This unit covered the creation of the our character, the mech for our project. This mech would also need to be fully textured and rigged, although rigging falls under unit; I would need to keep this in mind. I split this unit into three parts: designing, creating the mesh and texture. I thought that this could help split this unit into more manageable parts.
At the start of the unit was the designing process for my mech. As with any design process I started off by doing some light research into different designs of mechs. Even prior to starting my research, I had a pretty solid idea of how I envisioned my mech to look. My research helped me affirm that there aren’t too many mech designed in this fashioned and looking at the human anatomy may prove useful. At this stage of the project I didn't create many designs and only a few moodboards. I feel that if I had conducted some more research, this could've helped develop my idea further by taking inspiration from different sources which ultimately could've helped me design a better mech. In the end I felt my mech suited the environment as it was built in the 1770 hence the old skeletal design. Although looking back on my design, I feel that pieces of armour that originated from the 1770s would prove to be a great addition on the mech to help further solidify the history of the tower.
Once I had designing process I moved onto creating the mech in my chosen 3d software: 3ds max. I chose 3ds max as my experience in using it is vastly superior to my Maya knowledge, which was the other choice. By using 3ds Max for modelling and Maya for animating I would also meet a requirement of the brief which is aimed at the exporting our file and its cross platform functionality.
This was the part of the project where I felt the most improvement could've been made. The first error was that I spent way too much time individually crafting parts to ensure they would work in a believable manner; this delayed everything else. In my project planning document I had only planned to spend up until December for the creation of the mesh and a further two months texturing. I overshot this deadline by nearly one and half months. This ate into time that should've been spent creating the rig.
In retrospective if I created a basic mesh before beginning to detail the parts; this would've allowed me to begin the rig. By doing this I would have a rig ready to be tweaked for use with the final mech, this would've sped up production immensely. This is definitely a part of the project I feel could improve upon.
The modelling process itself was fairly straight due to my past experience in 3ds max, although Im focused too much on the detail and neglected other parts of the brief. In general for future projects I need to keep in mind the broader scope of things and remember that rigging and animation are also key factors of the project.
While modelling the mech I felt fairly comfortable as I had experience in using the main tools of 3ds max and the user interface. This allowed me to create my mech very close to how I envisioned it. My poly count in the end came in at just over 37,000 triangles which was only a bit below my poly limit. If I didnt need to move on to creating the rig as soon as possible I felt I could've used those extra triangles to improve my design. This is something I need to keep in mind for future projects; to ensure I use make the most of by budget.
Moving into the texturing stage of this unit was also fairly straight forward. As I had already overshot the deadlines I had set myself I knew the option of UV unwrapping my mesh would take too long. I had to rely on the simpler UV map tool in 3ds max to correctly map my textures onto the mesh. I decided against the unwrapping my due to my lack of experience in using the tool and the fear that I would further delay the completion of my mech.
Although using the simpler tool has now allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the functions of the tool. Ideally I would've liked the time to learn to use the UV unwrap tool as a correct UV map would be required if I wanted to export my mech into a games engine. This was caused by my own time management which had a toppling effect that was a detriment to other parts of this unit.
Overall I think I made the best of the situation I put myself in with poor time management. If I had stuck closer to my plan I feel I could've spent extra time testing with UV unwraps. As time management is a universal skill I feel that I really need to work on sticking to deadlines as that would help with all parts of life not just on projects.
At the start of the unit was the designing process for my mech. As with any design process I started off by doing some light research into different designs of mechs. Even prior to starting my research, I had a pretty solid idea of how I envisioned my mech to look. My research helped me affirm that there aren’t too many mech designed in this fashioned and looking at the human anatomy may prove useful. At this stage of the project I didn't create many designs and only a few moodboards. I feel that if I had conducted some more research, this could've helped develop my idea further by taking inspiration from different sources which ultimately could've helped me design a better mech. In the end I felt my mech suited the environment as it was built in the 1770 hence the old skeletal design. Although looking back on my design, I feel that pieces of armour that originated from the 1770s would prove to be a great addition on the mech to help further solidify the history of the tower.
Once I had designing process I moved onto creating the mech in my chosen 3d software: 3ds max. I chose 3ds max as my experience in using it is vastly superior to my Maya knowledge, which was the other choice. By using 3ds Max for modelling and Maya for animating I would also meet a requirement of the brief which is aimed at the exporting our file and its cross platform functionality.
This was the part of the project where I felt the most improvement could've been made. The first error was that I spent way too much time individually crafting parts to ensure they would work in a believable manner; this delayed everything else. In my project planning document I had only planned to spend up until December for the creation of the mesh and a further two months texturing. I overshot this deadline by nearly one and half months. This ate into time that should've been spent creating the rig.
In retrospective if I created a basic mesh before beginning to detail the parts; this would've allowed me to begin the rig. By doing this I would have a rig ready to be tweaked for use with the final mech, this would've sped up production immensely. This is definitely a part of the project I feel could improve upon.
The modelling process itself was fairly straight due to my past experience in 3ds max, although Im focused too much on the detail and neglected other parts of the brief. In general for future projects I need to keep in mind the broader scope of things and remember that rigging and animation are also key factors of the project.
While modelling the mech I felt fairly comfortable as I had experience in using the main tools of 3ds max and the user interface. This allowed me to create my mech very close to how I envisioned it. My poly count in the end came in at just over 37,000 triangles which was only a bit below my poly limit. If I didnt need to move on to creating the rig as soon as possible I felt I could've used those extra triangles to improve my design. This is something I need to keep in mind for future projects; to ensure I use make the most of by budget.
Moving into the texturing stage of this unit was also fairly straight forward. As I had already overshot the deadlines I had set myself I knew the option of UV unwrapping my mesh would take too long. I had to rely on the simpler UV map tool in 3ds max to correctly map my textures onto the mesh. I decided against the unwrapping my due to my lack of experience in using the tool and the fear that I would further delay the completion of my mech.
Although using the simpler tool has now allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the functions of the tool. Ideally I would've liked the time to learn to use the UV unwrap tool as a correct UV map would be required if I wanted to export my mech into a games engine. This was caused by my own time management which had a toppling effect that was a detriment to other parts of this unit.
Overall I think I made the best of the situation I put myself in with poor time management. If I had stuck closer to my plan I feel I could've spent extra time testing with UV unwraps. As time management is a universal skill I feel that I really need to work on sticking to deadlines as that would help with all parts of life not just on projects.