Week 12 Studio

Russell Lowe demonstrated severeal works he has done in Crysis, and showed us many technology in crysis that our team is still trying to explore which is very useful.
Stephen Peter has talked to us about our graduation project in next session and brought some samples of previous student’s work.

During studio time, we have walk through the map in crysis and discussed with the tutors. In the coming weeks before the final presentation and submission, there are serveral things that we need to consider:
- Since we have failed in combining the two maps, interativity may need to be re-done by next week
- Roads in the map, some elements of the model are dislocated which need to be fixed.
- Interior space: except teleportation, AI should be able to walk through the space physically
- Lift stopping at each levels if possible

Week 11 Studio

Today we had a interesting guest lecture in ICinema Centre of UNSW. The iCinema Centre was established for Interactive Cinema Research into digital interactivity for benchmark applications across the arts, culture and industry. It brings us in new media, aesthetics, cinematic theory, multimedia design, computer science, cognitive science, software/hardware engineering and mining virtual reality.

We talked with Jeremy and Graham about our progress and specialisation.  We told them about our plan that AI will add again into landscape, the street lighting and texture of interior will be modified as well. They gave us a lot of advises how to make our specialisation much better.

Week 10 Studio

Today’s lecture we had Andrew Wallace, previous architecture student from our university to present his works and project using Crysis.
The demonstration which shows the city of Sydney is realistic; the boat driving around the sea with realistics view and reflection of sunset from the water. The Eco house and the African community lot designed for children are also shown during the lecture.

During studio, each of us has discussed about our specialization with Jeremy and Graham, on how to approah our different difficulty of the specialization.
Referring to our project, since the interativity has been saved in a different map instead of the map with the lighting and model in it, we will have to try to combine the maps for this week.

Week 9 Studio

Today we had a interesting guest lecture. The topic is digital storytelling. I interest in this kind of topic. The guest, Shilo Mcclean has introduced computer graphic how to collaboratively support the game or film. She presented variety of catergory of film showing how 2cg success supporting those film.

1)Documentary

2) Invisible

3)Seamless (eg. Blood Diamond/Transformer)

4)Exaggerated –never over bottom line

5)Fantastical

6)Surrealist — from fantastical to get back in real (eg.The Painist)

7)New traditionalist (eg.ToyStory/Happy Feet)

8)Hyperrealist (eg.Beowolf)

9)Hybird-real (eg.TRON/300/Sin City)

Finally , she encouraged us that the contribution and experience can offer to human creativity and its shared meanings.

After guest lecture, our team discussed with Jeremy and Graham, we have to improve our five key areas in further : 1) Interior texture and structure, 2) Landscape , 3) Elevator, 4) Furnitures & 5) AI. Lighting & sky might not need to develop at this moment. We need to make a new schedule again as they required. ( sigh….I will make it later…)

They asked us to keep working on those areas in coming few weeks. Different forms of building & its texture could be shown up in our landscape. Moreover, they expected us to develop the elevator which can stop at each levels going up and down throughout the building. AI application will possibly create into environment as more as possible. They also pointed out insufficient details for interior of our building in terms of texture, creating walls & adding furniture as more as possible.

We initially planned that we might need to add AI to the landscape by Monica first meanwhile Teresa keep testing to import variety of texture into crysis, I keep testing how to make an elevator stopping at each levels and Jae try to find more buildings & texture. Such resources will be added in until a file consists of AI.

Therefore we prefer all our parts will be completed by the end of next weekend from now. Jeremy assigned new task to everyone in class, that’s specialisation of areas in crysis.That should be done by next studio class. Jeremy noticed that final presentation will be held on thursday but all submission will be submit to emustore on monday by Week 14.

Week 8 Studio

Today Dr Deo Prasad  has came to our studio class as a guest presenting the lecture about  global collaboration fro sustainable future. He mentioned three aspects of consideration when he plans the collaborative sustainable work.

1)Sustainability and sustainable development  : * interconnection and interdependence * Built and natural system

2)Harmony : * consider pressure, state and response * impacts of environment/social/economic

3)Ecosystem: * challenge is not just conservation but achieving optional balance * recreating amenity where needed at zero rate

After the guest lecture, we had a presentation for our final fabrication. We have to complete the peer review sheet when each group present their works.

Week 6 studio

In Week 6 studio, we were given lecture about psychology in collaboration; how different people response and react in a group.
For the coming week, we need to re-schedule our plan, about development of the project:
- Lanscape needs to be re-built in more detail and needs to simulate the picture we have found about the site
- continue on modelling the building and importing texture
- interactive environment: people, cars and so on in crysis
-deal with interior of the building if exterior of the model is done

Week 5 Studio

Today we had to fix up team combination research of collaboration topics on wetpaint. After that we kept to discuss the progress of our fabrication. We need to write a fabrication plan that is outlined what stage we expected to reach and what outcomes we need to complete by scheduled time.  We roughly wrote down some key areas we have to focus on and complete it by schedule,then we discussed our draft plan with Graham and Jeremy seperately. They also suggested we need to think more about how to build elevator into building, fix up the scale of building and its entrance.

