3D Modeling & Animation Reflections
Joseph Htay, 2025
Joseph Htay, 2025
I'm taking this class to learn new skills and learn how to model. Taking this class may be challenging sometimes, but it's also fun at the same time. What I expect to learn from this class is to learn how to make cool designs, such as nice designs. I am taking this class to learn new skills and how to model. While I know this class may be challenging at times, I also find it enjoyable. I expect to learn how to create impressive designs, such as character designs and their animations. Characters and animating them.
During the hours I spent on Brain Buffet, I learned various skills I use to my advantage, such as how to copy and modify blocks, etc.. On the brain buffet, I learned how to create my first project called the Temple of the primitive. It taught me the basics of the tools, plus how to use different tools. One thing I found interesting was the array tool; it was difficult to understand, and it still is for me. The array tool made the project easier and simpler to complete, as it allowed for copying the model and lining it up quickly.
Learning these skills has increased my understanding of modeling and will help me with future projects, such as the game I had in mind. This game I wanted to make is very important to me because I want everyone to come together and enjoy the game it has to offer. Just by taking this class, I've learned a lot and am willing to put more energy to learn everything I can from this class.
September 28, 2025
During this module, I focused on getting better at organizing my tasks and using coordination tools. I also learned how to make new folders, and I was surprised to see that some already had files inside, which I didn't expect. These new skills should help me find files faster and make my future projects more accurate. For example, in my recent '4 corner scene' project, I made a plane with a different scene in each corner: one had trees, another had an igloo and a snowman, the third had a pyramid, and the last had five tower blocks.
I can use these skills I've learn to make my future project more effective and easier to manage. Learning these skills will help me make the game desirable, and I hope everyone can enjoy my own MMORPG. Using these modules as a guide has helped me a lot as a beginner, and I hope it goes that way. Modules 1 and 2 gave an understanding of how the tools work and how to use those tools to my advantage. Tho it is hard to keep up I'll keep pushing myself to achieve this goal.
During module 3, I've learn a lot of skills, for example. The LEGO man and chess pawn project was tricky at first, but easy to complete, especially the Chess pawn project. I had to use splines to make the chess pawn, which I did on my first try, and was pretty proud of it, but the tricky part was using the spline to outline half of the chess pawn. During the outlining process of the chess pawn, I had to make the little curves on the chess pawn and messed up many times. Still, I didn't know I could edit the spline after the first outline, which saved me, but it was still tricky to do because it involved the same process as outlining, just with the addition of moving the vertex, making it a lot simpler to edit. On the LEGO man project, there were many new tools, like the mesh smooth tool. The tool makes any model smooth. For example, you're trying to make a rock, but the rock has a low poly count, and making it look like a box just bends around, but if you add mesh smoothing, it will smooth out the rough edges and make it look more like a rock.
Learning these new skills will help me in future projects, making small shortcuts, and making modeling easier. Learning these new skills is important because it makes modeling simple projects fast and easy, like the chess pawn project. Module 3 gave me a good understanding of how to use the edit poly tool, making future projects look nicer than putting blocks together and calling it a design. Learning these new things will help me make my game look way nicer and improve my understanding of modeling and making shortcuts to not overcomplicate things, making a simple project more difficult than it needs to be.
During module five, I didn't have as much fun with as it was just rendering, dragging, and dropping material. I did learn some new skills, which I don't find as useful in the future, in my opinion, because in this module, all I did was create high-quality images, which I found surprising. Something I found interesting was the slate material editor because it's where all the material comes to play. The skills I learn weren’t quite useful, tho it was a good thing to learn for future lessons. One tool I used was the slate material editor, as it was the main topic of this module. In the Slate material editor, there is so much going on in the editor, but you didn’t need to stress much due to it being easy to navigate around the editor. There's a thing called Map, where you can drag and drop a picture into your files and use the file to drag and drop it again into the editor to create a map. In order for the map to work, you need to drag and drop a physical material from the menu and connect those two together to get your desired material on your module. That's all this module was about; there was nothing much to it. I hope I can find more interesting lessons in the future.
In module six, I learn how to use unwrap UVW. This module was quite simple, but at the same time, hard because a simple mistake can ruin your progress, and make you restart your UV ray. During this lesson, I had trouble mapping the unwrap UVW, making it tedious. This is a great skill to learn because this module shows you how to add texture to your model, bringing it more life than keeping it just in solid colors. In my opinion, I think this skill is quite useful for future projects, making it easier to add texture and making my job easier. I didn’t learn a new skill as this module was quite easy and not that hard. I can see myself using the unwrap UVW for future projects and making my game more outstanding and lively. This can help add life to some of my modules and make working easier. I really love this module as it wasn't too hard nor too easy. I hope I can find future lessons more engaging and enjoyable.
During Module 7, I focused on learning essential animation tools, especially the Biped tool for posing and animating humanoid models. The module was straightforward since its main objective was to practice using the Biped tool. I learned how to create a humanoid skeleton for models using Biped, which was easy to understand. The Biped tool features four modes: skeleton, male, female, and classic; for this lesson, we specifically used the skeleton mode for our frakenstone monster/golem. I found the biped tool quite easy to learn due to it just being about sizing your skeleton to the right size, and configuring it to fit your models and skinning it to make sure your skeleton moves with your models. For the Ik tools, it was somewhat hard but easy. For example, if you look at your arm, you can see how far your arm can bend; you can bend your arm a full 360, but only a 180. meaning there is a limit to how far you can bend your model's arm, grab a string, the same length as your arm, put the first end of the string on your shoulder, and the other end on your hand. Let's say your shoulder is point A, and your hand is point B. The string will represent the Ik solver. If you bend your arms towards your face, you can see that the string becomes loose, but if you bend it back out, you can see that the string tightens. This is how the Ik solver works. It’s quite hard to understand at first, but it gets easier later on.
By learning these skills, i could really benefit from them in animating a character for future projects and bring my modules to life. These skills are a game-changer as I don't need to move each individual parts to pose or animate, but instead can use either the Biped tool or the Ik tools. This module was quite fun, and I hope to find module 8 fun and engaging.