Sarah's Games Design 2016

Tuesday, 30 January 2018

Year 2 - Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products

Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products

Task 1:

Quantitative:

A review from IMDb

Audience ratings - An audience rating is a figure based on a sample of statistics which shows how many people like or dislike something, this could be anything from a tv show to a game but in this case it is based off peoples opinions on a film. Big Trouble in Little China has had an overall rating of 7.3/10 on IMDb and 6.9/10 on Rotten Tomatoes. On Rotten Tomatoes there is a total of only 38 reviews counted, 31 of those reviews were positive and 7 were negative. On IMDb they have collected 345 user reviews and 190 from film critics so far. However, without counting all of the reviews I can't get a specific number of positive or negative reviews. The average rating on IMDb is 7/10 with a rating of 8/10 only 2% behind, it was rated generally a little higher by men than it is by women with only 7,328 women voting at an average of 7.1 and a staggering 76,648 men voting with a little higher average of 7.3. It is surprisingly rated the highest by people who are under the age of 18, this number is a 7.5/10. As this is the highest rating on average this doesn't seem to bode that amazingly well for the films reputation, however this overall review and rating still makes the film better than average and even quite positive. People between the ages of 18 and 29 rated the film an average of 7.2/10, there is rating of 7.4 that is the average from 30 to 44 year olds. The lowest review was surprisingly from those of the age 45 and upwards as a 7.1/10, this is quite shocking as this category of people is the films target audience.

Qualitative:

What a focus group may look like

Focus Groups - It is a research technique used by a company as a marketing strategy, the use of this method and all of the others definitely gives these companies the best possible answers to any of their marketing questions. These groups are most likely filled with a small amount of people, generally this number can range anywhere between 6 and 12. They are probably from within a target audience that is specific to the product or service in hand. The group participate in a planned discussion that is supposed to draw out its audiences perceptions about a certain topic or area of interest. It should be be a non-threatening and receptive environment so that the subjects feel comfortable enough to share their true thoughts and feelings. This research technique helps to see alternative ways of gaining information from consumers without using a simple and non-engaging survey. They are flexible and gain the advantage on others who have the ability to talk to their customers. The people who are taking part may vary in things like gender, sexuality, race, religion and backgrounds etc but the topic is fully constant. After scouring the internet to try and find any sort of focus group research relating to Big Trouble in Little China I came up with nothing that appears to be of use. I am guessing this is probably because the majority of the films audience is over the age of 30 and the concept of discussing this film seems too outdated to be worth the effort.

Possible answers from a questionnaire

Questionnaires - These consist of a series of questions which are used to gather information from the people who take part. It was invented in 1838 by the Statistical Society of London. Its main advantage is that it is cheap to set up and how it does not require as much effort as verbal surveys. The possible answers that are given are most likely going to be from a multiple choice selection, this makes the given data much easier to compile and average out. However, these set choices as answers can frustrate some users due to how they cannot fully express their opinion if it is not fully there. Unless the questionnaires are done in many different formats and languages some subjects may not be able to read the questions on their own. This research method can be very useful if you know what specific factors you want to explore by the fact that you are able to make multiple people answer the same question and get similar answers. A questionnaire can ask a large range of questions varying from things as simple as what age, gender or ethnicity someone is to what genre of games, films and music they like. This means that a company could use this to explore their target audience, so for the film Big Trouble in Little China the writers could've figure out what language they should use based on the age and gender of the people interested in the film. This could've made the film appropriate for larger or more specified audiences, I'm guessing because of how old the film is I cannot find any questionnaires based on the film.

What an interview my look like

Face-to-face Interviews - This is a data collection method in which an interviewer directly communicates with the subject with a specific set of questions or from free will. This choice can take a long time to complete but allows the interviewer to acquire the same information from a questionnaire but much more in depth, not only this but it also allows the recognition of body and facial language to be taken in and considered. The response rate is generally increased and the feedback can be a lot more reliable and trustworthy. If someone writes down on a questionnaire that they are 30 year old male and they are lying you can't see that clearly but if they were to come to an interview you could generally take a guess as to whether they are lying or not. The fact that these interviews require staff to perform them is probably the biggest disadvantage to this method because that can cost an awful lot of money to gain the right kind of interviewers. The interviewer may not know what to note down which could lead to a lot of wasted time if nothing becomes of that collected information. This could be because the interviewer has some biased opinions and would rather not have their subjects opinion noted. These interviews could however help to find out more information for a companies business none the less. Finding out what a person likes in a more intimate setting often makes the interviewee more comfortable to give their full opinion. This can help the company cater their considered product more intriguing to larger audiences. Like all of the above their was no such interview of Big Trouble in Little China's audience, it was more of the actors and other people who took part in the movies creation.

