Personal Development Portfolio
To be able to complete the project of exploring how a production designer can visually communicate character and theme through environment design there some skills and knowledge gaps which need to be filled. A set of criteria will help to define these knowledge gaps. Skills gaps would be on the technical side of the project, in Maya and knowledge gaps are mainly on the theories of the project.
The theories being studies for the project are colour, light, texture and composition. Books were taken out to fill in the knowledge gaps on the theories and notes were taken on them. Throughout semester one it was useful to read books on each theory, even though the research question and aim changed throughout the year the theories remained the same. Knowledge gaps consisted of colour, lighting and production design. As I knew that random colours were used in environments I did not know why colour was used and had to read up on meanings of colours and how they add to the mood of a scene. With the case studies I wasn’t sure where to start but after sitting with the set of criteria it was a lot easier to take notes on the films I was studying. Lighting was a big knowledge gap as this is important in environment design, it helps create mood and atmosphere but I was not sure about colour of light or the type of lights within 3D environment design so reading books on light was a great help as I did not know how to light a scene if there was not a realistic light source, I found that often scenes are lit by emotion so it is still possible to light a scene if there is no main light source. It was important to learn more on shadows and lighting a cloudy day as this was part of my project for one theme. To cover the theories for the project I had to learn more on production design as I wasn’t sure of everything that was involved to production design books were just as important a books on the theories as they has information on the process as well as the theories I was studying.
There were more skills gaps than knowledge gaps within the research project, consisting of texturing and lighting. Texturing was an issue because when a texture was applied to a model it was upside down and on the wrong parts of the model and one piece of texturing appeared to be on several places instead of one. This was due to the uv mapping being wrong because I did not have the skills or knowledge to uv map so the textures were wrong and stretched. The reason for them being wrong on the model was I had not changed the settings in the snapshot menu and had all of the uv shells scattered instead of them being in the space it was set to snapshot at. To solve this and fill the skills gap, I unwrapped the objects again and used a checker map to see if the textures were stretched or distorted. It took a while to re-do the uv mapping I learnt a lot from it, for example using the uv centric took to apply the correct texture to the correct part of the model. As mentioned before lighting was a knowledge gap and also a skills gap and I hadn’t used lighting in Maya a lot so a lot of it was trial and error. A book called ‘Texturing and Lighting’ was helpful when doing lighting, in my media tests 3 point lighting was used but this was not very realistic at all when creating sunlight and bounce light from the sky and other objects. To fill this skills gap, practices were done with the final models and uploaded to my blog to describe was what happening with the light and why it was not working. A major skills and knowledge was rendering because the plan was to render in mental ray but when the scene was rendered the bump maps and alpha maps were not showing up. After realising that mental way was better for lighting but not for textures the decision was made to render in Maya software to have the textures show up as well as the light because textures play a large part in making the models believable due to the fact they show dirt, bricks and slates so it was important to keep the textures showing.
The sources used to address the skills and knowledge gaps were books, films, online tutorials and media tests in Maya and Photoshop as a lot of the project was trial and error to get the environment looking the way it should. The plan was reading books and taking notes on the theories to use in my own work, then watching films to look at how other artists created an environment with those theories then media tests while looking at the tutorials. The studies of films were very useful to take notes and then try to use what I learnt in my project. This did not work out as planned as the books were read and notes were taken and tutorials were identified but I jumped straight into media tests without having enough knowledge which is clear to see in the tests. The tests were created before the research aim was finalised so this had a big impact on the development of the work because I did not have the knowledge so this meant I relied on notes and tutorials instead of learning from mistakes made in the media tests. As I felt a bit lost in the project I did not know where I was going with it so after it was finalised I started to create assets for the environment which were tested with texturing as this was not covered in the early media tests, and also when it came to lighting this took a lot of testing so there were media tests made, but later on the project than intended. The tests were uploaded to the blog where is a critical commentary on the work produced.
Overall the development plan for the project did go well as the skills and knowledge gaps were addressed which solved problems I had due to not being able to do some of the work as I didn’t have enough knowledge on the theories. Each gap was worked on throughout the year to improve my knowledge on production design and the theories of colour, light, texture and composition, however composition was not studies as much it should have been.
To critically reflect on the professional development I would say I am happy with the final pieces of art I produced as they address the aim of the project. However the project was slow getting started due to it changing twice but it was always to be on environment design and the theories never changed. I gained a lot of knowledge and skills throughout the project but I do believe that the work could be improved having more knowledge on each theory. Although there were technical issues they were all solved to be able to complete the project of the environment communicating character and theme. The submission deliverables consist of renders of the media tests, the wrote up of case studies, sketches of ideas and photographs, notes on media tests which were examined, the project diaries, the final piece of artwork produced for the project and all of the production files such as Maya files, unwraps and Photoshop files with the textures and also the dissertation.
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