The three weekend workshops have come to an end and I wish to thank all who signed up to show their support of the project in the beginning, and I especially want to thank those who were able to make it out to the workshops.

So now that almost twenty people have had a brief introduction to 3D modeling and animation, what’s next?

Well, there may be no more 4 hour long workshops on the weekend, but I intend to continue on with shorter sessions. In the months to come, I plan to offer several 2 hour demos of various 3D techniques. They could include topics like more specific modeling and animation projects, or in-depth topics like texturing, lighting, rendering and some dynamics and special effects. I will prepare a detailed list of topics and post them soon.

After I give each demo, I will later post it here, in the form of a screencast on the blog for everyone else to benefit from.

Thanks again everyone and have a great summer.

- Modeling lesson - “Adding a door to the dungeon”

On Saturday, we had another full house. All eight seats were taken and the night was packed with “3D goodness”. This time I wasn’t surprised when the final hour rolled around and we hadn’t started talking about animation yet. Having learned from the first workshop back at the beginning of May, I decided to split up the topics a little so that we weren’t just talking about the UI most of the night, but instead coming back to it again and again as we delved into the other topics, modeling and animation.

There were some people we got stuck here and there and that was to be expected. Expecting to understand everything in just under four hours, even the basics, is a tall order. So if any of you that were there are reading this now, go easy on yourselves, you did well, considering. Still, I believe that the original goal of the workshop was met, that is, I wanted to introduce Maya to people who have never really sat done and tried to make something with it. And to those that have attempted to make sense of it, the workshops were meant to help them break through to the next level where they became truly capable of solving there own problems.

Having a tool whereby you can bring to reality (at least on screen) anything your imagination can conceive is truly a gift to behold.

The workshops being, far from perfect, I will still continue on to the final installment in two weeks time and strive to hone the lesson plan even further with the hopes that they can deliver on its promises.