Audience Classification:

Socio-economic - Theses are groupings that are broken down into different sections and divided from A to E. Band A is pretty obviously the higher earning group, they are classed as professionals like doctors. Band B has the roles like teachers and graphic designers, band C has to further categories, 1 and 2. C1 or White Collar includes occupations like junior managers and nurses, C2 or Blue Collar has semi manual workers such as plumbers and builders. Second from the lowest band is clearly D, you will find a manner of unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers. Band E has those who cannot or don't support themselves in a financial way, these can be anything from a pensioner to a student. There is the possibility of their being a seventh category but it is currently being debated. These different classes are used by companies to determine which group would be their most suitable target audience.

Difference between demographics and psych-graphics

Psycho-graphics - These can be a buyers habits, values or even hobbies, psycho-graphics are different from demographics because they explain why a consumer buys something rather than who the actual consumer is. Understanding an audiences psycho-graphics is the key to effectively reaching them. Say we were trying to create a film that would then become a game, to be successful in both ideas we would need to compare who would buy the game versus the film. The ideal situation would be to create a film and game catering to the same specific audience based on why they would want it so they would buy both the film and the game. The sort of things to look out for and link psycho-graphics wise would be what genre they like. One of the most common game and film genres is action, so if you created an action film and game its audiences would be in the masses, not only this but if someone enjoys an action game with a lot of violence they would probably enjoy a film with the same characteristics and vice versa. Big Trouble in Little China was only ever looking for its singular audience, the most likely reason that people would be drawn to it is probably because its an american comedy rather than its martial arts side.

Mainstream - Mainstream audiences are pretty much audiences where a lot of people like the same popular product. Companies will pretty much always cater to this group of people simply because its easier. Easy money, easy advertising and easy on time. Big Trouble in Little China is actually more mainstream than would be originally thought, as I stated above it is a comedy which is one the best genres for a company to have chosen due to its popularity. If we were thinking in music terms this would easily be the 'pop' genre.

If the different groups of popularity were like genres of music

Alternative - Alternatives audience are quite a lot less common than mainstream audiences, this group will generally have its own ideas of what they like and although they are smaller than mainstream ideas they still are pretty popular opinions. Big Trouble in Little China has its martial arts factor as its alternative audience, loved by many, just not as much as comedy. If we were thinking in music terms this audience would be the type of people that like rock,metal, indie or rap etc.

Niche - Unsurprisingly this audience hold the smallest amount of followers, these types of consumers very rarely share the opinion of anyone they meet. Big Trouble in Little China has a good thing going that it doesn't use any of these factors. The creators and companies tend to steer clear of these audiences to get the most out of their work.If we were thinking in music terms again these people would be fans of more abnormal genres like symphonic metal etc.

Applied:

Correlation - The correlation between Quantitative research and Qualitative research is that they both are used to find out information about an audiences wants and needs. The numerical information and the non-numerical information both have very similar research topics, they both want to find out the most information to help their product or service sell well.

How successful were my methods? - My methods I would say were fairly good, I researched as deeply as I could into the ideas and I feel as though I may have gone further into detail as others. However, I could definitely have done my own research which could've included my friends and family to get my own personal and possibly more accurate results. However, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes seemed pretty amazing, detailed and accurate sources to use.

Task 2:

Selection of content:

The most known quote from the film

Screenplay - The screenplay of the film was specified like the rest of its content to cater to its target audience. The script is written so that the martial arts side would be kept true to so the alternative audience, that enjoy that aspect, keep their faith in it. But it has also elements of the comedic aspect to appeal to the mainstream audience, this includes the gags and long lasting ironic quotes as shown to the right. The main character is a masculine male, according to the statistics shown in task 1 the film was rated more and also higher by men. Because the film is led by such a strong male character it's stereo-typically not that surprising that the majority of its audience is male. The masculinity of Jack Burton was written amazing well by the script writers to give such a conceited and egotistical main role.

What the visuals in Big Trouble in Little China mainly consist of

Visuals - What we see is very typical of late 80's movie visuals with the lighting being very dark and moody, this style caters itself to the audience of its time. To make its audience feel more immersed the creators of the film used stereo-typical Chinese people and surroundings, this helps to really bring out the classic martial arts feel. The creators used a handsome Jack Burton probably because this should have helped the movie appeal more to women than most martial art films do, however I did notice that there were no sexualities in the film other than straight and this is possibly because of the times. You see Jack in his truck at the very start you can see Jack in his large truck, this could be a metaphor of masculinity with the size of it. We see the electricity shown by the black magic with the static blue lights, this shows its audience that its true to its magical roots. The roads shown at the beginning are quite narrow and long with fields surrounding them, this attracts the audience that don't specifically like the martial arts genre because its not started in Chinatown. We see the rain pouring down on Jacks windscreen this helps to back up the lightning with the dark and moody lighting. The Chinese market sets the scene for the rest of film for the karate loving part of the audience, we see a lot food in the market like chicken and duck which helps the people who aren't that big on the cultural history think of the classic food that they may have ordered themselves. The betting and drinking that we see shows the masculinity of Jack Burton and his friends, this targets the male audience with the idea of them comparing to him. All of the tourists in Egg Shen's bus are white except one female, this could be their way of achieving more of a racial equality so it seems more interesting to the masses. We can see all of the guns, bandannas and black/red/ karate belts, these features are very key to any martial arts film and give the film a slightly more genuine appeal to those who are fans of it. A Chinese standoff between the gangs is shown to gather the fans of action films and the Chinese black magic is featured with smoke and lighting for the appeal of the true Chinese setting.

