3D Analysis

I’ve found this term’s 3D work very challenging but I’ve learnt a lot and I think the team project has been a good motivation to get work done for the sake of your team as well as yourself. I think everyone has had to overcome a variety of different problems and it’s pushed everybody’s teamwork skills as well as modelling, texturing and working in an engine.

I think that the size of the groups could have created some problems, people might have worked better in smaller groups maybe of around six, which could have helped to make some more tightly knit coherent teams with more of an emphasis on communication between team members since there’s less of you to get the job done which increases the pressure. With smaller groups there would be more large assets to distribute to people which would help to push everybody’s current modelling skills even further. Having said that, I think that our group communicated very well with regular scheduled meetings and several group deadlines to make sure people got their work done on time. There were some issues at some points but everything ended up being resolved and everybody produced some great work and a level to be really proud of.

I enjoyed the work I’ve produced, particularly the texturing this time around. Although it can be the most tedious and drawn out aspect of 3D work, nothing beats the satisfaction of drawing to the end of your time working on texturing a difficult model and applying and tweaking normal and spec maps to get that final outcome.

I also had good fun with the one day speed models, it was great to have some totally different things to work on besides the Queens building work and I think it gave everybody a chance to really free up and work on some very enjoyable projects without the kind of team-related pressure concerning the group project as well as improving overall modelling speed.

Something which took absolutely ages was getting my work ready for presentation, I couldn’t believe how time consuming it actually was to organise all the different renders to try to present things to a decent standard. I ended up sacrificing a lot of sleep when it came to sorting it out simply due to me underestimating the effort it takes to try to show off your work in a good light. It was very satisfying to finally have everything in presentation form and be able to scroll through it at a leisurely pace though.

It was a good year for 3D work, my main regrets are not getting to grips with Unreal as much as I could of and also needing to do more high-poly work in Zbrush, but this can be remedied over summer. I’m looking forward to finding out about our summer projects so I can get started on them, but for now, after getting everything on the K-drive, I’m gonna have just a little break and catch up on some sleep