For One Last Time

It has long been discussed and ignored that we needed to measure and be made aware of what our layout and space allowance is for the End of Year Show.  With this drawing closer and closer, we finally got an answer in regard to our confusion.  Each team will get a designated space and each person will have a board to use to present renders, visuals, concepts and developmental progress images that those attending the EOYS can see. The allowance for equipment for each person is 1 board, 1 table and 1 mac.  We have been told that the dimensions for the boards are 80cm x 120cm and we should plan out what images and size of sections we wish to include on these.  In addition, our space has to facilitate a place for our poster as well as room for a mac to sit on the desk surface to display our showreels. Desk and Board Size Below is the initial plan, we as a team have drafted together to give us an idea of how we want our area to be laid out - Based on this, we each started to p

Due to being unable to attend our User Testing Days, this post will incorporate alot of information from my teammate's blog reports on these days of tests.  3 were carried out in total and following each user's experience of our project, questions were asked regarding their understanding, feelings and advice for the project as a whole.  This feedback was noted down and was then used by each of us to improve various areas of the project, whether in the area of animation, effects, textures, modelling, lighting or narrative. Below are results and notes taken from our March User Test by our Producer, Lorna - Our First Survey group consisted of 10 people, a mixture from our own year group, as well as people from other courses in their final year, so the majority of the age group where in their early twenties. For this stage we had our environment, blocked animation in with basic posing, as well as some holographic effects in the scene. After the test we asked a series of quest

Before heading into the big bad world of employment and potential freelance work, it is essential we leaving Undergraduate level with a professional portfolio of components we can use to sell our skills and help put us on the industry map to propel us towards a future career. This is in regards to two main pieces of self promotion.  The CV and business card.  It is important we have these designed, printed and accessible on the night of our end of year show so that company reps, directors and other industry members can view our projects and then take something tangible away from it to remember who we are and what we are capable of. When it comes to CV, I have always been taught through my years of business orientated education that it is simple, clean and not overly creative.  I was always taught that colour is tacky, images are resented and icons are acceptable but need to remain minimal.  When I approached this initial design stage of an updated and animation industry standard of

To optimise our scene even further, myself and our Director, Cassie, decided to start deleting faces for various models in our scene that are never seen by the user.  These are mainly on furniture, large counters, table items, counter items, fridge and kitchen door.  In this blog, I will post the videos of a few of the newly optimised models, some images from the process and explanations from other blogs and videos I watched as to how basic models need to be to ensure our scene is optimised as much as it can be. I found the article from Evermotion on optimising scenes to be very helpful in giving me the knowledge and understanding of why optimisation is such a large part of a project such as ours.  The real time rendering that we will be using within unity is processing a lot of information at one time.  If a project has a lot of textures, geometry and animation, this can be described as an expensive project.  Not that it costs a lot of money, but rather it is expensive in its ab

With our project continually being developed, the overall look and final design or our story and project personality are being gradually more understood.  With this being the case, it is time for us to begin looking at creating promotional images and visuals that can be used to highlight, explain and raise awareness for our project. Two of the main ways we aim to do this is through the use of a project poster and social media.  Using components from our narrative and scene, we hope to create a poster that symbolises our project in a clear, intriguing and professional way.  And in relation to social media, we plan to use Facebook and Instagram as our two main avenues of outreach. For our poster designs and concepts, our team we very split and individual when it came to style, layout and content.  Some of us wanted to pursue more of the sci-fi chaos of our project, while others wanted to maintain a happy place vibe for the poster.  It was clear that a lot of communication, concepts,

With our animations coming together, we are continually making further refinements and edits to each of our scenes to ensure each part of our narrative flows and is effectively portrayed.  Below are some updated notes that our producer, Lorna share with me of her opinion and advice on my current animation.  They are refinements that will help the overall appeal and appearance of our story, as well as ensuring our users aren't distracted by actions and movements that look...just plain wrong. Lorna suggested the movement of the mug and the male character should have a frame deleted as it seemed pretty jerky.  Below is one of the animations created of the male after applying some of the feedback. Another development for my animations was to add in the AI walk cycles.  I struggled with matching these up but although some areas are floaty, the design and nature of our project and in particular, our environment, means that the whole walk cycle does not have to be perfect.  As