I think that this year there have been a lot of major takeaways. The first major takeaway for me is that when you are applying for a job you have to have a professional looking resume and portfolio in order to better help the people potentially hiring you and so you can look like someone that they want to hire. Another major takeaway is that whenever you are working on a project in 3ds Max, the composition of lights cameras and renderers always have to work well together. I cannot tell you the number of times when I would render a model and my lights would not work with the renderer and I would have to redo all the lights. The moral of this is to focus on what you are doing and think things over before you put them into action. Below is a visual I made showing what we did in class in a summary form. In this class along with what we learned from the material we also had rewarding experiences from our teacher Mr. B. I found that it was very rewarding for me that whenever we were messing around he would not only put us back on track but give us a punishment if we continued to do it. Because of this, at some points during the year we were required to do extra work. While this work was frustrating to do, it also helped me realized that I need to stay focused in both this class and life in general. Not only that but I also think this class has helped me learn a lot of skills that I will use in the future. Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the knowledge that you will get many more jobs and job opportunities with a professional resume and portfolio will really help me later in life as I start working. Another skill that will help me is the knowledge of all of these programs that we have been working in. In the future, if I pursue a career path in digital design, the knowledge I have learned in this class will help me to become better at what I do and will not only help me find a job but can also be something fun to do in my free time. Overall this class has really helped me prepare for what is to come later in life and has helped me get on track and focused on the things I need to do.
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As I have grown older, the video games I like have drastically changed so many ways. When I was younger, I used to play on the Nintendo Wii all the time with my brothers. We played a lot of games in the Mario series and still to this day play games like Super Smash Brothers and Super Mario Odyssey. These games have been a part of my life since I was younger and even the newer games bring back older memories I have had with games similar to this. One game that I have loved for most of my gaming career is Minecraft. Minecraft just turned 10 years old this year an I have been playing for at least 6 years now. This game has been one of my favorites even though at some times it seems to get dull or boring. I have recently been playing Minecraft more and more lately and I am starting to realize how much creativity this game allows for. I really appreciate these kinds of games because as games like Fortnite are super popular, they usually become boring very quickly which is not fun. Overall as I have grown older and video games have evolved, I appreciate the older games because they are so nostalgic and interesting.
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As we only have one real class period left before exams I thought I should do a final thoughts on class. This quarter we have been doing a lot of work with animations and while the projects take awhile, they are interesting. I have developed so much this year and I have been doing things that I would not have been able to do last year. All of our animations have been interesting and make me want to continue on with this class even further. The one thing I do wish we had were better computers. At the current rate, it takes about 5 minutes to just open 3ds Max. Along with this, whenever I use Adobe Premiere, it lags constantly and is very hard to use because the amount of time it takes to assemble projects almost doubles. As next year approaches, I hope that we do more animations like the ones we have been doing this quarter. Along with this I hope that my skills with 3ds Max, Photoshop, and Premiere continue to improve and along with that, my grade improves as well. Overall, this last quarter has been good, even though it has been tough and I really hope in the future that we get new computers that can run our programs better and quicker.
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For this blog post, I am supposed to write about the hardest skill that I have had to learn in this unit so far. For me, the hardest skill was how to use different camera movements effectively throughout my animations. During our camera unit we learned about a ton of camera movements such as pan and dolly that can be used to create a different feeling for the viewer watching the animation. I found this to be difficult because firstly, it was hard to remember all of the camera movements and when to use them and secondly, working in 3ds max can sometimes be very tricky. This is because even when you move the camera, you can still get unwanted movements from frame to frame that you don't want. This was very hard for me to get used to and I still haven't mastered it completely. One way that I figured out how to remember all of the camera movements was to sort them into categories in my brain. For example, when the camera moves up I always think of a tilt of pedestal shot after studying for a bit. At the end of the unit, we had to make a demo reel like animation showing off our skill and what we had learned in the unit. I think that this showed how I improved throughout the unit and slowly got used to the different movements and how to make them work in 3ds max. Summary
For about the past month now we have been working with cameras and animation. For the most part this unit has been pretty easy and the projects are not too difficult. This year most of the difficulties for me have come during tests and quizzes. I have a hard time understanding the information because when we are working on assignments in class, we are not looking at the information sheets that tell us for example what each kind of camera movement is called. While this can be solved by me studying more, I find the information I learned to some times have little to no correlation to what our assignments are about. Sure the ideas we are supposed to learn could help be make better projects but when we are following a tutorial I find looking at those documents not very important. Like I said earlier, these problems could all be solved by me studying more but while this is a solution I wish that in the future the quizzes and tests we take would have something more to do with the work and the specific projects. Overall I want to be able to focus on the assignments we do in class and focus more on the information inside of them rather than learning information that is not always incorporated into our work.
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Recently, I have been really addicted to a game known as rocket league. While I have been playing Rocket League for well over a year now, I still really enjoy playing it. My favorite thing about the game is just the concept of it and how something like it has never really been done before. Along with this, I find this game really enjoying because as I continue to play, I start to be able to do things and hit shots that I would have never thought I would be able to hit. For those who don't know, Rocket League is basically a game of soccer where you control rocket cars in order to hit the ball and score goals. Because the cars are rocket powered it allows you to fly across the map and hit aerial shots that would not be possible in a normal match of soccer. This adds a totally new element to the game that increases the skill cap and even after the game has been out for four years now, allows for increase development of the limits the game has. Overall Rocket League is one of my favorite games to play with my friends casually or just try to get better at that I know I will continue playing for a long time.
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For the past week we have been working with lighting in 3ds Max. Overall lighting is not very hard to understand in terms of shadows and how they react with each other. While this is somewhat easy to understand there are still important things that you can learn from just trying new types of lighting. Throughout this week I have learned a lot about lighting in 3ds Max and how the different lights work in the scene. While it is easy to add lighting to the scene it is hard to master it. Because there are so many different options you can create shadows from all different angles that overlap each other and create various designs. One of our activities called Working With Shadows, made us see how shadows from objects react with each other when light is coming from different angles. I found that when you have light from two different angles and multiple objects you can have separate shadows and also intersecting shadows that make it hard to tell what the object is. Unfortunately I do not have any images of this in 3ds Max on my Laptop but if you do a quick google search you will probably be able to find it. Overall lighting in essence is really easy but you can still make cool shadows with different types and styles of lighting.
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Since the new quarter has started we have been working a lot with materials. Materials, while they may not be very interesting to me, can still be fun to work with and learn about. As we have progressed towards UVW mapping it has gotten harder and harder, and it is taking a lot longer for me to finish projects which is leaving me far behind. While I am far behind, the stuff we are learning is very useful because with these UVW maps, Our work looks professional and could be put in games. While this is not the most fun unit for me I am really looking forward to what we are doing next because we still have two units to go for the rest of the year and it should be very interesting. Next year I plan to continue on with Game Art Design and that means that I will be continuing to make blog posts and to update my portfolio with new work. I really hope that I can start to understand UVW mapping better so that I can do it more quickly and catch up to where I should be.
Summary
For about the past week we have been working with a new style of materials called UVW Mapping. UVW mapping in 3ds Max is very different from most of the other styles of materials because you have to be very specific. This is because UVW mapping is used to create a lot of video game assets and because of that it needs to flow and look clean all the way around. If any of the pictures you decide to use are even a little bit off, you can get white or black marks on your asset that makes it look a lot worse. Personally I really like UVW mapping, I find it very useful and even though you have to be very precise, it all pays off in the end because the finished product looks better than if you just put a regular material on it. So far I have only used UVW maps to create a shipping box and a board game box but they are still some of my favorite works already because they look so clean. I really look forward to what is in store for the rest of UVW mapping because even though we are not very advanced yet it is still enjoyable and interesting. Overall I think that while UVW mapping takes a long time and is very precise, the finished product could be used in games even at my level of understanding.
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So far this year we are about half way through the school year and in DDA II I have learned a lot more than I did in DDA I. This year has been so much more fast paced and we have had so much more advanced work to do and I like it. I like the fact that we are learning more advanced skills like Boolean objects and modifiers like lathe and loft. I like this class a lot more because I can now do so much more of what I want because I know so much more than I did last year. For example last year it was hard for me to even make simple objects without putting a lot of time and effort into it, but now I feel like I can make so many things with ease. This class has really helped me a lot, even though some of the activities can be a little more challenging because it allows me to explore what I want to do and lets me create what I want to create with simplicity and also high detail. There are certain projects that take a long time but before I started this class I had no clue that I would ever get close to what I am doing now. I am so glad that I chose to stick with Game Art Design as my pathway because I am learning so much more than I thought I would be and the tools are very useful in creating many different things. A good example of this is MassFx which is basically just animations with collisions and moving components which I would have never thought I would be doing this early in this year and it would be so simple. Overall I am still really enjoying this class even if it can get hard at some points because it is still very enjoyable.
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AuthorHi, my name is Nick Bayer and I will be posting blogs about every 1-2 weeks in the 2020-21 school year. I am doing this for my Advanced Game Design class at Durham School of the Arts(DSA). The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Categories
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May 2021
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