The Reason For My Madness

The newly reformatted PC and big hard drive have opened up to possibilities. I just wish I could expand the capacity of my brain to help me make those possibilities a reality. I mean, does anybody out there know any good ways of learning to model and animate in 3D that doesn't end up with my barking at the moon? My mind is spinning with information overload: facts about how to sculpt a 3D mesh, then (apparently) I have to do some ‘retopology’, which involves drawing a new mesh over the old mesh and then doing something mystical (waves fingers vaguely) before I import that mesh into a package from which I can then rig the mesh and animate it. And who knew that everything had to be made from ‘quads’ not ‘tris’? I'm used to thinking about shapes with ten or fewer sides. Not 1.4 million. Even the simple action of adding a fourth side to a triangle is driving me crazy. I watch the videos on Youtube it looks so easy yet it feels like, everywhere I turn, there isn’t enough information to help me. I’m beginning to think that simply walking through the door will be too much for me. My capacity to understand things seems to be regressing with every new detail I learn about 3D animation.

In theory is all sounds so easy. The reality is that I can’t ever model my own finger… Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing this weekend. Trying to model my finger. I thought about doing a head, realized how difficult it was and gradually reduced my ambitions to animating a single joint in a single finger.