The film room project was a 4 week long group project that required us to recreate a shot of a room from a film in 3D. This project was designed to test us both technically in our skills; picking out an interesting room to model as well as testing our people skills by working in a group. Our project ended with some success as we recreated the chosen shot with good accuracy although there were some troubles along the way. This post is to review how our group worked and how well the project went.
My group was made up of Calum Bellis, Dom Shaw, Joe Shaw and myself and we started by finding what films and rooms to make. As a group we quickly established a good work ethic and kept communication open between us by staying in labs at the same area and also using facebook. This came in handy throughout the entire project and played a part when choosing as we voted for what scenes we would make and iterate more if we couldn't all agree.
We planned our work well and spread out the assets between us quite fairly. It was hard to spread out larger or more complicated in an equal fashion but I think we made up for it by how we spread out the smaller assets more to some people (me for instance). We kept under the 20,000 tri budget because of the table we made setting approximate limits for each asset so we knew if we were going overboard on some assets. most of the assets went under and some went over balancing it out to around 15000 tri total used.
We also planned the timing of the project so each stage had it own time constraints. We kept to these time frames well with each stage which was fantastic but as we discovered we probably should have started the engine stage earlier and spent less time on the design and choosing phase. We had troubles lighting the room and if we had the time we could have got the scene much closer to the shot.
Reviewing was a major part of how we interacted as a group and after every stage we made sure each others work was of a high quality as well as checking we had remembered the basics (no ngons, pivot centered etc). We did this with models, unwraps, textures as well as helping out during the engine stage.
Technically I think we succeeded with the project and did well and our group ethic was good. There were problems with time management in our initial plans and the other problems were people related. The few problems encountered were very minor but could effect progress in other projects if things carry on. The first is that me a Calum would occasionally disagree about the direction of the project and later about how to get the best results during production. This would border on heated but we always kept control and diffused the situation to cool off meaning we were not wasting time. We were also just putting our ideas further and both trying to get the most out of our performance it was just that we were being hard headed in how we put them forward (because we cared about the project). The other problem I saw was that one of our group members felt left out during the engine and modelling stage which bothered me. This was because he felt like he wasn't being given enough work. Whilst I do see this as a problem because it effects his willingness to contribute to the project and how happy it is with it. I do feel though that throughout the project he was welcome at all times to contribute if he wanted but maybe we should have proactively asked his opinion more often.
Overall I am very happy with how the project went and enjoyed the experience. I have learnt what I can improve on both technically and in how I react to problems that are encountered on a project like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment