Evaluation

Evaluation for 3D Creative problems

I had used Maya, xNormal and Photoshop as these where the best utilities to use to make my design. I had found Photoshop very useful for the initial ideas and final drawn out piece as it had helped me to design it. It also had easy and simple tools to use and was very effective in doing so. Maya was useful in helping me design the product but my progress was halted in making the final design due to errors and crashing. This had caused me to make my design again due to the lag as well as the crashes. xNormal was very good for adding normal mapping to my design and making some of the textures I make look more 3D. It was very easy to use as all I had to do was import an image onto the software and it would do the rest.

For the design I had to find out how to use the Maya software and I did this by asking my teachers and peers for help and also had used tutorials on the internet to help me create some pieces in my work. The problems I had encountered were mainly crashes and errors, the only way I could make this less problematic was by continuously saving my work.

Evaluation for solving time-based creative problems

I had used Maya to animate my robot as it had the available tools to do this and it was where I had made the design on. There wasn't any problems really, mainly it was just learning how to do it which I had found out from my teacher.

I had to find out what it should look like and how to position the robot, this I had found out by looking at similar images of the way robots were created in the same format as I had done on Maya. I also had to find out how long I wanted the animation and how I should have made it so it had done this in that format.

Evaluation for work

The theme of my project was Mechanical Marvel, we had to create a mechanical creature. I had first had an idea of a mechanical bird that would fly around and be able to disassemble and reassemble but, I had thought about how hard that would have been considering I had only recently started using Maya, then I had a look at my other ideas and found one I liked which was a Turtle robot. I had used a lot of reference material from robots to general usage on Maya to help me find out what people have also done on maya and how they went about doing it. It was very useful as it had helped me to see what my robot should look like and the details I could have possibly added to my work. It affected my design because it had caused me to change it from an organic look to a mechanical look in order to suit the theme, it had also helped me add smaller details to my work.

It has helped me see how to do certain things in Maya, for example make a textured and rendered form of a marble. It has also helped me to see how I could make my ideas seem more creative. An artist called Joel Erkkinen had inspired me about my design on Maya and how I should do things on it too. He had made a lot of creations on Maya that looked amazing and that had inspired me to make things the way he did and also, helped me see what I could do on it.

In Maya I had made my work out of Lambert, Blinn and Phong (E) in Maya as these were the basic materials on Maya and also gave the type of look I wanted in Maya. I had mixed some of these with my own textures to see how they would look and if it was any good in doing so. this outcome was good as it did do so. My work had changed a lot, initially my turtle design had lots of shaders and materials in it but, I thought if it would look any good having all of these things in and due to the lag and crashes in Maya I had no other choice but to restart my design on Maya and create it from scratch.

In my Photoshop final piece I have used tone, colour and shading in order to give the piece the look that I wanted it to have. This was used a lot to throughout the project and I think I have used it effectively, I had chosen colours on the colour map that I thought blended well together and used tone to blend them together in my work. I had also done this with the colour but had to consider the mechanical theme that the project was based on.

I am very happy with my final design as it has the outcome that I wanted it to have. And also, it helped showed me what I could do with my work now that I know what to do in Maya.

Animation

This is my final design rendered out. It is a turtle that it mechanical, and in the video I have shown it being built from all of the parts into the final design. I found this quite easy to do as all I had to do was show the design in its final format and its broken up stage.