Hey there classmates and friends. My thoughts from our first 3D class (Wednesday) were mostly filled with annoyance from having to use the program Lightwave. If any of you have used Autodesk Maya or 3DStudioMax you'd know what I’m talking about.
I was first introduced to Maya (PLE 8.5) in year 9 in my IT class. My IT teacher said we're going try some 3D stuff today and he told the class to open up Maya which was installed on all of the school's laptops. He showed us the basics of how to use the camera: zoom, pan and roll. Showed us how insert a polygon primitive e.g. cube. How to move, rotate and scale the polygon. How to select faces, vertices, and edges. How to extrude faces. And later on he even showed the basics of keyframe animation. He showed all this in a matter of about 5 minutes explaining it clearly while he did it on screen and allowing us to try it all out while he was doing it.
We were told to model an aeroplane just to get the hang of using the tools. This first intro to Maya actually got almost everyone in the class interested in 3D modelling/animation, because using Maya was so simple and the interface was so easy to use. So easy to use that us year 9's (at the time) understood it and clicked straight away. Using such a program (Maya) inspired me to start 3D modelling and inspired me to choose 3D modelling/animation as a career.
Now what I’m trying to get at is, when I tried Lightwave for the first time on our Wednesday class I was surprised at how awkward everything on it was. Awkward to use the camera, awkward to manipulate a polygon primitive, awkward to model, the whole interface was flipping awkward! I honestly couldn’t stand using it, I actually felt sick from using it and knowing that we'd have to use this piece of poo for the rest of the 3D course.
What you could say is I’m trying to start an uprising against Lightwave in our 3D course. To put it more formally, I'm trying change the program we use to Maya (2010) which is installed on all of the Mac's in our class. I asked our 3D tutor if there’s any chance in changing to use Maya but he said I'd have to talk to Werner Hammerstingl. He said it's probably too late now anyways to change. He also said he teaches Maya, and he's teaching it in the diploma of interactive digital media.
I cant believe I didn’t choose that instead! AUGH! Doing 3D was actually the main reason I chose this course, I don’t want to spend this time using this silly program Lightwave. It will surely melt my brain!
Anyways. I’m about to send an email to Werner asking for this change. I’m going to try writing it as formal and as meaningful as I can. But I’m thinking I’ll probably need your help. "Your" meaning all of you guys. Because if all of us request this change, using Maya instead of Lightwave, there may just be a good chance he'll consider it. But if just one guy, being me asks for the change, he'll probably not consider it at all.
So firstly I ask for those of you who haven’t used Maya at all to look here
http://usa.autodesk.com/maya/
Check out what Maya looks like, maybe go on Youtube and watch some tutorial videos of Maya modelling just to see how easy it is (especially compared to...you know...Lightwave). And if you want to get your hands on it yourself to give it a try, download the Maya 2010 free trial, which is on the page I linked . The free trial is a fully functioning Maya that lasts 30 days.
After you have seen what Maya handles like or tested it yourself and If you have the same opinion as me then I ask you to send an email to Werner Hammerstingl (whammerstingl@swin.edu.au) explaining why you think we should change to using Maya instead of Lightwave. Mention your name, surname and that you're in the Certificate 4 in Interactive Digital Media course.
Hopefully he'll consider the change. If not, we'll all have to endure the pain of using Lightwave. My last resort would be to drop out of this course :O , or I too could endure the pain. I really didn’t think this through enough before. I just assumed we'd use a good, industry standard 3D program like Maya or 3DstudioMax. Though I know Lightwave is still used in the 3D industry, I just don’t know how 3D modellers stand it. I'd rather pay the extra money for a good piece of software if I start doing 3D for money.
Anyways, thanks for being bothered to read this, and I hope you guys can help me out. I believe there is still hope for us :D
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