Cyfle-D10-GGwyther

Portfolio site almost finished for 3d

2007-03-12T00:30:00.000Z

3d portfolio almost complete. Website Development portfolio to be designed next gonna make a nice php site with a cms in the background should take about a week and modifying this design.

Web address temporary til i get a domain could be a while for that.

New animation look laugh comment.

Need to make some character studio animations should not take to long now.

http://garethgwyther.110mb.com/

Day 8 The wrong Triumph

2007-03-01T00:30:00.000Z

Just found out i was making the wrong triumph (i was making a triumph rocket) Oh what a great day i have three days to model and finish this vehicle it should take two weeks!! shortcut time it is.

The triumph i am making is the tiger 2007 model the one with the least reference images available due to its release being a few months ago. Spent most of the day looking for a top reference image for this bike, have a bike near the same style (this is a messy way of working) all reference images should match when modeling i think its plausible to finish this with no animation.

Has been a weird week and a bit never knew the tv 3d graphics industry moved so fast im used to making a model say two -three days with no texture. four days to a week texture. Knowing some people who work in other company's (Ea, Blitz) games company's mainly they have two weeks to make a model. The tv industry is a lot faster pace.

Two days left and im already working at home to finish as much as i can. Time for bed . place the model on the usb(tires complete seat and shell nearly modeled greeble time coming up.uvmapping tomorrow night. Wish i had that reference image for the top dam manufactures!!!!

seat done Wheels in other file.

day 7

2007-02-26T00:27:00.000Z

Working on triumph some more finding it really hard to get a refference image for the top of the bike why can't manufacturers release their blueprints i need them.

day 6

2007-02-25T00:22:00.000Z

Finished Processor yippee they liked it to i think im never quite sure.

started modeling the triumph now does not seem to be much more work to do . Done a little bit of work at home aswell.

A new robot again Why??

do a search on boiler plater. victorian robot all will be revealed.

day 5

2007-02-23T00:20:00.000Z

Texture the processor wrong they wanted the processor to be iced up not in cased in an ice cube.
started again. Hopefully i will get it right this time.

Day 4

2007-02-22T00:18:00.000Z

Not much to do today spoke to Martin ive switched application to a 3d appliction i am more familar with. got given a job to do this afternoon texture a processor then ice it up.

day 3

2007-02-21T00:12:00.000Z

Finished solar tower as best as i could used some uvmapping techniques to mak it more realistic. Though told in middle of day i had put to much detail in. Martin said he would use the wire frame from my model to make it look more techy and interesting and francis would build another model.

Pretty much out of work to do now wonder whats in store tommorow.

day 2

2007-02-20T00:10:00.000Z

started solar tower today Maya is giving me problems as usual. Maya's polytools are something to be desired found the constraint tool made my life so much easier.

I hope they like what i come up with Made the tower with fans and planning to do some uvmapping tommorow.

First day of atitcus

2007-02-19T00:06:00.000Z

Have not been doing to much today was researching most of the day for a cnn breif. At the end of the day had a meeting and got given a solar tower to complete.

The people here are very dedicated i very rarely see them move from their pc's. First day is always the most nerve racking don't know what to say or who to speak to.

Crunch time Almost over

2007-02-16T00:00:00.000Z

Its been a hard two weeks sadly in the end i had to deliver a prototype after spearing with the client i agreed to finish this in my spare time.

To much work to take on i should have scaled this down more but hey when its finished it will be sweet.

Work experience next week working with atitcus media should be making a triumph for the next two weeks a good amount of time one week for model one week for uvmapping lighting, texture and animation.

working with maya not my weapon choice but i can use it.

Prototype in link show you end product soon.

Don't you think im loco

2007-02-09T23:50:00.000Z

Working day an night on briefs Its insane. I am listening to richard cheese insane in the membrane(great pianist does covers). everyone is going a bit crazy right now work to do projects to be finished one week then work experience.

My project is getting really heavy i should have done something a bit less intensive might only have a prototype to show next week i hope i can finish it. Here goes the final week.

Ideas in progress

2007-01-29T23:21:00.000Z

Everything is going as well as possible the mygo brief we are making a game called Orball where you bounce a ball off unlights when the ball hits the lights come on. Im working on the scoring and the powerups.

