Thursdays 11th October 2012  
Understanding the Media 2

I have modeled an asset for my environment as well as using assets from the Unity Asset Store. All I wanted to do was create a small plant to place amongst the trees and grass in the scene. I will be modeling a few more assets so I can get a bit of variety of vegetation in my environment, I want to create a few more rocks, plants and maybe trees although I can use the tree creator plugin for Unity to create trees.   

I also textured the leaf so it was ready to be put into my scene, I used Maya to unwrap and Photoshop to texture, I got the leaf texture from Autodesk Seek. My lecturer told me of the site and explained what it was and I will be using the site more often for textures and maybe for assets.

Autodesk Seek: xfrog inc : greenworks organic software, AG17 Spinacia Oleracea Spinach, Spinacia Oleracea Spinach, manuf(revit, autocad, Applications, Specifications & infomation). 2012. Autodesk Seek: xfrog inc : greenworks organic software, AG17 Spinacia Oleracea Spinach, Spinacia Oleracea Spinach, manuf(revit, autocad, Applications, Specifications & infomation). [ONLINE] Available at:http://seek.autodesk.com/product/latest/agg/xfrog/xfrog-inc-greenworks-organic-software/AG17. [Accessed 11 October 2012].

I'm still currently trying to find a better way to create the water for the river, as I have stated before most of the ways I have viewed on creating realistic water requires Unity Pro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sVvs6R4WTs
Unity 3: New Pro Water Feature - YouTube. 2012. Unity 3: New Pro Water Feature - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sVvs6R4WTs. [Accessed 11 October 2012].   

However I have more progress on my scene and completed the waterfall, and most of the close area around the waterfall. I have added my own assets as well as assets form Unity, I have added more rocks around and in the river. 

Wednesday 10th October 2012
Understanding the Media 2 

In todays lesson I have concentrated on making a waterfall for the environment, I want to make some features for the jungle a waterfall being one of them. In the Unity project file there is already a present particle effect for a waterfall, all I needed to do was alter the setting for the waterfall to suit what size I wanted to create.

I did create multiple particle effects for the waterfall to make it larger and to give the effect of it falling from different points on top of the cliff. For the bottom of the waterfall where the water hits the water surface and rocks, I used the waterfall particle effects again to create the water smashing of the rocks and down the river, this part still needs a bit of work because the river. The river doesn't look realistic, I'm using Unity's simple water script and all the textures that come with it, the problem is that the water looks extremely poor up close, but from a distance it doesn't look that bad. I have looked into finding different plugins for Unity to obtain a better package for water, a lot of the resources I have found only work on Unity Pro and I'm using the free license of Unity.

UNITY: License Comparison. 2012. UNITY: License Comparison. [ONLINE] Available at: http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses. [Accessed 11 October 2012].  

Thursday 4th October 2012
Understanding the Media 2

I have carried on developing trees for my game environment using the tree creator in unity. As well as creating trees with the tree creator I also intend to download assets from the Unity Asset Store, there are a large variety of assets available for free created by the Unity community.

Nobiax Free Plants by dactilardesign -- Unity Asset Store. 2012. Nobiax Free Plants by dactilardesign -- Unity Asset Store. [ONLINE] Available at:http://u3d.as/content/dactilardesign/nobiax-free-plants/2S8. [Accessed 04 October 2012].    

River Tool » Six Times Nothing. 2012. River Tool » Six Times Nothing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.sixtimesnothing.com/river-tool/. [Accessed 04 October 2012].   


Unfortunately I was unable to download the assets into Unity because it is not the correct version, I did look into downloading the latest version of Unity but I was able to, the latest version of Unity requires the latest version of the Mac operating system (10.5). The Mac i'm currently using is 5.4. I will have to do download it on my home computer and use the assets there. 

I want to include a river in my environment and I have looked into how to do it and there is a river building tool available for download for free created by sixtimesnothing. I have downloaded it and unzipped it into Unity and used the tool, the only problem I faced was that the graphics card is unable to run the shader for the river tool so I can't build the river. 

I will overcome the problem by carrying on the project at home and download all the assets that I will need to complete the jungle. I will need to spend time on getting the water looking realistic because at the moment it doesn't look like water.  

Wednesday 3rd October 2012 
Understanding the Media 2 

I have begun development on my project, I have spent most of my time using Unity 3D because I haven't used the program in a while. I have been experimenting with the tree creator, it generates a tree that allows you to heavily modify it.

 

Using the graph on the side bar of Unity I can add more branches and leaves linking it to different parts of the tree. Selecting different branches on the graph allowed me to edit that part of the tree, which locked the other branches and leaves stopping me from accidentally editing other parts.   

 

 The branches had rigs inside of the mesh, making it easier to move the branches into the shape I wanted. The rig had nodes spaced along which were  the edit points, I could rotate and move the rig the only option I didn't have was scaling it, that could only be done on the options in the side bar. The scaling was very specific to each part of the tree. I also looked at this quick tutorial to help me understand how the tree creator actually.worked.http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/tree-FirstTree.html 

 

Wednesday 26th September
Understanding the Media 2 

 I represented my Presentation this morning, I have improved it by including a variety of sources and a wider range of of research. I included demographics, sales data and genre data. I displayed the data on graphics to make it look more presentable.   

Both years 1 and 2 were designated into 2 groups for a debate. We had two topics to debate which were 'Games are Art' and '3D Graphics have improved film'. My group were against 'Games are Art' and we were in support for '3D Graphics have improved film'.

We suggested different points for each topic, mainly concentrating on 'Games are Art'. My main focus for the debate was although I did make other points -

Photorealism is a recreation of the fake (falsehood)

I researched into Photorealism using New Media A Critical Introduction, and read the actual definition for Photorealism. Reality is not recreated only a photographic reality, reality seen through a lens of a camera. Digital simulation has not achieved realism, only Photorealism. I also looked for quotes to use in the debate to support the argument. I also looked into the idea that artists have no freedom with being creative in the games industry. Artists are given briefs which they have to follow and no personal influence is allowed, they are part of a pipeline.

I read into to particular example, a concept artist was given a brief, the project was to create an image of a mech-planet construction site. The brief goes into detail on what is required on the image, the colour palette is restricted to only cool blues with one additional colour to pick out the details in the image. I used this example to back up the argument by explaining that the artist has no freedom in what he is creating, he is restricted to two colours.  

I found a quote by Roger Ebert who opposes the idea of games being art.

"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists, and poets. To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear."

- Roger Ebert

I used this quote to support the argument, explaining that artists in the art industry don't consider games to be an art form. This quote being a perfect example of why game are not art, saying that no artist has ever been able to compare games with other arts.    

Looking at this argument it has given me a wider mind on the subject, I have always looked at it in a biased way and always believed that games were a form of art. But arguing against it I have had the chance to view the other side of the argument and see what other people believe and they have made some interesting points. The games industry pipeline is a long list of people who have been given a brief which they have to follow building someone else's vision.    

The next debate was '3D Graphics have improved film'. My group were in support of this idea.

My points for this argument were not as strong as my points in the last debate, I began by explaining that 3D has improved the entertainment value of films. Films like Transformers could not have been achieved without the technology of 3D graphics. The animations sequences being so seamless and the quality of the 3D being photo-realistic making a more successful impact on the audience.

I then described Bullet-Time, I began by explaining how the effects of Bullet-Time were achieved before it excited, the way it was created was by editing all the single frames together, the director could then generate the illusion of the freezing of movement and action. This was not very time efficient. Bullet-Time is a very fast way of creating slow motion and this technique is improving all the time as technology advances.