Investigation, Reflection and Expression

This lesson i did my 10 minute presentation, which i think i did okay in. There were many improvements to be made for the way i presented the presentation and the presentation itself.

The structure of the presentation could have been better, for example on the development part of my presentation, i needed to include more pictures, and i could have done with putting more images into the whole presentation all together.

Another point that needs improving is the use of text, i had way too much text in my presentation and not enough images. I need to condense all the information into bullet points so the presentation doesn't seem in boring and keep people interested. One example is i had just pages of text and no images, i need to balance out text to images, and make sure to use bullet points. I think my referencing was okay, i did link a lot of my information. They way i need to improve on this is to put it into the Harvard Referencing style and definitely include a bibliographic at the end of the presentation. I think i was quite confident verbally presenting the presentation, i think i was talking loud enough so everybody could hear me, i did take a few unnecessary pauses which i need to work on, but overall i think i'm okay on that part.  

My lecturer has given me feedback on my presentation, and i will need to do an evaluation on my communication method, 500-1000 words.

Specialist pathway

I have finished my building, it is fully textured and now rendered. The lighting is a physical sun and sky, i think this the only lighting i will need since i'm only rendering exterior shots of the building. I have added Ambient occlusion, global illumination, ray tracing and final gathering. I have looked at tutorials on ambient occlusion which i may have mentioned before - http://www.samwirch.com/blog/simple-ambient-occlusion-render-maya-2012. 

Overall i'm happy with the renders, obviously there's always room for improvement. I think i have a achieved in making a model in the Sydney Opera House and i have had good feedback on it from my lecturer and fellow students, feedback being constructive criticism, and on some good points of the model. And i agree with all of it.

Some parts of my model are way to reflective, making it look very glossy, and the water is too choppy, the waves are too big and i should of reduced the size of them. There was a lot more i wanted to do with in general anyway which i never got round to, i did want to add more detail to it and also get more renders of the model. Also the lighting is way too intense, I did reduce the intensity which made no difference, so i did reduce the gamma as well. But i did this after the renders above so it only took effect on my night time renders which i printed in A3 for hand in.

The night time render didn't come out as well as i hoped it would, although i do like the reflections on the glass, i think the scene at night could have done with better lighting, as the only lighting i put in was the physical sun, but i was running out of time. Another thing i wanted to as was caustics, since there is water in the scene. I have used caustics on a previous project and i got good results on the renders.

I also didn't have time to do an animation which i'm majorly disappointed about, i think an animation would have made the project a lot better, i think to one of the reasons of not having time was to when i had lost half of model earlier in the project forcing me to go back to a previous file. Some of the textures could have been better for example the floor concrete texture was a bit bland a too stretched although I was happy with most of the textures. I did want to take a few renders into Photoshop and do some post production with them, add Sydney Harbor in with the bridge in the background, i think this would have been great and it would have added realism to the model, i could of added characters in as well to help show the scale of the building.

I think for my next project i will need to manage my time better, i also think i will be able to deal with problems a lot more efficiently and effectively.  

Investigation, Reflection and Expression

I have put together a Powerpoint presentation for IRE, the presentation is on my Specialist pathway work. The presentation will include most things i have done on my project. The structure will be -

• What research i have done, what i have looked in for example Architectural visualization studios and blogs.  
• Research i have done into my building. 
• Techniques and processes used.
•  Lighting and Rendering

• Actual renders of my building 
• A conclusion  
  
  

Animation

This lesson we begun Character animation, the character i will be using will be fully rigged. We had a choice of three characters all with similar rigs. I picked a character called 'groggy'. 

I am to animate the character preforming some kind of task, i did a number of sketches in my sketchbook, drawing down ideas. I came to the idea where my character would be pushing a box and then while he would be doing that he would somehow fall over. I drew some stances the character could be in to push to box, like pushing just with his hands or using his whole body to make the box move giving the impression the box is heavy.    

Using the rig to move the character and key framing each movement so i could get the character to progress forward. At first i found it hard to get the animation going especially animating the legs since I've only animated using a rig once before. The more i did the more easier it became, and i got quicker at animating the character.    

After i had got the character moving the box i decided to make him slip over just to make the animation a bit more interesting, and made it a bit more harder to animate.  

I managed to get the character to fall over but its not a seamless fall, due to time i won't get a chance to adjust it. All i have to do is batch render the animation and then edit.  

I managed to get the character to fall over but its not a seamless fall, due to time i won't get a chance to adjust it. All i have to do is batch render the animation and then edit.

Specialist pathway

I have encountered a problem with my model, half of it has disappeared. I'm not exactly sure why and i have looked it up online to try ans solve the problem, scanning through forums to see if anybody has had this problem but i was not able to find anything that would help. I have had to go back to a previous save, this save has the model complete but there are no textures on the model i will have to re-texture it.

This is the error message that occurred when i opened my file, it comes up every time i try to open the file and after i close the error message i cannot see anything in my perspective view port. This will put me back a few hours and i have concerns about not having enough time for rendering and animation.  

So i will go back to a previous file and i will have to re-texture it. This should take me an hour maybe 2 and then i will add water to the scene and then go on to do the lighting and rendering.