Their are only a few power- ups to create most of them are just adding to a variable. Though the multiball gave me a headache then i realized its in an array array slice pop all the lovely things you can do with arrays(bliss).

The games score will be based on timers. I hate timers clear interval set interval forget to clear one or name an interval wrong and a few hours of pain come my way.

The two man brief is going well currently finishing off the graphics. Our idea is about aliens invading Cardiff and taking children's rights away. The client loves the idea and is looking forward to seeing the finished product. Im going for a very cel shaded cartoon look

alein 1
walk into him and you loose energy

alein2 shoots you

gun

main character

Work time

2007-01-19T23:08:00.000Z

Received our final briefs this week . The end is neigh . I paired up with Shahim for the two man brief we chose the Promo cymru breif in which we have to make a component for a website currently we are unsure of an idea but a brainwave is looming.

In the Malaysian Mygo flash game brief i am working with Tom,Rob,Nic and Carol a real goldmine of talent in the team. We are currently trying to come up wih a bluesky idea for a game we want it to be cross culture cros gender and cross age. My mind is set in motion timefor some ideas.

Belonging, Finally belonged

2007-01-17T22:49:00.000Z

The belonging bbc brief is finally finished handed it in this week. Sadly the top trumps game was still buggy so we decided to leave it as a separate entity. the bbc were really happy with the final game they said it such an easy game to play they enjoyed the fact that it was simple (drop and drag) they felt the top trumps game was not keeping with the two other games so they were happy it was a separate entity.

A happy result for all concered (;.

Almost 2007

2006-12-30T14:14:00.000Z

My final blog of 2006, 2006 what an intresting year, a year when google bought youtube , a year when web 2.0 finally started getting round. A year when i started cyfle. I could reflect on 2006 a little more or mention my new years resolutions which are just generally a pack of lies i tell myself every year. But instead ill discuss something more intresting. What i think will be big in 2007 http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia

This is a wiki based search engine the idea behind it is users rate the acual relevence to a word typed in imagine the fun you could have with this for example the word politician would you rata http://www.parliament.uk/ site as a 100% or would you rate www.world-leaders.com as a 100%. This could be one fo the most intresting web 2 ideas to date.

With some advertising behind this product all search engine optimisation could become possibly obslete. Im not against google at all but this idea makes a lot more sense. For every word you type in google you get a lot of tottaly irelvent information take search engine optimisation out of the equation and you have a more intresting search angine available. Id love to see this product take off just to get rid of those annoying expensive adwords only time will time.

Almost forgot Happy New year to everyone.

Finished Flash training

2006-11-30T21:54:00.000Z

Flash

Flash training is now complete Neil jenkins was a great lecturer. Enjoyed the last days of the training the most flash is a great package and its potential keeps growing.

Studying multimedia i find one thing the most scary and most unique fact about the industry it never stops moving. I gave up on flash about a year ago when a lot of people started complaining about it's accesibility problems, after reading the pas 78 i relised that yeah flash does not adhear to all standards within web design but aslong as you design other options if a user can not handle flash its fine. One thing i do wonder is it possible to create accesable games in flash for a person with bad sight i guess it is possible maybe you could create a 3d audio enviroment within flash using stero panning and welcome messages. That could be an intresting project maybe even with some web 2.0 elements you could even create an online enviroment for people to speak and an online community.

Back to my personal favs game creation and 3d engines.

I truly adore 3d technology its what first grabbed me about the multimedia industry creating an enviroment where people can run away from everything and everyone and truly emerse themsleves in a completly new world .

Flash FREE 3D Engines (oh yeah)

Working with 3d engines in the past they are probablary the most cutting edge peices of technology to an interactive designer and definatley the most complicated to use. Though good or bad its what a lot of people peg the interactive industry on.

Found this little juicy morsal http://www.flashsandy.org/. This is one fo the nicest 3d engines i have seen made with flash so far. Smooth fps and uvmaping awsome could have some real fun with this beauty.

With Flashes growing community and development scene is their anything flash is not capable of doing anymore. Apart from a smooth framerate in which case it can never be forgiven (flash 9 please include some of these).

