my opinion related to 2D graphics. This is because 2D graphics are used more frequently than animation and 3D modeling are in other careers. Another rewarding experience I had was typing because I used to be a slow typer but after taking this course I have sped up a lot and I can now type much faster. Overall this year I learned many things throughout this course and even though on some occasions some things could be frustrating I had fun overall.
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Over these last few weeks I have been learning how to animate 3D objects in 3D Studio Max. This allows me to make my models even more detailed and realistic because I can make them move and look like living organisms or ral life machines. for example the tank that I previously made, before it was just a tank that was not moving but now i made it move. I did the same thing wih the snowman I made as my first 3D model, now it waves it's little stick arm. Other things I animated were the flowers which now rotate and the plane which also flies around. I also made a worm with a lot of spheres, box antennas, and sphere black eyes. Another thing about animation in 3D Studio Max is that as I said previously, it easy to use and not overly complicated like Adobe Animate CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC which makes animating much more fun and ebjoyable. All of these things could not have been done without animation in 3D Studio Max and I am glad I learned how to use it.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been using 3D Studio Max to animate different 3D models. I have found that animating in 3DS Max is much more simple than I thought it would be because the auto key option creates all of the necessary tweens for you. Although this makes it more simple and easy to use and understand I believe that this feature removes some ability to make the exact movements you would like because the machine is automatically generating the tweens between the keyframes. For the objects I am animating though, this is not a problem because all of my animations involve simple transformations that are easy to create using the auto key option. So far I have found animating in 3DS Max much more simple that in other 2D programs such as Adobe Animate CC or Adobe Premiere Pro CC because while using those other programs I encountered many problems and found that it messed up what I had done. Overall I prefer animating in 3DS Max much more than other programs because of it's simplicity, and the fact that I hav had very minimal problems with it.
Over the course of the last month I have been working in 3D Studio Max to learn the basics of 3D modeling. Earlier this month I made a blog post on what I was doing at the time in 3DS Max but now I have learned how to do more things in 3DS Max. At the time I had just started using 3DS Max and was still working with simple primitives to create things and I had barely started to learn how to use subobjects, but now I have learned how to use modifiers, splines, and materials. With these new tools at my disposition I can make my models look better and more detailed which makes them look much better compared to my first models made out of just primitives. These new tools also allow me to make a wider variety of models. For example, I now can make flowers using modifiers, I can make a futuristic looking world using different types of transformations, and I can make a desk without using any simple primitives and replaced them with splines that have been extruded. At the moment I am working on adding materials to a plane and a tank that I made earlier and making them look like they are on opposing teams attacking each other and placing them in a scene. This will help me better understand how to use materials. This experience has helped me understand how many different things you can do in 3DS Max and 3D modeling in general.
Cartesian coordinates are coordinates that are used on the typical graph or map. They are displayed on two different axes, the Y axis, and the X axis. Although when working with only two dimensions there are only two axes, when working in 3 dimensions there is another axis, it is called the Z axis. This ties into 3D modeling, which is what I am currently learning about, because in 3D Studio Max, which is the program I am using for 3D modeling, it uses cartesian coordinates to show where different objects are located in the working space. Cartesian coordinates are very simple, to read them you have to know that the coordinates are ordered (X,Y,Z). This means that if something is located at the point (10,5,2), it is 10 units along the X axis, 5 units along the Y axis, and 2 units along the Z axis. This makes locating and moving objects very simple because you can just enter the desired coordinates and it moves there.
Rocket League is a game where cars are used to hit the ball into a goal. The traditional game mode in Rocket League is called Soccar (yes it's with an A) which is like soccer, although there are other game modes such as hoops which is like basketball, there is snow day which is like hockey, there is rumble which is soccer but with powerus, and there is dropshot which is not similar to a particular sport but it has some of the same concepts as volleyball. How dropshot works is that you have to make the ball hit ground on the opponents side of the field, where the ground is hit it will light up, if you hit the same spot twice, it will turn clear and become a goal to score on so overall you have to hit the same tile three times to score a point. In Rocket League there are many little pads scattered around the field and six large pads on the edges. These pads give you boost which allows you to move faster, the little pads give you 12 boost ad the large pads give you 100 boost which is the maximum amount of boost. With boost you can jump and angle your car upwards to fly, this adds a lot of skill to this game because if you are able to control your car well in the air then you can reach the ball faster than others and score fro the air. Overall I think Rocket League is very fun and the ranking system and their rewards can make it very competitive which I think is what makes this game so fun.
