The pendulum was the first exercise we did. It was our very first introduction to Maya's animation system.

This was the very first project we did when we opened 3ds Max. We were tasked with playing with primitives, materials, and 3ds Max’s lighting systems. I explored a little with modifiers to try to make something. Even if it’s not winning any awards, my first experience with 3ds Max was pretty nice.

First time we worked with balls and references.

We had to produce this animation just two weeks after opening Maya for the first time. As it was the first “big” animation we had been entrusted with, even though it wasn’t graded, from our point of view, it was absolutely terrifying.

I remember being very proud of my little mushroom house. It was supposed to be a windmill at first, but when I used the Bend modifier, I just couldn't think of anything other than a mushroom house, and I really loved that idea.

First time we ever tried three-point lighting in Unreal Engine, and I absolutely loved doing it.

That was the second “big” animation we ever did. At the time, it felt like an absolute nightmare, since we made it within the first month of using Maya, and for some of my classmates, it was even their very first experience with a PC software. Looking back, it definitely wasn’t that bad.

Our modeling teacher only gave us a rural scene and, after showing us how to create textures in Photoshop as well as materials and sub-materials in Max, we were left on our own to create a small scene. After a while, I couldn’t settle for just a couple of textures, so I decided to turn it into a crime scene. It was also the first time I ever used any modifiers in Max besides Edit Poly to change a polygon’s material ID. I definitely learned a lot but most importantly, that I was in love with 3ds Max’s workflow.

We were only supposed to make a windmill, but I really, really wanted to make a lighthouse because my lighting teacher had shown us a personal project he had made, a lighthouse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6F-KZ3pptg). Even if I wasn’t at his level, I was really inspired by it. So, I did both. I eventually derailed a bit and added a bunch of other things here and there to make sure I got all my points, which I thankfully did.

This project was meant to help us understand how spline modeling works. Originally, we were only supposed to learn how to model vases and other small objects using the spline tool in 3ds Max. I had finished the overall project assigned by my teacher and was ready to add new elements to spice up the scene. While we were talking about Super Mario 64, my friend mentioned the slide level, which brought back lots of great memories and, of course, sparked my ego. So I personally decided that I had to create an animation using the spline tool to build the slide and basically everything in the scene.

This project was made in teams of four within 3 hours of pure chaos. We had 15 minutes to plan everything we were going to do: what we would model, animate, and which software we would use to render the final result. We were given a theme at the start of the 3 hours: a tribute to Pixar's first short film The Adventures of André & Wally B. My role in the team was to create the terrain in Unreal Engine (except for the mountain in the background, which my friend made), as well as to model and place the foliage, and finally put everything together in the end. Another team member modeled the bee and animated its wings, but since we had no idea how to make a rig in Maya yet, the animation did not make it into the final render. Another teammate made the character, but its materials didn’t work, so I had to set up the bare minimum in Unreal Engine with the little time we had left. Of course, since we didn’t have much time and communication left much to be desired, things did not go as intended. Still, we were pretty happy with what we managed to achieve, considering the number of problems we encountered.