Week Three: I'm Running Out of Names For This

    Third week down, close to finishing my second group project. I’ve learnt a lot from this group project in comparison to the first one, there is a lack of communication, and this is an incredibly important element in which we struggle in. Unlike my team members which have turned to complain about one another (including me) on their blogs, I feel that I need to dissect why these issues have occurred in the first place. If we do not stop to think about these issues then this circle of backstabbing is going to continue.
    The biggest elephant in the room is the lack of communication, on Friday one quote sums up this whole issue, ‘I assumed you knew’. I first started the group project by producing a ‘idiots checklist’ on what to check at each stage of producing assets to allow for the next person in the chain to move straight onto the next stage. This was ignored by at least half the members of the group. When we did communicate we often didn’t do it in such away that everyone could understand, or issues were just not communicated in general. Often elements was described in a way that was ambiguous which does not work in a team situation, and sometimes terminology was used which everyone did not understand confusing some group members. Work became rushed and finished to a poor standard when we would inform members of the group we were waiting on their assets. I was told by the next member of the chain that they were waiting on my assets, yet I took my time to finish as I did not want the next person to have to fix it up as in the end it would extend the time spent on the model. When we did speak about issues, it became a shouting match, I’m guilty of this. I do feel though that this would often happen after a ridiculous statement or answer was replied with, one moment of this would be a dislike of a room due to the colour of it, and not the aesthetics of the architecture. Yes a colour could affect this, but the overall form should shine through.

The colour’s not the best, but the focus on lighting is superior to the Clockwork Orange scene we did first, as well as the architecture which has a heavy focus on symmetry which makes it more interesting.

    Another issue was organisation, although we tried to be, we kept falling short. Much like with the check list eventually being completely ignored, our organisation was on and off. Sometimes we would all show up, other times people wouldn’t even show up. I’m guilting of not telling people that I wouldnt be able to show up at the last moment as I live with a couple of flat members so I assumed, yet again this key word appears, that they knew I wouldn’t be able to make it.

    Doing another project like this, I'll be focusing more on group organisation and group communication as this is currently my weakest element.

Week Two: Electric Boogaloo

    I struggle with having to write weekly blog post more than I thought I would. I’ve always been that person who never really like to write about themselves or in any personal extension, and already in my second blog post, I feel I have nothing really to write about. I guess it’s best to continue with talking about the group work I touched upon last week. I’m further behind on the project than I like to be, we had difficulty on settling on a room to model, jumping between ‘A Clockwork Orange’’s home invasion scene which takes place at the beginning, and rooms such as the Star Trek TOS Bridge, Speedracer’s living room, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and finally the green bathroom from the Shining. Due to only settling on a room at lunch time Friday, I feel we lost a weeks worth of work, as I was working on the room up in till the change. If we had changed earlier we would have had more time to work on the new room. The previous’ rooms work is part of our development so it’s not all lost, but I just feel we could have changed earlier.
    I feel this issue of thinking I’ve done enough comes from my negative mind set, I would be lying if I said I wanted to change it. Having a pessimistic and negative view on the world means I don’t have to deal with being let down, or disappointed, yet when something positive happens I’m over the moon, yet I do feel this mind set severely affects my viewing of my work. I’ve become incredibly critical of it, picking it apart, losing confidence, but this brings with it the understanding of what I’ve done wrong, yet I fail to act at the next part of tackling on how to improve this. I think this also plays into the struggle of persevering what is too much work, I always think I could do more in the end. electric

    In other going ons, I’ve taken on a interest of Satchell Drakes work, influencing my writing with his work philosophies. At the start of his series, Anti Semantics, he introduces a typographic quote by William Strunk and E. B. White
    “Vigorous writing is concise, this requires not that the writer makes all his sentences short, or that he avoids detail, but treats his subject only in outline, but that every world tell.”
    I aim to now evolve my writing to follow this philosophy. Allowing me to extend my vocabulary and reduce the amount of detail I delve into, yet still producing an informative piece.

New Year, New... Start?

    My first week back and we weren’t eased back in. We were given a project in Game Production, in groups of six and produce assets for a Nordic theme tavern. We were each to concept an item for the scene, being a bench, a table, a shield, a cooked hog, cutlery with tankard and plate, with the final asset being a barrel. We would pass the concept to the next person who would model it, then pass the model to the next person who would unwrap it, with this process continuing through the texturing stages and feedback stage, until placement into the new engine, Unreal 4. The creators of the engine did an amazing job with the software with it being more user friendly and more aesthetically pleasing. Not only did we have an upgrade to a new engine, Photoshop and 3DS Max was upgraded becoming creative cloud and 2014. But this new engine also brought a new way of texturing assets. Rest in Peace diffuse, I’ll always remember you, but now Albedo takes your place, while specularity has now become two maps, roughness and metals. My opinion of when I first saw this change, was that it was going to be easier to texture assets, and have a more accurate and aesthetically pleasing results. 

 

Ignore the metal. Dat wood texture though.

    This change came around due to the new PBR in Unreal 4 which is quickly becoming an industry standard. 3ds Max currently cannot render the new way of texturing and so we use Marmoset to see our end result without placing it in engine. 3ds Max 2016 should be scripted with the ability to see the new PBR rendering, as it’s one of the main asset building tools. And with all of this going on, I managed to get to play with Z Brush which is an incredibly fun and brilliant tool to use which produces amazing results.
    Along side this weeks project, in visual design we were introduced to our next project for three weeks, recreating a scene from a film still. After many film ideas, we settled on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’, home evasion scene. I really like the open plan design of the house, and the panning shot helped to reveal more of the room, allowing for a more complete idea to create it.

    With this new uni year, a lot has changed, not only in where the industry is moving to, but the whole structure of the course. Game production and visual design has become more intertwined, instead of separate projects for each part of the course. I fear for the first years though. In my first year, we had a new project every week where we would draw something different in Visual Design, I’ve heard that the students this year will have less time to develop their visual library, which I feel with negatively impact on them in the long run. But I do believe that the course changes will be beneficial for the second and third years, and the change in critical studies to writing every week about the week is an improvement. No research, no surfing the web to try to discover the source material, no long, boring blogs on history, but a reflective piece every week to help build up our communication skills.