Over the past couple of weeks I have started to learn how to make basic models in 3D Studio Max using basic primitives and subobjects. So far I have not encountered any issues with 3DS Max unlike Adobe Animate or Adobe Premiere Pro so I like it better than those two. During my time modeling using 3DS Max I learned many thing like how to create different shapes with different primitives and I also learned how to manipulate the primitives using subobjects. This allows me to be more creative because I can drastically alter the way the primitive looks in many different ways. For example, I made a tank using only a box but I used subobjects to change how it looked to make different changes like bring the bottom of the box in on both sides to make the continuous track of the tank and I brought out the front of the box to make the tank gun. Something else I like about 3DS Max is that it is easy to pick up and visually easy to understand because it is well organized into sections of different tools and each section has all the tools that do similar things. For example, the steering wheel has eight tools that have similar purposes or at least are used similarly. Also 3DS Max has many keyboard shortcuts which can help people quickly find different tools. Although the keyboard shortcuts are extremely helpful, they take a long time to memorize because there are so many of them and some of which I haven't used. Overall i found 3DS Max extremely useful, I have not found any serious problems with it and it is well organized and easy to find different tools.
“Autodesk 3ds Max Learning Materials.” ASCENT, 22 Apr. 2019, www.ascented.com/courseware-solutions/autodesk/courseware/autodesk-3ds-max?gclid=CjwKCAjwzPXlBRAjEiwAj_XTEbS7wSdFnXpRHM-vjv5tvD1t65EFTZ-bKQrcl75UaWKO. “3ds Max | 3D Modeling, Animation & Rendering Software.” Autodesk, 22 Apr. 2019, www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview. Over the past couple of weeks I have been using Premiere Pro to make different videos out of certain clips. Over this time I have experienced many problems with Premiere Pro much although I believe it was mostly due to a hardware problem not software. This caused me to take much longer on certain videos that would normally take about 30 minutes which really frustrated me to the point where I almost gave up. Luckily I was able to solve the problem before I gave up or else I would not have gotten as much experience. Besides when Premiere Pro was not working I found that it was very simple to use and useful. I was able to easily compile different audio and video clips together without having many problems aside from when it would not open up at all. I found that it was rather simple to make videos and it was not anywhere near as hard and complicated as I originally thought it would be. I also learned that you can make many simplistic but still cool transitions between clips, images, or audio files. This is simply done by clicking on effects, then clicking on any of the categories that you would like to integrate into your video. Overall I found that Premiere Pro was simple to understand and very useful but I had some problems with it.
Geometry Dash was originally a mobile game created in August 2013. It was developed and published by RobTop Games who also made the game Boomlings. Geometry Dash was released on Steam on December 21, 2014. Geometry Dash is a rhythm based platforming game which currently has 21 official levels and millions of user created online levels. Geometry Dash blew up in popularity in 2016 and was updated regularly since then. Geometry Dash was at it's peak during the years 2016 and 2017 which was when the largest number of daily players reached occured with 9,614 players active. Geometry Dash's most liked feature was the ability to create online levels. With the level editor you can make anything you want with different objects and triggers and can create many effects and designs that seem impossible to make with such simplistic objects but with the use of triggers and effects can easily be possible. The ability to create levels with the Geometry Dash level editor has made many people known to this community because of their skill in creating good levels that are fun to play. Others have made themselves known by beating the hardest levels in the game and posting videos of them beating the levels on YouTube and other forms of entertainment. Overall Geometry Dash was a game that was popularized during 2016 and 2017 and has made people known across this community and allowed for them to make a lot of money by doing this.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been learning about two programs that deal with animation. These two programs are Adobe After Effects CC and Adobe Animate CC. My initial thoughts about these two programs are very different. This might be because of the difference in difficulty of the two animations I made in each program. My initial thoughts on Adobe After Effects CC are that it is that it is a useful program and that it can be used for many things. For example I made a motion graphic describing myself and because my family is from Italy, I decided to add a pizza as a background. My experience with Adobe Animate CC was much more rough. My project was to create a monster eating a blob of food. When I started I had to draw the body using the pen tool and then animate it appropriately. However, when I added the shape tweens it would twist and move in an unwanted manner. Normally you could just add some shape hints and that would fix the problem but for some reason when I added shape hints it just made it worse. To solve the problem I had to redraw the whole thing. This was not the only problem I encountered, I also had trouble with the easing but that was solved by reapplying the easing after restarting Adobe Animate CC. Although I found more problems with Adobe Animate, I found that there are more options with Animate than After Effects, such as the use of symbols. This allowed for me to animate more abstract shapes without using shape hints. This saved a lot of time and helped facilitate many different portions of the monster. Overall I found Animate more useful but more problematic than After Effects.
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My name is Vinicio Maresca and my family is from Italy, however, I was born in the US. I will be adding to this blog page as time goes by.
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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