UP AND RUNNING · 26 FEBRUARY 2012
For some reason, I didn't really want to start with this shot to get back into the swing of things. However, I decided to go ahead and block it out. Sometimes going in order is just easier on my brain. Funny, when this year started I thought, if I could just animate one shot per week, I'd be done in around 30 or so weeks. There are so many easy shots I could have done between January 1st and now. Ah well, perhaps I can get back into a roll and make up some ground. I have also been forcing myself to adjust to Maya 2012. It's basically the same as previous versions, but there are lots of little interface quirks to get use to. Annoying interface quirks that is.

FINAL FANTSAY XIII and GRAB BAG · 22 FEBRUARY 2012
Man, February is almost over and I'm just now getting back to this project. I blame Final Fantasy. I have IX on PSP but haven't put much into it. However, I did finally get around to playing XIII which I loved. Today is the first day I haven't played it since starting earlier this month. Even though I finished the story last Monday, the combat was so much fun I went back to see if I could beat some of the more challenging boss monsters.

I've been meaning to return to this project for quite some time but just haven't felt the inspiration. Last weekend I did spend some time testing my rigs out in Maya2012 and have been trying to convert for some time. I converted all of my custom buttons to the new color scheme, figured out how to enlarge the fonts, installed the latest drivers for my Quadro4000 and loaded the new subscription service pack. Had to buy a compatible liscense of the picker I love and while testing my rigs this weekend, discovered my space snapping scripts break in 2012. It was simple to fix them to work with both 2010 and 2012, so I spent a bit of time doing that.

That forced me to look at all of my space switching scripts and I discovered that what I thought was so clever about my grab switching for when a character is holding an object, is actually quite confusing. My first attempt at re-rigging the Free controller resulted in the dreaded cycle-check loop error. However, after a few days away from it, I came back tonight and made it super simple without breaking the rig. I simply constrain which ever "grab" I need to the location of the object before switching it and then delete the constraint. It's sooo much simpler now. You want the object to move with the right hand, you press the R button, left hand, L, want the object free, the F button. I can also ik snap the hand to the object and have them controlled by it and themselves at the same time. Basically, I took 8 scripts and reduced them to 3. I reorganized the picker to be more intuative as well and removed the confusing buttons around the hands. It was almost a year ago that I wrote those scripts and I have no idea what the heck I was thinking when I did the grabs. Ah well, lesson learned.