Showcase Reflection

Comment on the OVERALL SUCCESS of the SHOWCASE

Overall I believe the showcase was a success but it would have been a bigger success if Team 17 had actually shown up.

Did everything get done on time?

Everything for the showcase did get done on time but only just, our team’s final version of the trailer was completed only a day before the showcase.
What kind of things were in the Media Rooms?
In the media rooms there was examples of students work from the games and media courses on the display boards, there were folders out on one the tables that contained students work such as concept art and on the computers there was a slide show which showed work from different students on the courses.

What was on each BIG screen?

Throughout the whole of the showcase the four trailers made by the four teams were being shown on the big screen so that everyone at the showcase could see what the year two games students had produced throughout the year.

What were students doing?

During the showcase, students from the media and games courses were showing those who turned up to the showcase the work that they have done throughout the year, we had talks with future students about the course they had enrolled on and gave those future students a quick demo of the programs that they will start using.

What were the teachers doing?

During the showcase the teachers were talking to future students and their parents about the course they have chosen to do and what they’ll expect and they answered any questions that anyone might have had throughout the showcase.

What visitors did we have?

The visitors we had were mainly future students hoping to learn more about what they are going to learn on the course and what kind of work they will be creating. Team 17 were supposed to be visiting but they didn’t turn up. I'm not too sure who else visited because I was busy during most of the showcase so I didn’t find out.

What was the most enjoyable part of the day?

To me the most enjoyable part of the day was getting free pizza towards the end of the showcase.

Reflection on trailers

Team Lazer Baby’s Tempus trailer

Three positives of the Tempus trailer are the 3d model detail, which was good and consistent throughout, the music used for the trailer fit really well and was edited to fit the scenes almost perfectly and the scenes were put together really well in the trailer.

One negative point about the Tempus trailer is that some of the splash screens and credits were a bit plain and boring and could have been improved with a flashy animation.

Team Negative one’s Desolate trailer

Three positives of the Desolate trailer are the atmospheric effects used in some of the 3d models, the wide variety of 3d environments created and the lighting techniques used in a few of the environments, which adds to the atmosphere even more.

One negative point of the Desolate trailer is the texture quality on one of the scenes wasn’t brilliant and could be improved by UVW text unwrapping the 3d model better.

Team 42’s Zero G trailer

Three positives of the Zero G trailer are the 3d models, which are very well made, the soundtrack they used fit brilliantly and the scenes of the trailer were put together really well.

One negative point to the Zero G trailer is that at certain parts of the trailer, the vehicle didn’t look very fluid as it was moving around the track and could be improved by adding more movement to the vehicle’s animation such as a shaking motion.

Team Paradox’s Dark shock trailer

Three positives of the Dark Shock trailer are the sound effects, which were used effectively, the scenes in the trailer were put together really well and some of the animations were excellent.

One negative point to the Dark Shock trailer was that the quality and detail on some of the models wasn’t brilliant and could have been improved with better use of textures.

Reflection on Tempus trailer by team Lazer Baby

Here is the final trailer for Tempus, created by team Lazer Baby.

Here is a link to the trailer for Resident Evil 4, which is the kind of trailer that we were aiming for; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORc25vZo54

The final version of our team trailer didn’t completely match our original intentions because of complications in our team’s communication, which caused some team members to create extra scenes which weren’t in the original plans and other team members to create very little. Even though our final trailer only matched the original plans by a small amount, I believe that what we created in the end turned out better than the planning that we created. Below is an image of the storyboard that our team agreed to follow but didn’t really stick to.

I believe that the end trailer that we created is appropriate for our intended audience, which was aimed for people of both genders who are aged 12 and above. Our trailer was supposed to be for an 18+ game but we made sure the trailer contained nothing inappropriate as it was being shown at the digital showcase. The trailer is also friendly for people of all races and contains no offensive images such as knives, guns etc.

