Evalution

Overall i found this part of the assignment quite enjoyable, i really liked having a guide line of what was needed but also being able to do, as a group, what we wanted, within reason of course.

I was a little disappointed that the module had two assignments involved as i felt that there wasn't enough time to complete the models to a high standard, so instead I fell that we were pressured into completed two reasonable standard models instead of one extremely high standard model. The time restraints were not helped by my other modules also being quite time consuming.

I am very happy that I found that although I lack skill in modelling and animating I was able to be of help to my group by being quite good at texturing models and finding textures that go well together. So although I did make some models I feel I have learnt something about myself in the fact that I am a very good texturer.

We, like any group, ran into a few problems along the way whilst making the final animation, these included things such as realising we wouldn't be able to finish in time for the normal dead line and therefore had to ask for our first extension, having issues with the lighting system that causes problems with the look of the model, giving it an almost speckled look, problems with the blue prints not matching up correctly and even not being able to render properly due to the university computers not having the rayfire plug in that we required. 

I wish I had had the time to complete my head model to a better standard but unfortunately because of the time we were given I had to cut my losses as such and work as hard as possible to get the rest of this assignment and my other assignments finished.

If I was to do this again I would try to improve upon not only my head model but also the little things within the guildhall that we wanted to include but didnt realise we hadnt until everything was rendered and we didnt have time to re- render it or because we didnt have time to put them in. Things such as not including the map of Finchingfield on the museum floor, not having any book covers, there being nothing in the display tables within the museum etc.

My contribution

Because of my lack of abilities in creating models I wasn't able to help create more of the complex models, therefore I decided to make myself useful and start populating the rooms with the models that myself and the group had created.

I also found out that I am quite good at finding textures that work well together, as well as making sure that they look good when rendered and so I set myself the task of adding texture to the majority of the models.

Some of the rooms I placed and textured include the bathrooms, kitchen, some of the museum and some of the library as well as the walls of the ground, second and roof of the actual guildhall.

Below is a picture of the kitchen fully textured, placed and rendered in a high quality:

Bookcase

I have created a bookcase, a simple model but one that is needed as it will be used in the library of the new guildhall.

To start off with I created a simple box which I would use as the back of the bookcase, I then added two other boxes which then become the top and bottom of the bookcase:

 After this I added two more boxes which became the sides of the case:

Again using boxes I created the shelves:

I then created a simple book again using boxes.

And finally I populated the bookcase:

This involved alot of boxes I know, but as previously stated I am not the strongest of modellers therefore I'm not sure of the techniques that I could have used.

Stairs

Today I was assigned the honour of making the stairs for the building, this was an easy enough task, if not abit annoying due to the building blue prints being of a weird scale.

The first thing I did was create a simple box and put it into place over the blueprints, this then allowed me to get the scale I needed right. Once I believed the box was in the correct place I simply pulled the vertices on one side of the box closer together to give the stair a curved look, see picture below:

After the first stair was curved I simply made copies of that stair and put them into the correct place, and if they needed any adjustment then I made them according to the plans.

 
 after I made a simple square box and then created copies out of the single step to create a straight set of stairs:

Afterwards, I simply added both parts together to get a final set of stairs:

First Floor

After having the guildhall built by someone else, I decided to start creating the walls within the current guildhall to allow the group to start creating the other things we need.


As my modelling and animation skills are pretty poor I knew I would struggle with the majority of this assignment so I am making sure I can help in all the little ways I can, building these walls being one of them as  they only require me to create boxes using the box shape tool and put them into place following the blue prints, see image below for a rough start.

Once I had started to place the walls within the building I started running into problems such as not being able to get the boxes to fit to the building blue prints, this was because the building is in such a strange archictual design that using the flat boxes wasnt always going to work, so some modifying was required after the walls were inserted. Modifications such as moving vertice's around to make the walls look flat but in reality be at an odd angle.

Our Decision

Today we made a decision of what we are going to be doing for our assignment, this has been posted on the group blog, and I believe if all works out as planned then our animation will look fantastic.

Some of the problem we will undoubtedly run into is having not enough time to complete our assignment to the standard we would like due to our other assignments being extremely time consuming as well.

More posts to come.

Group assignment

Our group assignment is to create a reconstruction of the Finchingfield guild hall, to do this my group, consisting of myself, Jack Cassie, Jack Dickens and Ben Knowles, had to decided on which of the briefs we were going to do and then to decide on an idea.

We will be having weekly meetings which will be posted on our group blog, I will also be updating this blog with varise posts about our progress and what I have created or taken part in.