Demo of sandy shes a beauty

http://www.flashsandy.org/sources/1_0/tests/CameraTest/

Thats a game model of a starwars id say its around 500 polygons+(tris +)
It apprantly will import 3d models form an xml file with their texture cordinates retained this is really intresting.

Just Found another great engine but it lags a little this one has some physics awsome.

http://blog.noventaynueve.com/papervision/

demo of papervision

http://www.noventaynueve.com/lab/NRG-2006/

I need to find an excuse to use one of these and soon.

Worrying times aheed Adobe vs Microsoft

2006-11-29T00:26:00.000Z

Microsoft is attempting to break into the interactive design world with their expression packages id like to say on face value they would fail.

Looks like they could win on one front at least looking into the expression packages even though most designers use macs. Microsoft have one package called sparkle which will be capable of creating web applications similar to shockwave though using their direct x libary sparkle will be capable of creating realtime 3d objects within a web application.

As a trainee in interactive media i find the possibility of microsoft gaining a foothold quite frightning in some instance and quite intriguing in others. It would be niave to dismiss microsofts work. Guess this explains the rise of asp.net servers .

Only current problems i can see with these packages are they are made by microsoft who have a poor reputation for the frontpage product and the fact that sparkle will only work with a windows vista machine. Looks like theirs more to learn, though theirs at most another 2 years before every home user has definatly switched to vista.

Hope adobe has a rival other than lingo to XAML otherwise they might just loose the battle before its started.

Links

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193500186&pgno=5&queryText=

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/08/microsoft-entering-adobe-territory.html

Sound design and flash

2006-11-28T18:10:00.000Z

Sound Design

At the end of last week 23 - 24th nov we had sound design training with reason and audacity from jean paul jones.

Audacity is a gnu sound editor free which is nice though no where near as poerful as its competiters though and has a bad habbit of falling over (crashing) hopefully the creators will get that bug out though.

Reason is a really great synth/sampling package. The whole package is based off what i used to use in my old uni to record sounds by anologue nice to know reason is kind of halfway their to replacing it. The lectures were intresting and the moby dick sound excersise had more than one pirate in for throw. Yo ho me heartys yo ho.

Flash

We have just started flash training we have had one lecture already on it already and moreover the next todays. The lecturer truly knows his stuff he has been working with flash before it was owned by macromedia. Ive been in and out of using flash since about version 5 and have made various things on it im no expert because i would prefer to use and opengl libary to create games though after speaking to the flash lecturer i was shocked to learn their is an application that will let me do this OH YES YES YES!!!!

May i present http://processing.org/ it also has a libary to create mobile games (AWWWWW drooling) Now all i need to to is figure out how to get some physics working and a basic 3d engine JAd and jar games rule.

P.S For those considering creating a 3d game for a mobile phone.

What you will require

1. 3d engine (opengl is the libary not an engine) In open gl this can be done a lot easier thand flash.

2. Physics engine use a math function and to hell with the problems.

3. Low poly models (look the 3d modelers are shivering) 300 polygons/tris (main model= vehicle or Character sorry to be a sticular remember your working with cpus that run very very slowly with limited or no ram none of lifes little luxurys) everything else alpha mapped with collisions.Uvmapping only to display colours(unwrapping for short its about as much fun as an appointment with the dentist trust me i hate the dentist)

What should i do for my first project easy Formula 1 racing (racing games are always the easiest to create learn how to biuld a course then make and fps) Will start this project after flash during christmas will setup a new blog for its development shortly.

Web design project finished "Why use asp?"

2006-11-22T19:51:00.000Z

The web design project is complete.

This has been a real eye opener as a project. Started out discussing the project thoroughly with my colleague Tom about what needed to be in the project. We achieved this by dissecting elements from the breif at first we were a bit confused about what information was going to go into the site after talking and comparing other websites we settled for what we though was best. In this project we decided our roles i would develop the back end for the website (cms system) and tom would work on the design in the end this worked out really well.

Last Friday we presented the project to the client (www.seqeunce.co.uk) they were pleased with the design and the content managment system. They had a small crit about me leaving the clear button on a form in the cms system which is perfectly understandable when i think about it in hindsight.