Sound - The sound in the film starts of very solemn with a low mood as the soundtrack, this gives its audience a variation of music so they don't bored and this certain scene needs the music to create the right ambience. We then go into some light rock when we see Jack for the first time, again this is probably the masculine side of the audience coming through with our introduction to his character.

What the typical view of Chinatown is throughout the film

Sequences - At the beginning we start with a look into the future where Black Magic is being questioned, this gives the audience a first look into what they are getting into so they don't feel like they're watching just any film. We then go back to the present day with Jack Burton again seeming very masculine driving his truck and eating fast food, once he arrives in Chinatown we see him surrounded by the Chinese culture and people which brings the audience to its main attraction. The middle of the film is filled with the action and chase of the film, this appeals to its audience because many of the viewers like action films and in this is the martial arts seeps through. At the end we have a happy scene with a little bit of romance to appeal to the romantic audience, however the masculinity comes back when Jack goes back on his own.

Construction of content:

Colours - All of the colours that have been used are generally very dark, this is linked back to the visuals of the 80's film. The main colours that are used are red which is generally thought of as the main colour for China, we then have some blue which links back to the electricity so that the audience who enjoy magical films make the connection and yellow which again is a very Chinese like colour. The colours used are not particularly very vibrant or pigmented and are very dull, however this is probably because of the equipment and style of the times, this should apply to all of the audience.

The title/intro font for Big Trouble in Little China

Fonts - The font at the beginning and the end with the credits are a very basic white font with 3D lettering. The font of the title 'Big Trouble in Little China,' is in a bold, red and Chinese takeaway font, this may be tacky but is pretty stereotypical so even simply by the title we can already tell that it will be based in Chinatown. In the middle of this we can see the same font but with Chinese lettering.

Codes and Conventions:

Jack always seems to be the one front, this could be
a show of his masculinity in protecting.

Symbolic (Characters actions) - We can see Egg Shen backing up Jack right from the start so we already begin to like him and see that not everything we see is as it seems. A possible metaphor could be how Jack crosses a large bridge in his truck, this could be to show how he became a different person. One way we can see Jack foreshadowing what will happen is when he says 'a man'd have to be some kind of fool to think we're all alone in this universe,' this would please the part of the audience that like the magical part of the film as they now know that something like that may happen or even be a key feature. The friends that Jack makes are different genders and races which again helps the creators connect to further cultures and gives a symbolism of anyone being friends with each other. There are so many cultures that are portrayed within the film, the majority of them come from the same ethnic group but they all share different views. This makes its audience believe how the Chinese cultures work.

Technical (Camera Techniques and Shots) - The only specific thing that the camera ever does is point to the main person speaking, however the majority of the time it points at Jack even when he isn't the one speaking.

Modes of Address:

1st and 3rd Person - I don't believe that the actors ever address themselves or each other in third person. All the scenes are referred to in first person in speaking and third person with the camera.

Egg Shen performing magic in his interview with his
attorney

Formal - The only real formality in the film is right at the beginning when Egg Shen's attorney interviews him about the events that happened. This makes us as the audience see how strange this concept of formality is with this culture as they're so used to just saying what they think (at least that is what we are led to be believe from the creators).

Informal (Slang, Expletives etc.) - Jack is very informal, he is very loud, rude and makes a lot of jokes, at no point is he formal towards anyone. This brings out his cocky masculine side and appeals to the male audience. Jack also swears a lot, these expletives are mainly used by him and no one else, this appears to have the same appeal as the rest of his informality.

References:

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-market-research-focus-group-2296907
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090728/ratings?ref_=tt_ql_op_4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire
http://www.spinter.lt/site/en/vidinis/vidmenu/face-to-face-interview
https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-psychographics
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/mainstream-vs-alternative-media-21113.html
https://prezi.com/ynsi5tngnrvz/classification-of-audience/
https://www.slideshare.net/952501/how-media-producers-define-their-target-audience-19065483

Saturday, 23 December 2017

Year 2 - Unit 4 & 5: Originate, develop and research an idea for a game - Task 2

Unit 4 & 5
Originate, develop and research an idea for a game
Task 2

(Links to content in blue links)

