Much of my work revolved around a single theme which was sustainability, using much of the work that I produced for my Robinson group work. In order to meet this I looked at other sustainable buildings and objects such as solar panels and wind turbines. This gave me a good idea of what I needed to make and what it would look. However as part of the team storyboard I wanted the trailer to fit in with the theme of a post apocalyptic world, my particular scene was just after the world had been devastated and had become this baron wasteland with the city being the only thing left. I wanted the city to look like it was just recently recovering to help give it a better sense of immersion. I found that this worked very well with some parts of the city looking rather old and somewhat rusted and others containing sustainable items that would be seen in a typical futuristic city such as Solar panels. However I focused more on the recovery of the city rather than it being very sustainable and could have used more of a balance to make the city appear more futuristic but on the whole I found it to be very effective in the end.
nMost of my work revolved around the 3D studio max environment for the trailer and was planned from the storyboards and concept art, although this changed through the development stage it retained much of the themes of the sustainable and a post-apocalyptic worlds.
nMany of the models are simple everyday buildings or decorations that everyone has bound to have seen, such as a large fountain in the centre to make the city appear more ‘clean’ and sustainable. Another very simple building was the warehouse with a slanted roof, this was filled with boxes to make it appear as if it in use giving it more life than an empty building. I also added a Varity of metal bars and barrels stacked together so that the environment seemed like it was under construction, I believe this worked well. Other models such as the café were made in a similar way extruding inward. The small wall around them was made separately to help wall off the tables and chair so that the world did not appear as cluttered. Another building was the large administration building on a large slope. I tried to make this building look important by making it larger and separating it from everything else creating a sense of organization in the environment.
nMuch of my work used the same textures, or very similar textures that would use the same technique such as adding and manipulating noise so that buildings in a particular area would ‘fit’ well with each other and not look as mismatched as a building with grey panels next to a building with yellow panels. I also tried to add age onto the textures such as small splashes of rust or scratched metal on parts of the texture but did not add this to buildings I wanted to look new and high tech.
nWhen creating my end product most of my problems occurred in 3DS max, some were very simple problems such as a wrong texture, or a incorrect file path requiring me to specify the correct file path. This correct frequently when I moved between different machines and there was little I could do other than giving the correct path. I created all my models separately so that any alterations could be made to that individual model and not influence the whole environment before it is ready. Towards the end this posed a major problem. Originally I attempted to import these files into one to place them together to create my final environment. This worked fine for simple and untextured models however for models that had a texture or an animation there were multiple problems such as the new model replacing a previous model with the same name forcing me to rename them separately. Another issue was the textures not loading on an imported model, or some not working at all. Once I came around to my more complex work such as an animated arm or the café I was forced to find an alternative, I then found the merge tool and placed everything together into a single environment, this increased the load time in smooth and highlight by the end of it as well as the saving of any alternations however it worked perfectly compared to importing models.
nAnother very time consuming problem was the lighting, at first I wanted to create a darker scene at night, however not so dark where the audience could see nothing at all, I experimented with the different lighting after the environment was put together, this took some time to perfect with a balance between render time and quality. I constantly switched between different lighting systems such as a daylight system, skylight and omni lights. I then found that a skylight and omni light system that seemed to work. However I had to change from a night scene to a day scene because the lights did not seem to fit with the sky texture that I had originally made. I found the daylight system worked well however the interiors of any buildings would not seem to light forcing me to compromise and find an alternative.
nFrom concept art creation, to the actual development from the trailer I have leant an immense array of skills and built on existing skills using the different software packages, and if given another chance to do this I would probably learn even more.
nWhen creating models I learnt about the different techniques and tools that I could make use of such as box modelling, particle systems and bone systems. However it would have been difficult if not almost impossible if I had not done the concept art and storyboard stages and had just started the modelling. This gave me more direction in my work and gave me a far more in depth understanding of the process when creating 3D environments and game trailers.
nI also learnt to use other software packages that were new to me in order to make the trailer such as audacity to edit and record sound, and adobe premier elements to put the video together to create the trailer. At first I was only able to use the basics of these software packages however they became very easy to use and allowed me to do much with my final trailer such as remixing soundtracks, changing pitches and bass to create new sounds or edit existing ones and add effects to the video and soundtracks in the final trailer to great effect. I also learnt how to better manage timelines and how short my soundtracks can be for them to work well. I also learnt more on file conversion and how different formats work better in particular conditions such as WAV files for editing on a large Varity of packages since most are compatible with that format. However I had problems when using multiple formats when I tried to bring the trailer together such as one member would use an AVI format while another would use an MP4 and the software did not work well with the different formats forcing me to convert them into one.
nI also built up my skills in Photoshop far faster than I did in my first year since I was familiar with the software and what effects were available to me, this allowed me to look at other online tutorials and combined them to create my own custom effects and textures such as adding noise and using filters to edit them.
nI also learnt very important team work skills and how important it really is to communicate with different team members to make sure that the final trailer works together and everyone finishes it on time so it can be edited and that it makes sense from the planning stages such as the storyboard and storylines.
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