Looking at the other projects i was quite shocked at a lot of the people on the course most have never touched asp/asp.net before and pulled out some really great development work.

Given the option I would have developed the back end in php. Here are my list of reasons why i have a strong dislike to asp.net

1. Its structure is hard to follow in many instances and run's very chunky through a browser.

2. Asp.net(Microsoft's server technology is used by 31% of the world's servers where as apache an open source server technology is used by 61% of web servers I wonder why?).

3. In the architecture of asp and asp.net to make a third party application to run you need to install a 3rd party product directly into the server where as in php you can just upload a gzip file that will load without bothering any maintenance guys and paying for a dedicated server

4. Lastly its made by Microsoft the baron of pc themselves who most reticently have tested my patience's for the final time this is why. Their is a standardization for xml known as E4x Microsoft has refused to include it in ie7 why because they can.

This little piece of info is brought to you to explain many reason's why firstly asp.net is not the best to use.

Ask yourself these question's?

1. Why does asp/asp.net not run as standard on a apache server?

2. Why are 61% of the world's servers Apache non Asp/.net and 31% IIS(microsofts attempt at a webserver) ?

(statistics http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html)

3. Why do Microsoft block superior technology?

4. Why does Mozilla/Linux exist is it merely an alternative?

5. What is the language these apache servers use?
(let me give you a clue it begins with a P)

Another interesting question is do industry clients really want IIS the answer is simple yes they do or is it?

I thinks its more of a service option if i said to a client if i build your site in asp/.net i could charge you through the roof or i could use PHP is more reliable and safer than asp.net and does not rely on Microsoft technology the choice is yours. Most usa sites are PHP for a good reason think about it look at usa sites look at most sites on the web.

In 1995 a lot of dos programmers said this new operating system would never take off dos and cobol are the way to go. In 1996 they were unemployed and unemployable windows 95 was released.

Im writing this section in hope people consider learning php, Asp.net is worth learning but no future is stable in web or in the information technology industry 61% is a lot of websites in comparison to 31%.

Php sites can be developed on a shoe string budget. Asp.net sites can be expensive especially considering you really need a dedicated server/msdn libary and possibly visual studio for good development.

Web design project

2006-11-05T20:34:00.000Z

2 week ago we were taught html and css from steve at atticus media. They were intresting tutorials ive never used much css before apart from font edeting, it was great to learn
that css can be used to create table. Last monday we were given the html breifs i have been paired up with tom a member of the course i get on very well with we have dicussed what we want to do in the site aswell as ways in which we can do it.

I was quite shocked to see toms sketchbook wow he has real talent at concepting and looking at his ideas for the website so far he seems to have a great capability as a designer. We agreed early on that we each wouldmake a design in photoshop/illustrator to demonstrate an idea. Mine is based on the idea of water and curves bubles etc.seeimage below his ideas are based on materials use in the bays architecture.

On monday we will discuss the design of the site and agree on a final idea, Tuesday we will code a design and on wednesday we will meet with phil murphy from sequence to discuss our final idea and possibly get a sign off to go ahead with the idea. I want to biuld a cms system into this site but im going to need to discuss this with phil. This is a tight shcedual we have to keep the project has to be presented a week friday. fingers crossed i hope my idea is not laughed at.

Maya finished

2006-11-03T14:08:00.000Z

Maya tv ident project completed watch and enjoy

Past two weeks

2006-10-30T09:38:00.000Z

Week 1

The past two weeks have been quite hectic learning maya for the first week mat from atticus media came in and gave us some truly awsome tutorials. To train people in a 3d software application in three days is an amazing thing to accomplish. I found the training extremly intresting and finally i have made a transition form 3d max to maya quite smoothly.

I am currently finishing off my characters for the maya project the scene is complete just rigging/ Uvw unwrapping if i have time and animating to go should have this project complete by firday. I have made my scene light weight to render most objects in the scene are around 3000 polys max meaning rendering time will be short to say the least.

robot image (so far)

Monkey image so far Legs need rework

Scene animated waiting for character animation

Weapen needs retexturing

Week 2

Last week we were trained by steve from atticus media in html/css and dreamweaver. In some caes it was a little bit old ground for most of us wihtin the class but it was really helpful i learn't to change som bad habbits and how to make Css tabels which was truly intresting and refreshing.