At the beginning of our idea creation I was actually in a completely different group so I missed out on the original ideas, however with my first group I took part in all of the generation. As there was only two of us in my first group I was given the task of creating the documentation for more than just the one idea. I had to create the mood boards and mind maps for the original 4 ideas, the first idea in a mind map was the one my teammate ended up choosing to do alone, it was called Demons of the Crest. It was a game that was simply put to be Big Trouble in Little China gone Dark Souls style, in this padlet I came up with the idea for the first two bosses, one was called Artemis (The Fallen Keeper) who once lived in the lower district of Silvercrest as a Gravedigger and the other was Faine (Shadow of the Abyss) who was the former priest for the Church of Silvercrest. I came up with some music ideas for the different types of scenes, the intense boss battles and fighting scenes should have symphonic metal in the background and dark ambient music for the loading screens and resting periods. The second idea was for a game idea called Rise of the Crest, this was one hundred percent my favourite idea because it was based on the mechanics of the game Uncharted. In this idea I came up with the ideas for the enemies to be Chinese Ninjas that fight you in a Chinese forest where the light seeps through the trees. The art style of the characters and environments should be 3D and photorealistic like what is found in the Uncharted games, combat mechanics include the use of guns, explosives, melee and the possible use of a bow and arrow. Sound effects that should be implemented were also included in this padlet, they consisted mostly animals, combat and objects. The target audience was also included to be towards any gender of the age 16 and above, this was because of the intense combat, take downs and the open gender tag because of the diversity of having the choice to be either a male or female protagonist. The third idea was called Kombat of the Krest and was never fully completed however we got as far as defining the art style which would appear to be 2.5D, the whole game idea was inspired by Mortal Kombat hence the name. The forth game idea was called Jackman, this game did not get any mood board ideas as I moved groups however, this game and the other three have fully completed mind maps that are shown below:

When I moved groups I did miss the first steps of coming up with the ideas however I was still given the task of making a padlet for each of the 4 ideas. After being filled in on what ideas they came up with I expanded them with some mood boards and further ideas, I created the padlets off of the Game Ideas document they created at they created at the very start which wasn't fully finished so I had to flesh out the ideas further on my mood boards. The first idea they came up with was a game called SUM TING WONG, as a padlet I included where it shall be played which was within the streets of Chinatown within of the many restaurants in that surrounding area and when it was set, 1980's. The second idea I developed was for a game called Big Truck; Little China, it would be an action adventure game that started in Canada's Western provinces. After starting in British Columbia you eventually end up in San Francisco's China town. You play the infamous Jack Burton who is employed as an Ice Road Trucker in British Columbia and Alberta, along your journeys you get in bar fights by night and the more you get intoxicated the better your fighting skills will be. You would also be able to interact with gas stations to gain fuel and a place to stay overnight, overnight thieves may attempt to steal cargo or your truck. The third idea was for a game called Jenny's Prison, this story starts off in China during the Japanese occupation in WWII, you are captured during the battle of Khalkhin Gol, instead of being transported to do 10 years of hard labour you are recruited into the Soviet Army to fight on the Eastern Front. After all of this ordeal you survive only to discover something much worse in the ruins of the Nazi concentration camps. The forth and final idea was called Jack and Cthulhu, this was the idea we decided to go with, we felt that it was best choice mainly because this had the most fleshed out ideas. It would be the easiest to actually pull off and create, it also had a lot of potential to go further and gain more content. You would start off in New Orleans, specifically The French Quarter and Jackson Square which is within the state of Louisiana. Jackson Park is a historic park within the French Quarter, this will be the centrepiece for the beginning scene of the game. You will play Jack Burton who's truck is taken by a cult, once following the cultist to the end of a pier not far from Jackson Square, your truck falls off with Jack holding on, you are taken by teleportation to New Zealand. Once in New Zealand you find yourself within a huge bayou, you must fight off all the enemies and then teleport to R'lyeh. In R'lyeh you will be given the task of stopping an enemy from awakening Cthulhu. Another team member (Sam) created the mind maps which also helped create the mood boards:

Sum Ting Wong
Big Trouble; Little China
Jenny's Prison
Jack and Cthulhu

We did a survey that asked the public questions relating to video games and our ideas, we had a total of 23 responses to the survey with a mix of people who played games and who didn't. The thing that we didn't clearly think through enough was probably the fact that we didn't tell everyone about the actual game idea so the first question about whether or not people were interested in our game came out as the majority (54.5%) saying they didn't know enough about it to form a strong opinion. We only got 17 responses to the gender question so I do not believe that all of the results will be 100% accurate, with 58.8% being female and the other 41.2% being male or identifying as another gender. We added the gender question after asking our class to complete it and they answered the rest so if the responses were accurate the idea that our target audience would be mainly male would be correct. However, on the question that asks how old they are the majority being 73.9% said that they were 16-21 so out target audience age wise was completely spot on and we should cater to a wide audience. Another question that played in our favour was the one which asked what was people's favourite genre of game with Action-Adventure being the top choice at 60.9% choosing that, this is the genre of game ours shall be. The least popular choice of game genre was sports which has nothing to do with our game so we definitely have that upside. 30.4% of the people we asked said that they only play 0-5 hours of games a week, our game should only last under an hour so this works for the masses. The second highest choice was 21 hours plus at 26.1%, this means that our game can still be used by them but it just might not take up all their game time. The PlayStation platform was the most popular for people to play on at 52.2%, our game would only be on PC, luckily this option came second with 43.5% of the people we asked using it. 91.3% of people we asked said we asked said that we should include Easter eggs and collectables in the game, this is what we hoped for because we had a lot of fun coming up with the ideas for them so if no one wanted them it would all go to waste. 73.9% of people thought 3 levels was just the right amount to have however 21.7% of people thought that it wasn't enough so we will now probably think about adding one or two more if that doesn't overdo it. Relating to the playable characters 82.6% of people thought we should have more than just the one so we will probably think about adding another character, when asking who we should add if we choose to 68.2% of people thought it should be Gracie Law.

The constraints we had to consider were the time limit we had, I especially had to worry about this because I had to do my new groups and my old groups work in the same time it took everyone else to just do the one. This issue resulted in our first game ideas not being very fleshed out or in depth, however I feel as though we have managed to pull it all off in time. Costs never really became a problem through the process, this was because things like bubbl and padlet are free services so the develop of just the ideas was not difficult cost wise. Having three people in one group may seem a lot easier than working alone and in some ways it does, however trying to co-ordinate everyone and what they have to do can become very complicated. You can only go and certain distance with the ideas you bounce off each other but it does help to flesh out the original ideas. Resource wise is again very similar to the cost as well, we had the resources that we needed, this mainly consisted of our computers to work on and pens and paper to organise ourselves.

The legal and ethical considerations we needed to think about were things like privacy, this and data protection basically protect people from their information being shared with anyone, including ourselves. The survey we took kept the names of everyone private with it being anonymous, things like this are what made it a private and safe process. Race discrimination will not be tolerated in our game and we will have characters from all backgrounds and they won't be all stereotypical. Things that are more copyright concerns shouldn't have to worried about because as far as we know our main idea is completely original. However, the idea R'lyeh being a place and Cthulhu existing are not, not only this but the major copyright concern would be Jack Burton and Big Trouble in Little China. This is because we do not have the rights to create a game from the film, however because it will never be publicly released or available for purchase, neither of these issues should arise. I go into a little more detail about legal and ethical consideration with our first ideas here.

Wednesday, 20 December 2017

Year 2 - Unit 66: 3D Models for an Asset Library - Assignment 2

Unit 66 - Assignment 23D Models for an Asset Library

(Links to drawing in blue)

Stimulus:

The brief we were given is to create a game that is based off the film Big Trouble in Little China. We then gave ourselves the brief of creating separate parts of the game each whilst still working together.

