FGA Progress blog

Watercolour

baranandrew — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:21:00 +0000

Today I really felt like having a go at a quick watercolour painting – a medium I haven’t used since school. Here is the end result:

FGA7: Duxford Visit

baranandrew — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:53:51 +0000

Today I visited The Imperial War Museum, Duxford, to see some of their educational features and also their static Vulcan display, with its bomb doors open!

I was surprised at how little computer based education was at the IWM – the only digital features around tended to be TV screens with information scrolling across them.

Here are some photos of the Vulcan at IWM.

FGA7: Visit to Norwich Aviation Museum

baranandrew — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:10:17 +0000

Today I visited Norwich Aviation Museum to do some primary research for the new FGA 7 brief. I will be studying the Avro Vulcan airplane this year, and will be making detailed 3D models in Maya.

Fortunately for me there is a static Vulcan at the Aviation Museum, and I even got a chance to go into the cockpit of the plane! It was a fantastic afternoon and I spent some time wandering around the aircraft, eyeing up details and intricacies of the bodywork.

Here are a few of the photos I took.

Conclusion

baranandrew — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:13 +0000

In conclusion to FGA6, my learning agreement and my brief I feel that I have maybe not followed the time structure I set out for myself particularly well.
I believe that I strayed too far away from the original task of creating the vehicles in Maya, and instead became too immersed in the technical drawings that I created. I still feel happy with the outcome of my 3D work, but feel that if I were to repeat the project, or a similar one, I would make sure I manage my time more efficiently, and make sure to primarily work within 3D as I said I would.

I really enjoyed creating the 2D elements of the project too. I hadn’t been able to create technical drawings for a project in a long time and took this opportunity to create some, or maybe even too many.

I feel happy that I challenged myself to stick with 3D work and to continue using software that I am still unfamiliar with (Maya). By doing this I felt a great sense of achievement and accomplishment when I completed this project. I have only used Maya twice previously (once to create the tunnel scene I put my vehicle in at the end), and I am still very much a beginner!
Creating the vehicle within Maya was an extremely complex task, and I really struggled at times to understand what to do next! I stumbled across a few serious problems throughout my model making process but each time managed to work my way around it, usually simply through trial and error!

I learnt a huge amount from completing this project, such as modeling techniques, things to avoid when modeling, textures and texture behavior and also a lot of information about how Maya behaves in certain modeling situations.

As stressful as it was I thoroughly enjoyed this project as it allowed me to explore my interests whilst working with one of my favourite subjects, and I would definitely work with Maya and 3D modeling again. In the future I would like to expand on this work i’ve done, maybe by creating more cars in Maya for my game or even just creating some cars in general.

Importing into the tunnel

baranandrew — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:09 +0000

Once I had completed modeling my Elise I imported it into my FGA5 tunnel scene, for some renders:

A step backwards

baranandrew — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:35 +0000

Today I had to go return to the start of texturing my model as I had forgotten to create UV’s for my model. Fortunately I am not using many file textures and patterns so it did not prove too time consuming, but I was still frustrated to have made this mistake.

Important decision

baranandrew — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:07 +0000

Today I made up my mind on a very important decision regarding my model – its windows. I have decided to mock up some simple seat designs to fill out the interior of the car, meaning I can use a translucent texture and achieve a successful glass effet.

Texturing and lighting

baranandrew — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:52 +0000

I have now completed the modeling stage of my Elise. I am now moving onto texturing and lighting, and will eventually be putting my model into the tube station game environment I created for FGA5. Here is a screen shot of my model with some rough textures on it.

No longer a car…

baranandrew — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:06 +0000

I have continued to model my Elise, and have now gotten to the stage where I have been finalising details and working back into the design’s smaller features. Today I smoothed out my mesh.

Modeling progression

baranandrew — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:46 +0000

I feel that modeling the car is coming along well, although it is presenting lots of challenges. Upon merging vertices I have been creating lots of triangles, and have had to rely on regular save points to recover my work from this and avoid making these mistakes again!