confectionary malfunction

It’s not official yet, but I handed in my last assignment at Animation Mentor and I should be able to access the Alumni server in a few weeks barring a failure in the final minutes. (I don’t think that’ll happen, though.)

I feel elated.

I’m not happy with my final short film. The basic problem was too many cooks in the kitchen. I couldn’t stick with my original idea, and what my ideas turned into was so far removed that I wasn’t clear on where the film was supposed to be going when I began Class 6. My mentor for Class 6 did a good job of helping me wrestle the short together, but I never lost the sense that I was doing an assignment instead of working towards something I wanted to say.

So here I am, at the end of it. I probably learned as much during Classes 5 and 6 as I did throughout the first four AM classes; Cal’s lectures in Class 5, where he supplimented our video lessons with experiences and notes of his own, were my favorite classes. I want to go over those notes again, because I think I want to get into Story as a discipline.

I’m feeling good. I’m thinking I’ll take some time off from animating in my own time, for at least a few weeks. Then, who knows?

I’m slowly coming out of the fog of Maya, now that I’m done with using it for Animation Mentor, and I’ve been trying to get back into Cinema 4D. I just wanted to post this short COFFEE script snippet. This looks through all the animation curves on an object and spits out information on them.

var op = doc->GetActiveObject();
var curTime = doc->GetTime();

println("\nKey dump for ", op->GetName(), ":\n");

var t = op->GetFirstCTrack();
if (t == NULL)
	println("Error.");

var i = 0;
var j = 0;
var k;
var c;

while (t != NULL) {
	i++;
	c = t->GetCurve();
	println("\tTrack ", i, ": ", t->GetName(), " -- ",
	c->GetKeyCount(), " keys.");

	for (j = 0; j < c->GetKeyCount(); j++) {
		k = c->GetKey(j);
		var bt = k->GetTime();
		println("\t\t", j, ": v", k->GetValue(), ", t:", bt->GetFrame(30));
	}

	t = t->GetNext();
}

println("Number of tracks: ", i);

The sad part is this: you can’t add new keys to curves in COFFEE; you can only read what’s there. (EPIC FAIL, Maxon.) At least now I know how to get keys and how the BaseTime class works.