Ideas:
Before I started creating my first NPC I did quick sort of brainstorm or mood board, this was for a character called the servitor of the outer Gods. It included the colour palette I decided on, basic sketches have been included of all the different parts of the creatures body, these included the tentacles and suckers it uses to smother its victims. Any of the colour was done with some basic oil pastels that were blended into the acrylic paper. After that first basic brainstorm I then developed this idea to a more in depth and clearer diagram of the main two different angles/perspectives. I did this in charcoal to try and use the smudge it creates for the haze that is shown over the creature, the haze grows as your sanity level decreases. This idea was then completed with a fully shaded side view that clearly shows what different parts of its body the enemy has. I used a basic sketching pencil in 2B and some blending stumps, I also used the stumps on the two documents before, once to create the haze effect and another to blend the colour of my oil pastels together. Although this creature is not an original idea it was developed in an original way, once I had the basic concept nailed I then added details that I could not research. The front view was something I made up and I messed around with the different scales of its body. I feel as though that when I go to create this in Maya I will struggle with the polygon count as it is a very detailed creature. Each of us in our team decided to the concept art for one of the main enemies each, one large, medium and small, this assured us that we could do some work independently and have a chance for our creativity and flare to shine through. This creature will appear only in R'lyeh, this is because it is only a water based enemy, it will serve as Cthulhu's minion and there should hopefully be many throughout the level that you must defeat. This was one of my final ideas because it was the first one that I had the intention of using, once starting its generation I realised how much I loved the idea of going further. I had to set the first two sketches with hairspray to avoid the colour/charcoal from transferring or smudging. Time Lapse for the first drawing of a servitor of the outer Gods.
I then did some concept art for Gracie, this was one that completely came from my mind. I decided that I didn't want her to be like she is in the film, I wanted her to be more of a calm companion that could really see into the hearts and eyes of Jack and the enemies. This is why her concept art/sketch contains her cross legged and mediating, as a 3D model I like to hope that she will be wearing the clothes in my drawing and she won't be too difficult to create. Gracie never really had much development because her figure was made up, I started drawing what I wanted her to be and it just slowly developed into who she is now. Whether we actually use Gracie in the game is an idea we are still playing around with, however I personally feel like it could help the game gain a few more woman players.
Jack Burton's concept was probably the least thought out but most detailed drawing I did, I created the art from scratch with an action shot as a reference to base it off. He is decked out in his basic outfit from the film and is drawn in biro, biros are one hundred percent my favourite media to draw in however they are very hard to clean up if you mess up. I did slip up around his fingers on his right hand, I had the mistake of making them way to large in width, luckily with the use of shading I was able to define the hand further and more or less recover the drawing from its near fate. Biros are hard to work with because you can't use them like pencils to shade, no matter how much more or less pressure you put on the pen it will still be the same shade. To overcome this barrier I had to use a cross hatching technique to add depth to his finished character.
I'm pretty sure the first sketch I did was of Cthulhu and this was an idea that we had as a group, he is probably the main reason anyone would really want to play the game. He is character who will be extremely large so the polygon count of his 3D model will have to be kept at the back of our minds at all times. Much like the servitors of the outer Gods he has a lot of tentacles, especially hanging from his haunting face, this is the thing that I really I had to focus on with his concept art because it's the most noticeable part about him. To achieve this I used shading to make his tentacles more pronounced, I only did his head as I wanted to create something that wasn't copied and the only way I could think of doing it without going in over my head.
The first environment concept art I did was of the pier, this was created before we decided to set in New Orleans so it isn't the most accurate drawing, I saw an image pretty similar to the one that I drew that I decided to base my sketch off. I made my pier with the intention of it looking as though you were on it with the perspective used, it started off as a simple pier but then I added the foliage in the back with the water to add a little more detail as it was so plain without it.
I then created a willow tree with a uni-ball liquid pen, this media was surprisingly hard to work with as it smudged so easily. I started off creating the tree trunk but I then realised if I carried on this way it was be smudged within seconds. I left the trunk to dry and once it had I went from the left to right creating the weeping branches in a simple fashion. Once it was all dry I went back in and added shading with small lines going up the branches and trunk, without this it looked bare and unimportant.
Surprisingly, the last thing I did was create a storyboard, once I had a sound understanding of our main ideas I felt that I could create a storyboard that fit our needs. The story was based on what we wrote as a team and I did some very simple sketches to add further illustration to what was being written down. I wrote the plot down first, numbering it in chronological order in coloured ballpoint pen. I then added the simple drawings at the end, I can't really explain much further what I wanted to get from it but you can just view it as I think I made it very self explained.

Legal and Ethical considerations:

One of the legal things that we did consider was the copyright factor, this was not an important worry as unless our game was published the models would be ok to copy. However, although legally it wouldn’t matter the work still would’ve been plagiarised and it wouldn’t be credited as our own work. Ethically wise I know that confidentially is not such a key thing to focus on, especially in games creation and 3D models. It protects the information of people involved, this could affect anyone we had take part in a survey to determine whether or not people would actually enjoy our game. They would enter things like their age, gender and other personal questions, this would be under the data protection so they wouldn't need to put their name or address for their own safety. Decency would contain what is considered acceptable, whilst 3D modelling this will include properties like nudity, blasphemy, violence and sex. Even when I created my first ideas I had to consider how I annotated them, any swearing would not be acceptable and may seem like the creation is not a serious process. Drawing and models shall not contain nudity or sex, our game has been given a target audience of the age 16, any game containing those would have to be used my gamers over the age of 18. The representation that I use is widely diverse and involves all genders, race, sexuality and religion. The reason I, and many developers, decided that it should be so inclusive is because the game then aspires to much more of a wider audience, also it avoids the possibility of a bad name for the game based on a sexist and racist front with the character art. If I were to relate this to the brief the most obvious issue would be not succumbing to the stereotypes of the Chinese people and culture, luckily the only real link to the film is Jack Burton and his truck so we have a lot of leeway with the character development and environments.

Specification:
Our target audience is the male gender who are above the age of 16, the maximum age will probably be around 30 however that does not exclude people over that age. People who enjoy the voodoo following and are fans of Big Trouble in Little China will also be included as well as people who enjoy action adventure games. The reason it will be towards people over the age of 16 is because children who are under that age and witnessing the violence would make the game be considered inappropriate. The visual theme of our game is very photorealistic, the first scene will be based off a real place so getting it to look perfect will require studying photographs of the place and making the environment and 3D models look realistic enough. The main character is Jack Burton who has swept back hair and a muscular body, this should come across in the game as strongly as possible without going over a specified polygon count. However this is one constraint of the many, the larger the polygon count the larger the file size. Having a high imagine resolution is of course quite a key part to the immersion of a game but again comes with a cost, large file sizes and even the possibility of it not being to run or render on the PC being used. If the output size is large then the export and import time will take a very long time, not making it worth the wait. File types can be a large issue, if you don't use all the correct types then you will most likely have issues in the future with getting everything to work together and opening files in the right applications. File sizes are what everything basically comes down to, large file sizes cause the issue of opening and exporting in a slow and ineffective way.

