Over my four years of being in the game design pathway, I have learned a lot about the game industry. From how much work it takes to do make models, texture them and then put them into a game engine. To learning about coding and all of the small parts that go into making a game but make a huge impact on the game overall like sound and light design. I learned that in terms of skills needed to work in the the game industry I would recommended at least being able to understand the importance of every part and how each part affects the end product of the game, but specialize in one or two specific areas so you are able to stand out if you are trying to get into the game industry. though this pathway I have learned a lot of skills for basic design principals, how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, to understanding a 3D Modeling programs like 3ds Max or Sculptris, and learning how to navigate game engines and code on a very basic level. I also have learned many valuable lessons like being able to buckle down and get lots of work done even if others are not. And how to work around my weaknesses and strengths to create good quality work, as well as how to read a rubric instead of asking what I need to do to get a good grade. Not much information hasn't been helpful but in the case of the "science" part of Sci Vis wasn't helpful for me and I want to go into the chemical field where some of those instruments and equipment is actually used. I wish my sophomore year instead of coding in game maker we took the leap into Unity so we could get a head start at learning coding to help the process of coding for 3D games in AGAD because personally for me coding was very hard because I didn't have a good foundation for coding, so I wish I had spent more time earlier on creating a good foundation of knowledge of coding for myself.
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This week we had our end of year presentations where all of the CTE (independent Studies) kids came together and after school presented what we have done this year. It was fun because me and my friend Graham were able to present together since we both focused on building a 3D portfolio and be prepared for the certification test for 3D studio Max. This event was fun because I was able to see the games other CTE students had been working on for the entire school year. The night seemed to have a reoccurring message from all of the students. The message of scope and not setting to big of goals for ourselves since we were only one person and had very limited amounts of time dedicated to our work inside school.
This week I have spent my time working with the AEC Extended items and the Stairs tools in 3Ds max. These tools are very helpful for modeling architecture due to these tools having pre-built tools allowing for easy creation of things like walls, and stairs. For example the walls can be created from a spline path and then you can set a width and height to create an easy layout. Also the stairs are created just like all other objects in 3Ds for example I can click and drag and make some stairs just as easy as I was to create something like a cube or sphere. These have been very helpful because my interior design project has gon through some changes now that I have learned about these tools I want to model an apartment and furnish the interior as a finial project for this year. This would give me a good summary of concepts and tools for modeling. The only problems I ran into this week were having to get re used to using 3Ds 2017 at school compared to the 2018 copy I have at home. Next Weeks Goals:
-Find an apratment layout I want to model -Create walls for apartment -Sketch and brainstorm interior This week I spent most of in class time compiling tutorials and references for HDR maps and textures. By compiling these references I am able to do better and more efficient work outside of school due to my limited time in class but more extensive time outside of class I have been able to make better use of my time. This has helped me to also find better and higher quality items instead of finding the first tutorial or texture I see I am able to spend more time knowing that I will work outside of school. The only problems I have had is that I have hit a point where my computer either is required to sit and render for hours for some tutorials or my computer isn't beefy enough for some of the higher level stuff that I want to make. But I have been able to fix this problem a little by decluttering my CPU and some programs running in the background without my knowledge has sped up my CPU and processor a bit. Next Weeks Goals:
-Do next tutorial on fluids -Work on advance rain tutorial In 3ds Max as of 3ds Max 2017 they have added a new render option in the form of the ART render which I have talked about in the past and its ability to render better higher quality textures. This is through the physical material texture which is exclusively in the ART render. Through following the tutorial by the Autodesk 3ds Max Learning Channel on YouTube their video on Understanding the Physical Material has allowed me to gain a better understanding of using this material and its modifiers that can be changed to make virtually any texture with any look you want as long as you understand the physical material and how to edit it to make it look how you want it to. Texturing has always been the main pillar in my modeling and rendering process. Sometimes focusing on the textures and editing the textures to make them seem more realistic and believable in the hopes to make a better render or model which has been one of my personal goals throughout this year in my independent study of game design. This week at home I have been following the next tutorial for fluid systems which is a scene where chocolate falls down in a circular motion onto a strawberry which is on a plate. I have been having some trouble though because part of the tutorial is to add a leaf texture to the leafs on the bud of the strawberry. There are like 5 or 6 leaves all arranged in an array so it is hard to apply the texture to each one of them due to each one of the leaf models being a different direction so that is what I have been dealing with for the past week at home. Hopefully I will be able to finish it this weekend or by Wednesday. At school the progress has been slow due to me doing very small changes and having to redo models so cloths can be laid over the top of them. Next Weeks Goals:
-Finish fluid tutorial -Finish major element of room scene This week I started working on the modeling the Acetyl-CoA model. There are several problems I have ran into with dealing with bond angles due to the fact of 3Ds-Max not having a way to easily snap the atoms at specific angles like 120 or 109.5, causing me to make all of the angles by eye and have been looking into possible ways to fix this problem and hopefully resolve it next week. Also tonight is this years first game night. Game night is a time where middle school and freshmen can come and play games to learn about the game design pathway and hopefully get people to join the pathway. Next Weeks Goals:
-Finish The Acetyl-CoA model -Find a way to have specific bond angles This week I started one sorting out what will be the sizes of the atoms and the bond lengths along with the angles. I started by setting up a spread sheet with all of the information that I knew I was going to have to find like radii (size), bond length, and the angles for each bond. I used periodictable.com as a reference for covenant radii due to all of the bonds in Acetyl-CoA are covalent this also allows me to calculate bond length between each of the atoms. The problems I ran into this week were having the Workeys test on Wednesday and wanting to make sure everything is a accurate as possible. I am having each of the parts I want to be looked over looked over by my AP Chemistry teacher to assure that I am being as accurate as possible and getting her help with finding parts of the atom that I have not learned about. For example covalent bonds in reality overlap instead of forming bonds like depicted in ball and stick models of atoms.
Over the past week I have been working on texturing in the room scene for the animation, but have been running into problems with the actual textures showing up as solid colors instead of the pictures the texture is using. I haven't found a way to fix this so next week I will just transition to using solid colors to have a more simplistic color scheme instead of the more realistic approach I began with. This will end up being the best due to the limitations of the computers I have accuses to at school and hopefully while in the process of animating the scene the file won't crash and become inaccessible due to how these computers are set up due to administration restraints set up by IT so students are unable to damage the computer or the network the computer is on. Next Weeks Goals:
-Animate candle This week I worked on the of the most important parts of any render or animation. The lighting within the scene, normally the lighting in a scene is boring with just at standard light that can't be manipulated or moved. I used a Photometric Light which allows me to change the all of it's components for example I changed the type of light that was being emitted in my scene to appear as like a fluorescent light and changed its area of dispersion or where the light will be projected. The challenges I ran into this week were making the light not completely white out the scene because of how intense the light is. To fix this all I had to do was change the intensity to 5% and move the light further away from the scene. Next Weeks Goals:
-Start complex animation -Model the skull for animation |
AuthorIm a student at Durham School of the Arts Highschool in Durham North Carolina . I love playing video games and enjoy useing digital artwork as a platform to display information more efficiently, I also enjoy industrial photography and camping. Archives
May 2018
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