Great First Day

Bonus cookie points for the whole team and thanks to everyone for a great first day. We sorted out a bunch of questions and clarified many of the project goals. Fantastic to have Rodney B. joining us every class for lab - your modeling skills are vital for this endeavor.

Our first pass of what the project goals will be:

1. Everything is free for use to non-profit ventures including festival films (credit required)
2. Everything will be 100% student content.
3. Any non Ex'pression content (if included at all) will be in a "use at own risk" area
4. Everything will be built to a consistent and high standard
5. Costumes and Props will be modular and easily modifiable
6. Everything will be light and easy to integrate.
7. Clear documentation and tutorials with everything.

We determined who our clients are:

1. Ex'pression College, Marketing and Promotion
2. Ex'pression College, Current and Future students
3. "Pre-Students" (folks thinking about going to art school)
   
4. Students (other colleges and programs)
5. Industry Professionals
6. Short Film Makers

and we established the costume and work-flow parameters (image below):


We also gave everyone their first tasks:

Dressing Room Environment (Meyer Hall) - Ruby & Joe
"Template Suit" Concept - Catie
Explore MEL scripting for costume shape fixes - Ruby & Joe
Lighting Ideal Parameters (3 examples) - Natalia
"Catwalk" Walk animation - Josue
"Mugging it Up" animation - Logan
Model Jayna's Khaki Concept - Jacob
Texture Map Test for Hairdo - Les
Set Up Texture Templates - Tony
Model Jayna's Cowboy Costume - Joe
Props and Hats Sample Rigging - Tony & Marcus (I'll fill you in on this one Marcus)

These tasks will only cover the first days - we will get a larger deliverable schedule worked out in next class.

Rodney B. solved the question of how we deal with non-deforming costume objects (buttons, badges etc): Muscle>Bonus Rigging>Surface Attach - select two adjacent spans and it will create a fixed surface locator that we can use to anchor anything to the costume mesh.

To load Maya Muscle, Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager. The Plug-in Manager window opens. Locate MayaMuscle and turn on Loaded. Maya loads the Muscle module and adds the Muscle menu to the main menu set.

That's all for today - my brain is full.