Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Critical Review

Categories
Advanced & Experimental Group Showreels

Week 12: Group Project Showreel & Critical Review

In this final week, I put together my group project showreel to show the final outcome and my models breakdown, and I also wrote my critical review about this project.

Steampunk group project showreel

Critical review

This project was full of ups and downs. However, I feel like all of the components of this group have been professional, helpful, understanding, and a pleasure to work with. Communication is key in a group project and more when there is a time constrain that requires efficiency and accuracy. This team have definitely comply with their individual tasks and exceeded expectations. As a group, we managed to have all tasks finished on time, and we managed to discussed openly many issues we had throughout this project.

From my side, I have assumed the look dev artist role which I was very pleased with. I admit that look dev artists have the pressure of finishing the models as soon as possible so I did not really reach the point in my model where I was completely satisfied. For example, I had issues with my hologram model as it was way too heavy for the scene and I had to reduce the poly count of the model in order for it to work. I also had to remodel the base of the hologram as we were unsure how to make it work in the scene. While the hologram was a bit of a problem for me, the spaceship and the radio models were good and I just had to make small changes to them that would not vary their final look.

On another note, I have taken a lot of new knowledge from this: I have learnt to use Substance Painter to create my own textures which has opened another important door as a 3D artist; I have improved my modelling skills to have a polished finish in my topology to make it as much optimised as possible (and avoid future issues in crowded scenes such as this steampunk comp); I have also learnt how to create proper UV maps and the several techniques to do so; and lastly, I have also learnt how this industry pipeline works on general basis, which also is good to experience as it has given me an idea on what pathways I would like to go after I finish this master.

Categories
Advanced & Experimental Personal Showreels

Week 12: Personal Showreel & Critical Review

In my final week I finally put together my personal project showreel, detailing the project’s breakdown and final outcome

Personal Project Showreel – Mayan Environment

Critical Review

This project has been both enlightening and challenging. Thinking about my targets I set to myself before I started with this journey, I consider that I have fulfilled more than I expected. I was aware that I set a complex task to myself and that it would require to give up certain aspects in order to keep up with the deadline. I think that all that I was planning to achieve has been done with the exception of the final comp, where I was planning to show a change from day to night in the sky, playing with the lighting conditions. I also would have done many things differently such as UVs and texturing; this part could have been done better if I could have done the textures myself in Substance Painter how I was planning to do originally. However, due to obvious reasons (time constrains) I had to opt for downloaded textures that look overall good, but not at 100% how I would have wanted to. The river simulation is also another aspect that I would have wanted to expend more time with, as I consider I have not had the chance to practice simulations in depth in this course.

On the bright side, I also consider that I have improved my modelling and texturing skills by learning how to shape more organic models and how to use textures in my benefit to reduce the modelling time (e.g. using textured cards for the leaves instead of modelling them). I also learned a lot about water simulation and I had the chance to practice further my compositing skills with Nuke, programme that I have not had the time to use since end of term 2.

Categories
Collaborative Showreels

Personal & Group Showreels, & Critical Review

Personal showreel

Group showreel

Critical Review

This project has felt like a long journey squished in a really short period of time. At the beginning 10 weeks looked like plenty enough time to fulfill all required aspects for this project from gathering the group members, going through planning roles, tasks, and targets, to finishing up in time for the exhibition at the end of term 2. However, this was not the case for this group, since we started with several delays in getting the brief of this project and to get it going. This project has been exciting and inspiring, at the same time as draining and stressful. However, I feel like has been a good learning experience to know how to respond towards similar stressful situations that could be presented in future jobs in the industry.

The key aspects that I consider important for a collaborative project would be realistic time management and organisation of targets, prioritising most important tasks first, problem-solving skills, team work helping each others, and clear communication.

The time management and organisation in this project was difficult as we all had different schedules, other projects, and lectures, in addition to the fact that it was also a big group with 8 students, 2 lecturers, and 2 external studio partners involved. A good solution we came up from the beginning was the shared space we created in Miro where we could upload all our mood boards, references, links, tasks, and other important information for the group. Later on we came up with a fixed schedule for weekly meetings and if we could not attend, we could always check the recording of it. I feel like that helped a lot to keep all of us in the same page. We also learnt to prioritise tasks by level of importance in the project and to disregard other tasks that maybe were not doable or achievable for the time frame we had to finish the project.

Another aspect I learnt a lot from was the fact that nearly every task I had to make, would come with a technical problem: for example, the optimisation of the models for Unity, learning how to link textures in Unity, fixing UV maps in Maya, learning new programmes apart from Unity like Mudbox, or even learning new techniques in Maya like to generate hair with XGen to then optimise it for Unity.

One of the most important aspects in team work is communication and sometimes it was a bit difficult. As mentioned before, we all had different schedules and sometimes to receive an answer to a question could take hours or days to be answered. However, we tried to make the most of the weekly team meetings by preparing all the work in progress we had to show to the team, and reviewing all the tasks and targets we needed to get done every week (every weekly meeting would take between 2 to 3 hours).

Definitely, this has been a good project to get to know how working on the industry would feel like, and I can say that I have developed not only new technical and artistic knowledge, but also important soft skills needed to keep up with a professional VFX company pipeline.