We were quickly to have a look Wikipedia page in team, just check out pages such as history, discussion and reference. But we have to go through deeply to analyse how it works as a useful collaborativee wiki later.  And we have been assigned new collaboration topics to my team: Record & Management, we need to complete the research before next studio class.

In guest lecture, Neil Brown who is from Sosa Labs, he presented how collaborative software works in global development. He mentioned three significant elements in collaboration of using software Linux kernel,  they are  Philosophy,  Tools and People. Neil Brown has his own blog to show us the slides of these topics.

Here is the link : http://neil.brown.name/blog/collaboration

Week 4 Studio

Team Orange’s and other teams’ strengths and weaknesses.

—-Two Strengths—–

1. Since the building is much higher than the surround buildings, the main building stands out above all other objects in the landscape.

2. The colour of the building (white) and it’s transparency work well with the sky and lighting effects, especially at night time.

—-Two Weakness—–

1. We do not have enough information for the building and the landscape. Therefore, making it hard for us to add accurate details of the building and the landscape.

2. The curves on the building are difficult to generate, and scale of the landscape and the building is incorrect.

Other Teams
Team Atlar
Strengths: Unique environmental setting and its coherent design according to the theme.
Weaknesses: Scale seems somewhat incorrect, and it can be challenging to make those ideas to look real.

Team Omega
Strengths: Strong sense of public space & materiality
Weaknesses: Lack of details in the surrounding buildings, and more textures are required in the background environment.

Team Urbans
Strengths: Abundant information and thorough research of the building and the site.
Weaknesses: Troubles with importing the massive sphere dome into Crysis. Scale issues.

Team E-Volve
Strengths: Good use of materials and texture on terrain.
Weaknesses: Function of interior spaces need to be considered.

Team Digilism
Strengths: Nice portrayal of urban environment. Clear presentation of concepts.
Weaknesses: Unrealistic scaling. Actual fabrication/texturing of two buildings seem to be required. It can be time consumming to generate the realistic surroundings since there are so many buildings around.

Week 3 Studio

Today we had a presentation of team progress. We have showed images of tech tests what we did and where we are up to with CryEngine. Actually we did the tests for landscape, planting, light, sky and texture, however we got a problem on import texture files to CryEngine. Thus, we tried to find out the solution together and do the test in CryEngine. Unfortunately, we still cannot sort it out. This common problem appeared in most of team.So Jeremy will try to find a solution and more information to us later.

We tested to make a curve in Crysis, we put a solid in perspective view and used editing mode to change its shape. But there was no any tools to change the shape to be curve. Therefore, we decided to use 3dsMax as our main tool to build up our form of unbuilt architecture.

About assignment 1, we read through the brief and dropped down requirements. Meanwhile, Jeremy and Graham came to give some feedback on our tech tests and we had to seek guidance from them on this assignment. After that, we had a discussion to decide our location of fabrication — near the harbour in Shanghai– and which parts we have to work it on, then we allocated the workload to each team members.

————Draft Fabrication Environmet ——–

First part : build the landscape including terrain, water, trees;

Second part : build the exterior form in Max and import to Crysis;

Third part : import texture/material files and apply them on different elements.

Fourth part : design the interior & exterior of light and Sky

————Presentation works——–

1) Demonstration of draft environment in Crysis

2) 10 images highlight the significant parts of fabrication

3) 2 Video Captures

4) 600 words description of Tech Evaluation and environment

We planned to collect the works from each member by this weeked and then keep doing the rest of presentation works together in early of next week. By the end of class, we had chosen one topic for our own evaluation. And we have to do research based on the selected topic and post a 200 words evaluation on our individual blog later.

(Please kindly take a look this post and feel free to edit it if any mistakes. Thanks.^_^)

Week 2 Studio

We have chosen The “REN” Building among the Unbuilt Architecture for Fabrication.
The reason we have chosen it is because it’s an unique building in terms of it’s form and the concept behind it. Apparently we don’t have much information about this building such as the interiors, but we think that it can be a good opportunity for us to create by ourselves like the foyer of the building. The second choice is the “WATERLEVEL”, we think that the landscape is good for fabrication in the CryEngine, but the building itself is not exciting enough, which is just an ordinary house.

The following are the areas that we would like to test in Crysis:
- Park
- Trees
- Water
- Texture
-Lighting
- Sky
- Glass
- Furniture
- Curves
- Sound

 

 

**Hey hey guys, please feel free to edit this post if you have any additional info wants to add in – Teresa : )

In Week 1 Studio

In Week 1 Studio,  we

1. Met up with each other and exchanged contact details.

2. We came up with the team name – Team Orange

3. Created the Team Blog

4. Researched through unbuilt architectural sites/buildings and exchanged thoughts

5. We went through In Depth Basic Tutorials together, but did not finish everything.

6.  Discussed what we were to do by next week.