Our final team trailer contained three of my environments that I created in 3DS Max using a wide variety of different techniques. I created my mountain environment by using a displacement map that I had first created in Photoshop myself so that I could get the shape of the mountains to be the way I wanted them to be rather than mountains that look randomly generated. After I had the displacement strength at what I wanted, I had to tweak the vertices to make it smoother and get the mesh to fit better. To make the village environment I first added a displacement map to a plane using a noise texture from the material editor, which I then added a texture to make it look like snow. After I did this I merged my house that I box modelled, unwrapped and textured into this scene so that it would look like a village but I had to duplicate the house a number of times and place them the way I wanted so it would be more village like. The trees in the environment are 3ds max’s pre-made leaves and branches that have been put onto a branch that I have modelled and textured myself. Next I made a skybox with a tileable night sky texture on it, added an Omni light and lowered the intensity to make it look like it was night time, added a fog effect to a set area using a box gizmo and finally used a blizzard particle system to simulate the blizzard that is raging in my scene. I kept the animation for the camera straight forward and just had it go from one side of the environment to the other. Before I started making these environments, I first had to plan them out on paper, which I scanned on to computer to allow me to add colour in Photoshop. This was so I could get a general idea about what colours I was going to have the textures in the environments, which helped me out a lot. I would say that creating environments in 3DS Max is my biggest strength but there is still a lot I can do to improve on this and my biggest weakness is my drawing ability, specifically the drawing of characters.



The environments that I created for the team trailer are quite dark and gloomy because I felt that this style would fit the psychological horror game genre that we were aiming for. My original intention was to base some of the 3D environment models on medieval architecture and monastery style buildings but I never followed through with this plan and just made some things what I personally think should go in a horror game, which are dark forests, creepy ‘abandoned’ villages and dimly lit corridors where you can only just see what's there. On my mountain environment I did model a building that was based on the medieval style, which I am quite happy with. This made me think that I should have made more buildings in this style for my environments and if I had the choice to do this project again, I would model more. There was quite a few problems that I encountered during this project, one of which was the render times of some of my 3ds max models. These large render times were mainly because of the large poly count that some of my models had and also the realistic mental ray water effect that I used one of my models, which greatly increased render time by around 4-5 hours. I solved this problem by reducing the poly count of my models as much as I could and also by using the mental ray water as little as possible. Another problem that I have encountered are team mates who haven't contributing to the trailer as much as they should have. Me and Ethan have been doing a large majority of the work for the team trailer while Nat and Jack spend a lot of time off task looking at videos on YouTube or deviant art when they should be working on something for the trailer. I haven’t really been able to solve this problem because if they aren’t in a mood to work, I can’t change that. From this experience I have learnt to work and communicate in a team a lot better, I have learnt how to create even more realistic 3D models in 3DS max and I have learnt that not everything will go to plan when working on a project like this so I now know how to prepare for various problems that may occur. My skills in 3DS Max have increased dramatically throughout the course of this project, I have learned how make the textures look more realistic, use various types of lighting and effects like spotlights and fog to create more of an atmosphere to my environment. We only just met the deadline for this project because of different problems we had encountered throughout the project. The main problems which caused our team to finish the trailer one day before the showcase was the lack of communication between the team and two of the team members getting their renders done at the last second when they should have been done weeks ago. We would have finished the trailer weeks before the showcase if we had better time keeping but because of the various issues in the team, such as some members not doing their fair share of work, we had poor time keeping which almost caused us to miss the deadline.

I found working in a team quite enjoyable for the most part but it was hard working in a team with people who disagreed with each others ideas most of the time and who didn't contribute a fair amount of work to the trailers development. I think we would have been able to work alot better as a team if we communicated with each other more and contributed an equal amount of work to the project.

I am quite pleased with the final trailer that our team created but if I had the opportunity to do the project again, I would do a lot of things differently. The main change I would make to the project would be the choosing of the game genre because we chose a genre that we didn’t know a great deal about, the psychological horror genre. I personally believe that we should have chosen the fantasy genre because you are only limited by your imagination and our team has quite a wild imagination. I asked the other members of the team what they thought about the final trailer and their opinions of it were almost exactly the same as mine, “its ok but a lot can be done to improve it”. I asked our team to vote on which trailer they would choose, excluding our own trailer, the votes were three for Zero G by team 42 and one vote for Dark Shock by team Paradox.

Brief

We have been asked to work in teams of four to come up with a game story and create a game trailer for the final major project which will be shown at the digital showcase on Wednesday 23rd June 2010. We will be creating the scenes of the trailer in various programs, mainly 3ds max and Photoshop. The deadline for all 3d work is the 18th of June so we have to make sure that most of the work is done by then. The end product will be a game trailer that has been created using a professional brief.

We will research professional game trailers to give us a general idea of how it should be laid out.

The client that we have been asked to make the game trailer for is Shipley college. Our team is going to send an email to a few professional game companies to invite them to the digital showcase to see the trailer our team created. The target audience for our team trailer will be anybody aged 16+.