Week 4 *Heres a Halloween themed title*

Alright so it’s hard to come up with a witty relevant title every week. I think by week 3 you could notice my material running dry. Anyway its week 4 and as we go deeper into the film room project, I’m starting to find that perhaps me finishing my models early was a blessing. It turns out I’m not as hot stuff as I would like to think I am.

In game production my tutor reviewed both mine and my group’s models and oh boy the pressure was laid on and laid thick.

As it turns out my Angel model was riddled with a bunch on unnecessary geometry which was eating up the tri count. Although our group thankfully has quite a bit to play with, such wasteful resources are not efficient what’s so ever.

My tutor also pointed out that my packing could be a ton more efficient.

Throughout first year efficient packing was always a concept could never get my head around. However with the coming weeks of second year, packing has been explained with such an easier and enjoyable way. The idea is to build a jigsaw puzzle around the shapes/UVS. I can say that as of now although I may not be the greatest packer I feel much more comfortable with the process and any little criticisms and feedback is much appreciated. A matter of fact my tutor Casto gave me a piece of advice which I believe has made packing much more enjoyable and has helped my packing since, as you can see below.

Other feedback I received during game production included to work on the texture of my candle stick texture which I too agreed. For some reason read a lot like plastic. Moreover if I had a few Tris spare, it’s suggested to work on making the tapestry assets look less static and add more like drapery.

If you were to ask me weeks ago how to resolve this problem of the Candles reading like plastic I probably would have thrown my toys and had a tantrum buuuttt the person writing this is week 4 Chris Anka and this guy has been playing with PBR in his spare time. (round of applause…… what no?).

Enough ego inflating for a moment, in my spare time I have been playing with PBR and would you know it I had a strange moment, as if it all clicked and I realised the reason why the candle stick looked like plastic was a result of me getting carried away with roughness maps. A large proportion of the texture look matte instead of shiny. Referring back to what my tutor said, subtly is king. Also as pointed out by one of my group members turns out I placed the metalness map the wrong way round. Group feedback, never underestimate it.

Action plan/note for the future – get more in the habit of taking screenshots (No screenshot of the new and improved texture of the candlestick at the time of writing).

Visual Studies

In visual studies we had another lesson in engine this time studying colour grading in engine, just in case our chosen film rooms use particular photo filters. Moreover in Visual Studies I received feedback on my Candle assets. Turns out the asset’s base was 7 sided and needed to be much more rounder (seriously I’m so glad I finished this stuff earlier as I can have time to fix this mess). At first I thought this was going to be a walk in the park and just add a bunch of loops to the base rounding it off. I was wrong. So wrong. The whole asset was modelled off of this 7 sided shape so in order for me to correct this mistake I had to remodel the base.

This above is my failed attempt at trying to attach a 6 sided base to a 7 sided model and maintain clean topology (Never again).

Eventually I did resolve this. By modelling the entire asset again. Surprisingly in quicker time which looking back could evidence that I’m finally becoming competent in 3d modelling right? On a serious note looking back, this experience has allowed me to value many things. I’ve started to value feedback even more than I previously did as it has allowed me to notice things that would otherwise cause me problems with my work. I have also started to really appreciate the idea of finishing models early and re doing them as you not only learn more about modelling but it trains you to become much more patient when things go all haywire.

Critical Studies

Critical Studies was actually quite bare this week. In seminar we discussed personality types in group projects. According to a test given to us my personality is that of an Innovator.

The general gist of it is that innovators bring new ideas to the table and look at things through every possible perspective they can think of but seem to sometimes have their heads in the clouds. This piece of information seems like it would help with group work as it acknowledges my flaws and strengths and can give those around me including myself a base to work from to find a balance. However I’ve taken tests like these and my so called type keeps changing every now and then. What this may mean is that depending of the group situation I and possibly others who have taken this test is that we adapt and change our types to best suit the situation. The significance of this means that when working in groups we need to learn to be flexible because depending on a situation those who naturally feel that they are leaders (e.g. me sometimes) need to learn to take a step back as they can be in a group full of other natural leader types.

Any this was my week 4. I really need to learn how to make this much more concise.