Friday, 10 November 2017

Year 2 - Unit 66,67 and 68: Understand theory and applications of 3D

Unit 66,67 and 68
Understand theory and applications of 3D
Task 1

Applications of 3D:

Fantastic Beats And Where To Find Them
3D CGI/VFX
2016

Models represent a physical body in 3D, they use a collection of points in 3D space and they are connected by many varies of geometric entities. These may include triangles, curved surfaces, lines etc. They can be created by hand, algorithmically or scanned and then be extended with definition using texture mapping. Many computer games used pre-rendered images of 3D models as sprites before computers could render them in real-time. They are used in many fields with the main ones being the medical industry, movie industry, video game industry, science sector, architectural industry, engineering and also the earth science community. Product design within the 3D world is very helpful for any company trying to come up with initial and final ideas. A company can figure out how they would like their product to look without spending a lot of money of resources they don't necessarily need or are sure about. Also, they can develop their ideas with flexibility and next to no restraints or losses. 3D Animations consist of models that are built on a computer monitor and then 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton. The limbs, mouth, clothes, eyes etc. of the model are then moved by the animator on key frames. All frames must be rendered after the modelling is fully completed. In most 3D computer animation systems an animator will create a much simpler representation of a characters anatomy, this generally looks much like a skeleton or a stick figure.3D in TV and Film is often related to CGI which stands for computer-generated imagery, this is the application of computer graphics to create realistic images. Much like computer animation the term CGI counts both static scenes and dynamic images. It is used for creating scenes and special effects, the best way to explain this is to think about a TV show or film that had something that couldn't possibly be seen in real life (not animated). Perhaps this is something mythical like a dragon or a fairy, however something like a rhino or an elephant could also be like this as I'm sure it must be cheaper and actually possible to have a CGI elephant and rhino next each other rather than the real ones which most likely won't get on well! This also joins into VFX. The use of 3D in games is very large as I'm sure you can imagine with the majority of major games being in this dimension. I have talked more about how 3D is applied in games here:

https://sarahsgamesdesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/year-2-unit-70-computer-game-engines.html

Displaying 3D polygon animations:

In-depth Graphics Pipeline

Local Illumination vs. Global illumination

API's (Application Programming Interface) are basically messengers that tell systems what to do. Specialised versions have been created to ease all stages of computer graphics as they have proved to be extremely important to computer graphics hardware manufacturers. They provide a way for programmers to access the hardware in an abstract and more or less new way. Examples of API's are; Direct3D which is a low-level 3D API that is part of DirectX and can render 3D graphics in applications like in games, it uses hardware acceleration if it actually available on the graphics card;WebGL which is a web-based API that renders 3D (and 2D) graphics and can be used in any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins, it can be mixed with other HTML elements and can also be combined with other parts of the page or within the pages background; and OpenGL which is a high-level API that renders 3D (and 2D) vector graphics, it is most often used to interact with a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and was released in 1991 with it having around 17 versions that have been out. The Graphics Pipeline is a conceptual model in computer graphics that describes what steps a graphics system needs to render a 3D scene to a 2D screen. Some things involved in this are; clipping which removes parts of the image that aren't visible in the 2D screen and only the primitives which are within the visual volume need to actually be rastered; lighting which is where scenes can place light sources around to make the lighting of objects look much more realistic; projection which has the ability to transform the view volume into a cube with the corner point co-ordinates, occasionally the other target volumes are used as well; rasterisation in which all primitives are rastered and the grid points also called fragments for the sake of distinction with one fragment equalling one pixel in the frame buffer which corresponds to one pixel per screen; and shading, the most important shader units are pixel shaders, vertex shaders and geometry shaders. Rendering techniques include ray tracing which provides realistic simulation of lighting over different rendering methods. It effects like reflections and shadows are difficult to simulate using other algorithms, they are natural results of the ray tracing algorithm and models mirror reflections well but the diffuse reflection is approximated. Radiosity is a second rendering technique with models diffusing reflections accurately but mirror reflections are ignored and it attempts to simulate the way in which directly illuminated surfaces act as an indirect light source. Rendering engines convert 3D wire frame models into 2D images on a computer, Mental Ray uses and supports Ray Tracing, and Arnold is based on Ray Tracing technology. There are two types of major lighting with Indirect (Global illumination) being the first, it is all of the inter-reflected light in a scene. It is also an approximation of real-world indirect light transmission and an example would be if light spilled into a room through the space at the bottom or side of the a door. The second is Local illumination (light sources) where it is only the light provided directly from a light source. Examples of this method are if there was a spotlight on a stage or the sun shining directly on a solar panel. Applying texture is like applying wrapping paper to a present and it is done by having every vertex in a polygon assigned a texture co-ordinate. Fogging is a technique that is used to give an impression of distance, it achieves this by imitating fog. Objects faded out will be the ones that are further away and if there any even further a away will not be in view at all, this can save processor power. Pixel shaders are components that can be programmed to work on a per pixel basis and they take care of things like lighting and bump mapping. A vertex shader is programmed using a specific assembly-like language, they are orientated to the scene geometry.

