Client Project - Simulated Brief

I've just been given the brief for our first project for this year. We have been asked to create a piece of multimedia to support a public information campaign. The options we have been given include climate change, healthy living, sustainability, and sexual health. I would really like to create an informative website for young children about climate change. I am currently applying for a primary PGCE and I think by designing and building a site for key stage one children it will give me the chance to learn more about the national curriculum and also expand my knowledge of designing for education. I will be looking further into this for my live client project and my research project so I feel this will give me a good starting point to get me going with my work.

3D Update Room Two

Again I have been messing around with some textures, the doors and table aren't texturing properly and a note keeps popping up before it renders telling me to do something but I'm not really sure what it means. I will discuss this with Roma tomorrow and hopefully get it sorted.

3D Update Room One

I've been playing around with texturing and it doesn't look too bad now. I'm still not 100 per cent happy but it's finally getting there. I can't seem to decide on the floor, every texture I try just looks wrong, but I think I'll just play around again tomorrow and see what I come up with.

A Darker Alice In Wonderland

When I told my friend I was creating two 3D environments inspired by Alice In Wonderland he sent me this link; http://xahlee.org/p/alice/alice_am.html.




These images are from the video game American McGee's Alice. I really like the whole different spin this puts on Alice In Wonderland. I don't think I'd ever be able to create something this extraordinary in 3D, but it's something to aim for I suppose. The detail is amazing and someone has clearly spent a long time thinking this through, designing and creating it. It always stuns me how something this brilliant can be created in 3D.

Quote from Wikipedia;
Set years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Alice features an older, more cynical and macabre incarnation of Alice.
Alice's parents are killed in a fire. Driven catatonic and having attempted suicide (note her bandaged wrists), she is institutionalised in Rutledge Asylum. Years later Alice is called by the White Rabbit to the aid of a radically altered Wonderland, under threat from the Red Queen, the evil despot who has enslaved its people. The Cheshire Cat is a frightening incarnation, and is her constant companion throughout the game, popping up now and again to guide the player or offer advice.

Here is a video from the game that can be found on the address above and on YouTube.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rmwE1QZE3EI

Really Good 3D

This is a small render created by my friend from college, Chris. I really like all the little details in this doorway that I just wouldn't think of, like the wooden paneling. I also really like the marble texture on the upper half of the wall which Chris created himself. He often sends me bits and pieces of work he's creating and it's always getting better and better. After seeing this I think I will go back to my modeling to see what details could be added as this proves that it's the details that make all the difference.

Screenshots Room 2

This room is quite an awkward shape and I wanted to make the doors fit in with this so I made the doors into editable polygons so I could drag individual parts of them and manipulate them.

Screenshots Room 1

I also had a play around with different textures today which was quite fun




I especially like the texture on this hat, i think it is simple but quite effective. I also like the idea of bringin the outdoors in by having the mossy cobbled floor.

Screenshots Room 1

As I have been creating my 3D models I have been taking screenshots to track my progress.

Digital Senses... Phantasm -Takahiro Matsuo

http://www.aec.at/kiev/en/projects.asp

Phantasm is an interactive installation where a user holds a glowing sphere and by moving this sphere they trigger music and animation on a large screen. The display is dreamlike with beautiful butterflies gracefully moving around the screen towards the sphere and chase the sphere as it is moved. This sounds like an extremely relaxing and therapeutic installation to experience.

The Sancho Plan

http://www.thesanchoplan.com/index.html

The Sancho Plan produce live audiovisual performances and interactive installations. Their work involves live music and invites the user to engage with animated musical characters which are triggered by a variety of electronic drum pads. The work has been shown at many different places including festivals, clubs and cinemas. The creations are really interesting to look at and involve a great combination of animation, sound, music and performance.

"The Sancho Plan blend a careful combination of animation, sound, music and performance to produce striking, interactive AV shows"

3D Virtual Environment 2

This is a rough sketch of my idea for my second environment. Again this is inspired by the story of Alice In Wonderland. The room will be an obscure shape becoming very small at one end. I think this will be interesting to create and to see how it works out in the end.

3D Update

I have started to model my 'Mad Hatter's Tea Party' in 3D studio max. I was surprised at how much I was able to do on my own once I got started. I have decided to get all the modeling done before I start on texturing, but I have been downloading some interesting textures in my spare time already as this will will make the texturing quicker when I come to do it, rather than searching for and downloading the textures as I do each individual object. I am enjoying the 3D modeling a lot more than I thought I would , I even spent an hour modeling a teacup and didn't even realise where the time had gone. I am even starting the consider the possibility of doing a project that involves 3D in my third year, but I'm not making any decisions on that yet.

I still have not thought of an idea for my second environment but I know I've got to think of something soon as we do not have much time for this project, especially as we have been warned that rendering could take up to a week. Unfortunately I have to go home next week which will majorly cut into my time I can spend modeling as I don't have the software needed at home, so I know will have to work extra hard this week and the beginning of next in order to make up for my time off.

Idea

For my two 3D environments I have decided to take inspiration from Alice in Wonderland, in particular, the scene of the mad hatter's tea party. One room will be directly based on the tea party scene and while I am completing that one I will think about what to include in the second environment.

