Maya

In our last session we had a look at Maya, I had a feeling it would be slightly complicated and I'd get a bit lost and I did. I think it would be a great thing to learn though as it just gives you so much more scope when making films if you can add visual effects. We learnt some basics in the lesson like how to make a sphere and then using key frames to make it move or change size - this was done using the buttons down the left hand side and then clicking on the timeline and pressing S to put in a keyframe. 

We were also shown how to manipulate the shape, we were meant to make a balloon but I thought mine looked more like a creepy scull in the end which I quite liked. We also learnt how to add effects like fire which is quite simple as you select it from the effects tab and click the small circle next to it which brings up loads of different settings to choose how you want the fire to be. 

We were shown the render button at the top (clapper board) which shows you how the object would really look, mine wasn't working for some reason but because Maya is free for students I have downloaded it now and had a play about and I added the fire effect and could see it in the render box this time. I think if Maya wasn't free I would probably never have got round to using it again but because I have it myself now I will be more inclined to watch tutorials on it and just have a play about on it because it is a very powerful bit of software and I'd love to be able to use it even just basically.