Evaluation

Having evaluated the final project and the rendered video I’m very happy with the results however it has been easy to identify errors and improvements that I could have carried out during the modelling and animation process now that it has been fully rendered and completed.

The time that was allocated to complete the project was a very narrow time slot and this meant that not as much time and detailing could be spent on the modelling process. There are however elements in the modelling objects that represent below my standards of detailing and quality of the objects. This is only in a selected few objects and is perhaps barely noticeable.

I felt that the preparation for this project within the group went very well and it seems that we have stuck well to the storyboard and the mood board features have played a key role in the idea planning.

The modelling stage of the project turned out very well as many of the objects such as the furniture are very well detailed and do represent very realistic life like features. The modelling stages I found were my most favourite as I managed to learn some new skills while creating the models and implemented learnt skills from last year into this year’s creations.  There have been many of my techniques used within the modelling process but time was a big restrictor and as such limited the modelling process methods and quality.

 I felt that the animation techniques that I used in the project have combined very well with the models that I have used. The animation techniques have stuck well to the storyboard and these techniques that I have used appear to function with a high standard. I do feel that I could have incorporated more animation techniques into the project but it was difficult to learn new skills in such a short period. The main new techniques that I managed to learn and incorporate into my work, was the use of the particle flow system. I chose to learn this new skill as it was one of the few that could be used within the educational version of 3DS Max. “Rayfire Techniques” offered much more detailed animation techniques, however this feature is only available to commercial versions or paid plugins which were too expensive to purchase.

The rendering process was a very time consuming section of the project. It was very frustrating and required the use of several computers at any one time in the university. Each of my frames in my animation averaged around 15-20 seconds render time per frame. This is because of the excessive detail incorporated within each of the frames. On some of the computers exporting formats were limited and most of my files appeared to lack some quality. This mainly happened when rendering to AVI format. I had to use the compressed method of AVI because if I rendered in uncompressed it appeared that on some of the computers I lost vital frames which made the video appear poor.

The sound that I have incorporated into my animation is the theme from Alice in Wonderland. I felt that this theme of music worked extremely well with my fly through techniques.

The group worked very well throughout the majority of time but in some stages of the project communication began to lack and it became difficult to keep update to date on the progress of each other’s work. The group’s communication was a vital and essential part of the group project, however towards the end, the group began to pull together better and began to work very well.

The way in which we decided the work should be split up between individuals in the group has work extremely well to everybody’s advantage, as it has allowed all the members in the group to express their modelling and animation skills. It also allowed all the members in the group to have a fair share of work so that no group member put less effort in than another. This encouraged the group to work and function well and work more as a team than a group.

Overall I’m very happy with the outcome of the group project but if only more time was available then the results would have probably been much more improved.