Project Evaluation

To begin with for this project, I was very excited at the prospect and idea of making these characters. However, as time progressed, I would look back at things I had made for the project and felt unhappy with their look. The 'what if's' and 'why not's' in my mind far outweighed the feeling of worth. I feel that since beginning this project, my skills for modelling, texturing and animating have come a long way and that some of the assets I have created for this scene look very flawed and outdated. It was this notion that caused me to break through my initial idea, and to create a scene that could be implimented in a game. I deconstructed the RAID model, and used it as a center piece of interest in the scene itself, much in the style of the ruined body of GLA-DOS from Portal 2. Although this was a massive change from the scene I had first decided on, I feel that it makes the piece more interesting.

For my next project, I would like to take the skills I have learned from this project, and actually commit them to a realtime running game engine, such as Unity or UDK. I feel this project in particualr would have been vastly improved if you, as a player were given the freedom to explore the scene from a 3rd perspective as the character Eschen in a game engine. This idea will be the driving force of my learning for next year, as I progress onto the BA course. I would also like to take my texturing and modelling skills further by mastering UVW unwrapping, and by use of Autodesk Mudbox for improved character sculpting.

On the whole, although I am critical of my work; my client is very happy with the content I have produced for her. It will help her to better visualise her characters from a three dimensional perspective, which will undoubtably transate fluently into her drawings.

Over the course of this upcoming summer, I shall be working using the UDK engine to create an alien scene in colaboration with a couple of other students on this course, and I will use this opportunity to develop my skills to a level that I would be happy with.

Processes and learning outcomes.

This project has enabled me to learn a few new skills, as well as develop on skills I had previously learned. I have developed knowlege of  normal mapping to give a flat object an 'illusion' of depth and texture. I have also learned to use opacity mapping to hide certain areas of an object from view. This effect can be used to create low poly, yet realistic looking objects such as plants.

To create normal maps for textures, I have been using a program called 'Crazybump' which automatically calculates an appropriate normal map from a diffuse image. Although I use this program to make normal maps to speed up the process, I do understand how to create my own normal maps using photoshop. I just use crazybump because it is really helpful to create a quick map. For opacity maps, I simply take the diffuse image, cut the object I want to show out and place it into a new layer on Photoshop. I then turn the object completely white, and place it on top of a black background.

From a modelling perspective, I have learned a way of modelling which I find to be very useful, especially for organic modelling. NURMS subdivisioning allows me to model with objects as though they had been mesh smoothed, without actually applying the mesh smoothing effect to the object. Using this method, I find it easier and quicker to create the shapes I want to use, even if I do not end up confining the NURMS shape to the object I am building.

I feel that from this project, I have come out with a better grasp of texturing and character modelling. I do not feel that my skills are quite developed enough as of yet, I feel myself improving every time I create something new, however this project was definetly a key building block towards the area I see myself in.