This is a rough sketch of the sort of thing I will be creating in 3D studio Max for the mad hatter's tea party. I'm not the most talented at drawing but hopefully you'll get the general idea. I decided that I would add in the mad hatter's big top hat as I will not be including characters and this gives the viewer a big hint to where my inspiration came from.



As I am not the most skilled in 3D modeling I will start with these basic objects and, depending how I get on and how much time this takes, I may expand on this scene by adding more objects and detail.

My thoughts on the upcoming 3D project

I was so unhappy when I first found out we had to do a 3D project but I'm starting to come round to the idea, as it challenges me in a different area of multimedia and gives me a break from action script. I'm not a big fan of 3D in general but I am finally starting to grasp the basics of it. I was pleased to hear the brief has been changed slightly as it now seems achievable rather than completely impossible. I think this project will be very challenging but I'm going to throw myself into it and try to get as much out of it as I possibly can. Although I cannot say i enjoy working in 3D programs, I do think the results that you get can look really impressive and this gives you a sense of achievement, even if it does take a while to get there. 3D is a useful skill to have and any work I create is going to add to my portfolio and show I have a range of skills.

Online Virtual Environments

"Secong Life is an online, 3D virtual world imagined and created by it's residents"
It started in 2003 and has experienced massive popularity and growth from all around the world. People use Second Life to meet new people, make money, or just to have a bit of fun.

Here are a few examples of the things you could do with Second Life;


I don't really understand the whole facination with living in a virtual world, but the 3D modelling is amazing and the idea has certainly worked well as Second Life is inhabited with millions of residents from all around the globe.

Some more examples of 3D

www.blui.org/

I'm really intriqued by the strange water/jelly-like effects created in this.


www.dmp.cz/rt3d/onsi/diplomka/result.php

I really like the way the texture has created the effect for the curtains here.


www.3pointd.com/index.php?tag=work

A bit rough around the edges but I like it anyway.

Some examples of 3D work

http://www.unrealty.net/



Virtual International Space Station by NASA Langley Research Center Spacecraft & Sensors Branch

Not exactly a 3D environment...

... but funny anyway

Location/Environment Project Evaluation

The brief for this project was to ‘design and present your ideas and working prototype for an interactive kiosk/advertising with AV content’. This was a group project and would be worked on in pairs. Keywords - reactive, site-specific, physical interface.

The idea for the project was to create something innovative and creative to be set in art gallery cafes. The kiosk would be a large screen mounted in a specifically designed table with different phidgets built in such as a slider, a vibration sensor, and a touch sensor. Each phidget would activate a different animation and a joystick would give the user the ability to draw on the screen (see design boards).

Throughout the project an online journal would record thought processes, research, design ideas and notes (see online journal entries). This would help record each stage of the project and keep it on track.

To create a prototype of the interactive kiosk Adobe Flash CS3 with Actionscript 3.0 was used along with a Phidget interface kit. The project was challenging as it involved using unfamiliar software and technology. There were many problems testing the kiosk prototype, as the university computers were often not connecting to the ‘local host’ needed to use the phidgets. This made the project frustrating and slow. The scripting was difficult as tutorials involving phidget interface kits were tough to find, although seminar sessions were extremely helpful.

Towards the end of the project it was decided to only use the two main phidgets, the joystick and the vibration sensor. It was agreed that this would be the best action to take due to time constraints as it would be better to have two phidgets that worked well and without problems rather than struggling on with all four and possibly ending up with none working. This was a disappointing step to take but a necessary one.

The scheduling in this project was not up to standard, which, in turn, made the work difficult to plan out and divide up between the pair. In future it would be a better idea to carry out more research into what creating the prototype would entail, so that preparation and scheduling could be more detailed and exact. If it had been known prior to starting the action script work just how difficult it would be, more time would have been allowed which would mean the project would not have been compromised and changed at the last minute.

In this project, feedback from seminar and tutorial sessions were extremely beneficial to the idea and design process. This is important in any work or project as without feedback no one can be sure how well he or she is doing in context. Research is a key starting point to any project and it must be thorough or it will prove to be useless later in the task. As always, a time plan is crucial to success. It helps to keep work on track and on schedule, without it the project will end up lost with no plan of where to go next. It is important to learn from both the positive and negative aspects in this assignment in order to progress in the future.

Project Update

Camilla and me have been struggling grasping the actionscript for our interactive kiosk over the past couple of weeks. We have been using tutorials found online and the help of David Downes. In the last few days we seem to have gained more understanding and things have finally started to come together. Due to our underestimation of how complicated the scripting part of the project would be we have decided to further simplify our kiosk. We are now only using two phidgets, the joystick which acts as a drawing tool for the user, and the vibration sensor which activates an animation. After careful consideration we decided this would be for the best as we would rather have two interactive elements that work really well rather than 4 phidgets that don't work at all. We have drawn up our design boards of what we had hoped to do and what the finished product would be like. This will give the tutors a better understanding of what we would have achieved given more time and if we had planned things out better. This may be a project I would like to try and take further in my own time so I can continue to gain knowledge of actionscript and the use of phidgets.