Idat309 – Project 2 ideas

Following the 1st lecture I’ve been thinking about some ideas for the 2nd project.  Im thinking of building an environment controlled by a software element(s) but im steered towards doing something hardware based, partly for the challenge but also because I’ve never indulged in this sort of project before. Doing so would enhance my skills further and add to my knowledge base.

My first thought here is to build something that will allow me to augment something (not yet decided) using sound input from am icrohpne and possibly other outputs, mabe even navigate something using sound and different pitches or noises.

Below is a diagram of the kind of effect the level of sound input could affect an object

IDAT309 – Project 2 – User Interaction

Beginning to think about user interaction and how i can develop either software or hardware in order for a user to control or use the environment

Software:

User interface controlled either by user input, object interaction or editable parameters

Hardware: Using a joystick to control an object

IDAT309 – Project 2 – BTTF layout

(Excerpt from October 10th 2007)

Giving some thought to the back to the future idea Ive roughed out an aerial plan of the futuristic set from back to the future 2:

IDAT309 – Project 2 – Environment Ideas

Project 2 – Environment Ideas

The project requires me to build a different environment from the 1st project.

My initial idea for he 1st project would be a good idea for this project as it allows for a lot of development in interaction:

Exerpt taken from 10th october 2007:

Thinking more into the project Ive come up with some more ideas that “mean” something to me.

The first one is building a famous scene based on my favourite film “Back to the Future”. I grew up with this film and the series has been my favourite for a long time. The only thing thats holding me back from thisidea is that I can use it for Project 2 where you could navigate the area on a hoverboard – as featured in the film. Some screenshots are below:

 

Back to the Future 3: This scene could allow the user to navigate a horse or walking person???

IDAT309 Project 2

Digital Media Environments Project 2

This project bulds on the 1st digital 3d environment project by using the basic skills we developed as well as building on them with more technical skill, technique ad style as well as incorporating other software (namely director with its 3d handling capabilities), hardware (such as joysticks, controllers and sensors) and technologies to create something with user interaction.

Liking a challenge, im tempted to introduce hardware to allow the user to control my environment.  The drawback with this, is that the time consumption regarding the build of the envionment itself is heavy and in addition, Im more drawn to developing user interactive oftware rather than hardcoding peripherals.  In this case I may resort to creating something which allows the user to control the environmetn with an interface and possibly allowing them to add or remove objects from the scene.  Some ideas for interaction development are below.

• User navigating the environment with an object (i.e. controlling an object to move around with fixed POV – like in a driving game) could also be developed with a peripheral (i.e. joystick)
• User controlled environment – Adding/Removing objects, building a scene themselves (city, countryside etc)

IDAT309 – 3D environment progress update

Over the past few weeks ive been building various objects to place in my environment, most of which are buildings and things

heres a few snapshots of some of the objects so far and techniques Ive used to produce them:

I’ve found that the best way for me to model objects are to start with simple objects and modify them using the vetices and meshes ater converting them to editable poly’s.  Adding more height length and width segments where appropriate before doing so makes editing thm much easier.

Barrel

To create this oil barrel I started with a simple cylinder with 12 height segments.  Then once converted to a poly I bunched the mid sections an then moved them out to create the barrel ripples. I then created a line on top of the barrel and lathed it.  I had some problems with this but it turned out that I was using the wrong axis to lathe around.  This created the top and bottom lids of the barrel.  The material Im using for thi is a rusty type metal bitmap image that ill map onto the diffuse colour in the material editor.

Skydiver

The skydiver I’ve just started and at present he is built from edited spheres which ive modified with the move and scale tools.  I created his backpack from a box and editing ertices and the straps are also boxes with many segments that are modifed by twisting vertices and rotating them.  Im yet to add materials and give it a realistic look but happy so far

Buildings

The buildings are all created from standard boxes and then I’ve used the slice plane tool on certain edges and polygons to create sections i can extrude.  The roofs are done in a similar way but instead of exruding, Ive selected an edge and moved it on the z-axis.  From here I can create doors and extra features.  The roofs are detached by selecting the polygons and clicking the detach buttons, this will allow me to use different materials on them to the building itself.

Windsock

The windsock was quite quick and fun to create.  The base was made with thin cylinders and th main sock was made with a cylinder with deleted end polygons that i tapered at one end slightly.  Then i added noise to it so that it appears to be waving in the wind!

IDAT 309 Project 1 – Update

Proposal submitted at the last practical session, quite pleased with its in depth description of the project and the way I presented the information.

Since then Ive just been working on the environment, developing more and more objects and putting thm into my scene.

Ive found the easiest way to work is to create objects in sepreate 3Ds Max files and export to a .3ds format. Then I can import it into my main environment.  This allows me to be more confident in modelling as I wont disturb any previous items in the enviroment by accident and I can also concentrate fully on just that object.

Im also beginning to work on materials and add them to my objects which is great because it really brings things to life.

Some development shots of my project environment:

IDAT309 – Next steps

The next steps to take within my project are:

Aims

Time scale – Gaant Chart

Consider Camera Angles

Research?

Continue build of environment including landscape, buildings and sky

- Move blog to sketch book

IDAT309 – 3D build progress

The following images show my current progress in building the environment for this project. Im concentrating on developing all the builings at present and it coming together well (please click on thumbnails to view full size).

Hangar 1

Air Tower

Aircraft – this model needs editing, the engines need to be put under each wing and i need to make some adjustments all over but the basis is done – this model took a couple of days to create because it took a lot of fiddling, including polygons adjusting and attaching objects using the bridge and welding techniques.

Main Airfiled

IDAT309 – Progress

Working from a google map, Ive built up some trees and a rough building, ill develop the features later but as a start i want to get base shapes down