Geometric theory:

The construction of a face that could make up
a polygon using vertices and edges.

Vertex is the basic object used in mesh modelling, which is a point in 3D space. This whole theory focuses on creating and editing 3D objects. Two vertices connected by a straight line of any size will then become an edge. Edges are known as the connection between two vertices and can make a face with a closed set of edges. Curves are often made with multiple lines joining up with vertices very closely. The simplest polygon will probably be when three vertices are connected to each other by three edges which forms a triangle. The more complex polygons are created out of many of these, or just as a single object with more than 3 vertices. A group of polygons which are connected to each other by shared vertices are most likely going to be referred to as an element, each of the polygons making this up are called a face. It may be possible to create a mesh by manually specifying vertices and faces but it much more usual to create meshes using a large amount of tools. It is possible for two faces to exist at the same location. They are made up of three vertices, a face will always be a triangular shape, it is basically the face of a shape where the edges and vertices have been created. This is all needed to understand the Mesh Construction shown below:

Mesh construction:

The elements of a mesh

The construction of a simple mesh
using a primitive cube shape

It is a technique that is used in 3D modelling, the model is created by modifying primitive shapes to create a rough draft before creating the final model. Simply it is the process of making certain objects with polygon meshes, as shown on the right the elements are vertices, edges, faces, polygons and surfaces like there are with any 3D models. Extrusion modelling is the usual method to model with, it is also referred to as inflation modelling. You could create 2D shapes which trace the outlines so the model would then be symmetrical . It is widely used by 3D artists because of how easy it is to use. Box modelling uses two simple tools; the subdivide tool which splits faces and edges into smaller pieces, this is done by adding new vertices; and the extrude tool which duplicates vertices whilst still keeping the new geometry and is still connected to the original vertices. Extrusion modelling is often referred to as inflation modelling, this is were the user creates a two-dimensional shape which traces the outline of an object, this could be from a photograph or a drawing. Common primitives are probably the most basic polygon models that 3D software can make, this makes it easier for the user of the program to create models by using this as a base. Some of the most common standard primitives that we use in Maya are spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones, planes, prisms, pyramids and pipes.

3D development software:

Halo 4 - Energy Sword made in Maya
2012

Autodesk 3ds Max is a 3D computer graphics program which is used to make 3D animations, models, games and images. It has modelling capabilities with flexible plugin architecture, it is often used by video game developers, Tv commerial studios as well as architectural studios. Maya is an animation, modelling, simulation and rendering software that provides an integrated toolset. It is used for animation, environments, motion graphics, VR and character creation. It has been used in the first Chronicles of Narnia film, the South Park series and the video game Halo 4. Mudbox is a digital painting and sculpting software which gives 3D artists with a tactile toolset for creating and modifying 3D geometry and textures. Some file formats that are currently used within the modelling industry are; .3ds which is used by Autodesk's 3ds Max which aims to retain only the essential geometry, lighting and texture data; .mb is used by Autodesk's Maya software, mb stands for Maya Binary and it contains 3D models, textures, lighting and animation data; .lwo is used by LightWave, the files contain objects stored as meshes and also features polygons, points and surfaces; and .C4d files have 3D models created with Cinema 4D, it will contain a scene which has one or more objects with position, pivot points, meshes, rotation and animation information. Plug-ins are basically add-ons which can be applied to a modelling software.

Constraints:

Lara Croft gaining in polygon size over time along with
the systems as they can handle the higher quality.

The polygon count of a model can majorly strain a project as the amount of polygons you should use heavily depends on the quality that you require and the platform you use. On a mobile devices somewhere between 300 and 1500 polygons per mesh would give the best results and on a desktop it should be anywhere between 1500 and 4000 depending on the ability of the PC. There is a possibility you may have to reduce the polygon count per mesh if the game has a lot of characters on a single screen. The file size is also a large restraint due to how large models and textures can create huge file sizes, this would mean that the uploading, downloading and general loading times will be increased as well as the amount of storage the user will need on their device. Lowering the polygon count is a way to reduce the file size. The rendering time is a heavy constraint with pre-rendered the 3D image or animation is rendered over a long period of time. This could be only a few seconds, minutes or hours, and in some bad cases a vast amount of days. Real-time rendering typically uses a GPU and is most common in video games. The 3D image is created on the fly.