I didn't really have too many problems throughout this project. To begin with, I did find it to be a bit of a steep learning curve getting used to Maya, though once I had become more accustomed to the interface everything began to flow a lot more smoothly.
There were a couple of points near the beginning of the rigging course where I made some silly mistakes and had to rewind a few videos to remedy the problems, but nothing major. Once I'd made a few of these mistakes, I found myself being more careful to not repeat them.
By the time it came to skinning and painting weights, I began to see how the differences in my mesh might pose some problems. The mesh was a bit more confusing to me than the tutors' model looked (I'm not very well educated in 3D models, so I'm not sure about the details of meshes) but I figured it would pose a nice challenge to figure out how to make the lessons work for my own choice of mesh.
The weighting process was a little bit tricky to get to grips with and I found myself spending a lot more time on it than I had expected. Conscious of this, I decided to cut back on some of the weight blending so as to get a working mesh completed in time.
The process was quite intuitive and I enjoyed it - if I find myself doing it again I'll be more prepared and knowledgeable so it should be a bit more successful.
As I moved on to the Python tool section of the course, I followed the tutorials as closely as I could and was successful in replicating the joint creation tool. However, the coding still goes way over my head!
I was slightly limited by time for several of the end sections - I also had to complete a project more or less from scratch for Spatial Constructs reassessment too - but I think I managed to plan my time efficiently enough to get a satisfactory result... I hope.
Overall, I feel as if I learnt a whole ton of useful techniques from this, and definitely intend to try again in my own time, perhaps taking on the entire 3D modeling pipeline as well.
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