Term 1 evaluation

Research

I have learnt why it’s important to reference the different levels of research there are and what tools and methods are used in conducting primary and secondary research. 

Primary: pictures (researcher(s) has personally taken), surveys, questionnaires, focus groups etc. 

Secondary: textbooks, fiction/non-fiction books movies, games, quotes, pictures (other people have taken) etc. 

I have learnt why it is so important to give credit to other researchers because it’s research that you have not come up with the work yourself, if you don’t give credit then the researcher(s) is/are plagiarising, and it will affect the creditability the researcher(s) in the future which will effectively ruin the career of the person/people that have plagiarised. I have also learnt the effectiveness of using mood boards and images that you can find whilst conducting secondary research is vastly expansive but can bring whole new ideas into play when thinking of how the researcher can adapt it into a new idea. 

I learnt how primary research can be effective as it makes the researcher think about how the assets could look as well as making the person think of new ideas whilst conducting this type of research, for example, I took a picture below and I thought that I could use the same type of style but adapt it into a floor light using LED lighting.  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It can also help get feedback on how the assets are coming along from small groups/peers via surveys or questionnaires, which is useful to improve the work before final production.  

I feel that my work within primary and secondary research has been worthwhile at the beginning of my isometric room assignment as I was focused on producing three rooms that were focused around the Sci-fi genre. But after creating my first room I found that my skill level didn’t match the skill required to produce the assets that I wanted for the second room, so I changed the idea to a lockdown room for a mob boss. I learnt about the spline tools during this room as I had missed the lesson that covered this due to family circumstances which would have meant I could have stayed on the Sci-fi genre, but I felt it was too late to change it back. Due to this, I had little primary research that I could use for this room, also due to the large quantity illegal objects/substances and expensive jewellery I couldn’t really get any primary research to help with this room. when starting room three I did go out and conduct more primary research so that I could use it in my third room as much as possible. I found that because I had a small amount of primary research in room two it affected my last room to the point that I wanted to use no secondary research in my third room to make up for the little I had, ultimately it affected the theme I was going for as a few people stated that it looked more like a 70s style living room instead of a modern living room. 

In future, I want to be able to stick to the genre I have chosen and ensure that I have more than enough of both primary and secondary research to ensure I don’t come into this problem again. 

Ideation

I used isometric paper to design the ideas of the rooms, so when coming up with the idea of the first room it was designed as a bedroom in a space station I struggled to add circular objects, eventually I managed to do it for the window and floor lights but I couldn’t figure out how to apply it to the stasis bed, which I would like to improve on in the future.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When I started designing room two I just started drawing randomly and went through a few different designs as I didn’t know what I should do in terms of genre/style, eventually, I came up with the picture below. 

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This took a lot of time off actual development of the room and set me back a while, which affected my final rooms quality. 

I think working from the drawing is a good practice that I will continue implementing in the future, but It can also narrow the vision of the outcome which I need to make sure that I am open to new ideas to implement within future projects. 

Planning and pre-production 

Whilst planning the first room I drew it in a way it would look nice but when it came to producing the room I didn’t consider the room to assets ratio, as I went down the route of designing the assets before having the room made, which proved problematic when bringing in the assets as I couldn’t scale the window as it was merged together and affected the design of the window when I tried to scale it which then affected the overall design of it becoming the military barracks. In future projects, I will consider this and apply effective ways to stop this from happening again. 

Problem-solving

I have mentioned a few problems I have come across above regarding research and design, but I came across a few other problems but with one problem I failed to sort out in the end and that is the poly count in room two which was massive. Before I optimised the whole room, it was close to 7 million polys because I used a pane to create money then used the scatter tool in compound objects to duplicate them into a realistic stack of money.  

The room was already textured so when I optimised the room it affected the textures which unfortunately I couldn’t figure a way to sort out. At final production, it came close to 5 million polys which made the pc lag and crash a few times as well as It is not viable to be able to be used in a game. In future, I will be considering poly count heavily when creating my projects as I want to produce assets that could be put within a game. 

There were ways I could have sorted it out but at the cost of the design aspect which I felt was more of an importance at this stage. 

Plans: what I would like to improve on in the future 

At the start of the course, I had little to no skill in 3D modelling I had used Blender but didn’t produce anything to the standard I am now or even to the standard I had at the start of the course. 

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I knew about crediting secondary research, but I didn’t know the exact reason to why I had the inclination that it was because of plagiarism/copyright infringement. 

Where I am now, I feel that I understand the basics of 3D modelling and a few advanced processes but there is a lot more I wish to learn. In terms of research, I understand the fundamentals and requirements, but I am quite interested in learning the laws and how the effects of plagiarism have affected people in the past. 

In the future I would like to develop the skills that are required to become an effective games developer which would include 3D modelling to industry standard, sound, coding, concept art, storyboarding, promotion etc.  

I want to learn as much as I can because in the future after I have made a name for myself, I would like to produce my own games.