· What did you do and how did you do it? I used 3ds max to re-create an environment in Saltaire, I decided to model Salts building along with part of the surrounding area. In order to create this I first began planning for what I wanted in the animation, which had to be appropriate for the theme as the finished animation would be added to a final trailer I did in a team. Once planning was finished and the team was decided upon what we wanted out of the finished product I went out and took pictures of Salts building and its surroundings to get an idea of how I was going to re-create the building in 3ds max. After which I began work on the modeling of Salts building, I started of using simple box modeling techniques to get the basic shapes of the building done by converting the box into an editable mesh. I then continued to shape the box as it slowly started to look more like Salts building, I used the pictures I previously took to see what the building actually looks like which gave me an understanding of what I needed to do in 3ds max to get the model looking accurate. After about 3-4 hours the building was complete, After which I started on the surroundings of the building e.g. garden, (tree's, bench's, grass area) the surrounding wall, fences and the buildings around Salts. Doing so took about 1 hour to complete. Now it was time to start texturing the models, unfortunately the deadline was getting closer and I still had to animate and render the scene, so I was unable to UVW unwrap the models and texture them in Photoshop. Instead I created textures using the material editor for the stone of the buildings ext. The scene was set I just needed to add lighting, I used a Omni light to illuminate the entire scene, changing the emitted colour to a red to give the scene more of an atmospheric effect. I then turned the contrast down to make the scene darker and scarier. The scene was done but I felt it was missing something, so after pondering fro a while I decided to add rain to the scene, which turned out okay not as good as I had hoped but I didn't have enough time to make it any better unfortunately. I then sent a camera around my environment and rendered it, which took about 1 hour.
· Does your final design meet your original intentions? It does and doesn't, originally I wanted to create Salts building and a post apocalyptic city, but as time constraints where in play, I found that I just didnt have enough time for both and as we needed to add Saltaire into the trailer I had to make compromises.
· Self evaluation – how did you manage your time? How could you manage your time more effectively? I feel I manged my time fairly efficiently however I could have done so much better, by thinking ahead and not taking to much work on at once.
· What did you struggle with? E.g. Texturing, modelling, lighting, animation. I wouldn't say I struggled with anything in particular, If anything I would say that I wasn't happy with the finished texturing of my environment, but because of time constraints I was unable to spend time texturing the models properly in Photoshop.
· What did you find easy? Nothing was easy but what I found most enjoyable would defiantly be the modeling & animating of the environment.
· How does your finished design compare to professional examples? Defiantly no where near the caliber of quality in professional work, but for a team that have only used the software for under 2 years I think we did quite good.
· What do other people think of your finished design? The feedback I have had form people about my work is Quite good many said they really like it, but others gave constructive criticism, which will be taken on board.
· What could you improve upon? The texturing, use UVW unwrap on the models and texture them in Photoshop.
· If you were to do it again what would you do differently next time? I would give myself less work to do so I can focus more quality of my work rather than quantity. I would also model interior, rather than exterior, as I want to try my hand at something different to test my skills further.