Digital Story

2006-10-13T16:25:00.000+01:00

This week has been really exciting

Tuesday

Worked with Catherine Limstrum on my script for my digital story. Had a lot of fun she discussed how their were only two stories my life as a dog and mission impossible aswell as how to write great scripts and how ever story needs a begining middle and end.

Wednesday

Finalised script started to get ideas for images and recorded script to sound file.

Thursday

Edited sound and started to compile digital story.

Friday

Finished digital story.

Here it is click play.

Week 3 started

2006-10-09T09:29:00.000+01:00

Last week was great on wednesday we went to the bbc and saw their new media department. We saw a lot of intresting products the bbc have worked on, i really enjoyed looking at the education department's productions.

On friday I presented my presentation on the multimedia pioneer Ted Nelson. I was extremly nervous during the presentation i got through it in the end.

Third week today started today digital story telling breif today. In this we will have to take photographs record sound write a story and put it altogether in premier. Hardest asset to create is the story do i use a Philosiphal story an approach looking at the world from my eyes or do i use a deeply personal story something in my past regurgitated for the first person.

Wrote a personal story so far. I have decided to write a philsophical one tonight maybe a veiw on poltics war and why democracy is a lie.

Photoshop An illustrator Training

2006-10-04T08:59:00.000+01:00

Its now the second week at dimension 10. The first week was extremly intresting we looked at the design ethics of hauristics. Hauristics is a way of creating a multimedia product that better relates to the user. A easy definiton of hauristics is a set of rules to giude a user round a interface of a product. Though some rules have to be obeyed within hauristics some can be bent or completly broken though certian design ideas though most of these rules have to be obeyed to create a fubctional site.

It has been an intresting week so far, on monday we were trained in Photoshop in the morning then in the afternoon we visited s4c web department. The lecturer was really great he went through near every possible use of photoshop we could use he gave a lot of new shortcuts i was not aware of before. The s4c staff were very welcoming and explained how they work on their products.

On tuesday we spent the day learning illustrator. Illustrator was great to learn it really helped me. I found a new way to concept my work before i go into photoshop or a 3d program. I feel a lot stronger as a designer through learning this program. At the end of the lecture i spoke to the lecturer about 3d he gave me a good link to a new 3d program that may end up replacing some industry tools mudbox 3d I signed up last night to the beta testing of this product hopefully i will be accepted.

Received a new assignment on tuesday aswell a mockup of an idea for an interactive media product based on a user using the product at lunchtime. The options are either a website or a game. Currenlty im going a game idea considering that my main users will be office users who access their internet a lot on their lunchbreak it has to be quick to use with a standard set of controls. This assignment is going to be a lot of fun to mock up.

My learning of maya ple is going well i think im on track to show a new peice of work on friday.

2006-09-26T23:40:00.000+01:00

First Two days of training at Dimension 10 started, i have found im working with a group of extremly talented people. The course outline looks great im looking forward to working on some exciting briefs.

So far on the course we have been analisying websites and interactive media. Tommorow we will be analisying offline media. I was handed my first breif today to research the multimedia pioneer Ted Nelson and present a powerpoint presentation.

Ted Nelson seems to be suffering some bad press through his project Xanadu a bit of a mystery project to me but i will keep reading. Ted Nelson seems a bit of a rebel from what i have read so far just. quote "most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong." (quote from http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/nelson.html) should be an intresting character to research.

I can not wait to start the digital story telling breif that will be issued next week got a few ideas for a story all ready.

Currently trying to learn Maya again the 3d Max to maya learning curve is a bit steep but im finding where most of the same controls are. Seems maya is a bit more mathodical in its approach to modeling in max i could click bevel and drag the bevel out easy where as in maya it seems click bevel and then the bevel is automatic depending on the numbers i put it in, think ill get the hang of it by next week glad i found out how to use the hotbox a while back "phew".

Ill try and set myself a small project with maya ple in my spare time to be completed by next friday. Im gonna try and make a 3d model i made in the past with max im gonna make bender the greatest robot ever thought up heres the old model in max. By the next time i blog i hope to have a new bender made in maya.