tiafernandes

Week 4

Week 1

Week 2

For my Time Machine brief, I came up with the idea of a floral time-travelling ring with a watch-like face. I theorised the ring to have space for the 'petals' of the ring to function, so that they could close over the watch and reveal it when it was ready to be used. I imagined it to be used by some kind of nature-loving culture who rely on solar power.

My idea included many parts that could move, for example the petals surrounding the face, and a rail within the watch face itself that the face could be pushed around to 'lock' the time it was supposed to take the user to.


I started off by creating the base shape for the ring in Maya. I used predominantly cylinders, adding some other shapes in to create the watch face, surrounding petals and ring part (underneath the face).







Although there are some errors in this model (I feel like having seen it all together, a couple of the edges on the Normal map are a little messy) I'm really satisfied with how it came out! I feel like it looks accurate enough to how I originally planned it, and creating all the maps eventually proved fun (although I thought it was going to be very tedious at first).

I find that many rhythm games make me aware of my body and surroundings. Of course the obvious examples would be Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) or Stepmania, where the player must move their whole body in order to hit the notes at the correct time. However, this is a game which is highly inaccessible to those with disabilities, as it requires fast reaction times and mobility of the entire body to be able to play well. Because of this, it is very difficult for people with physical conditions to play the game as well as completely able-bodied people, creating an uneven starting point on which gamers could theoretically develop their DDR skills. It is likely that no matter how good someone's sense of rhythm is, they will not be able to play DDR or Stepmania expertly unless their physical condition is near perfect.

However, there are many more examples of rhythm games which allow more accessibility. Although the genre as a whole seems like it could be difficult for those with fine motor issues, games such as Project Diva, Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko: Drum Master) and mobile rhythm games such as Love Live! or Aichuu require the player to be sufficiently aware of their own bodies while not having such high physical demands as DDR or Stepmania. These games require you to move your hands or arms quickly and accurately and use your sense of hearing simultaneously to judge whether you are performing correctly, helping the player to raise their reflex time and respond to audio cues effectively.

For this task, we had to design and construct our own ruined pillar. I started off by making sketches in Clip Studio Paint in order to figure out the design I would construct later. I wanted to make an aquatic-style pillar, perhaps that could be found in an Atlantis-like ruined city in a game.



After the high poly model was done, I decimated the structure in order to begin creating my low poly model. After the poly count was sufficiently low, I brought the model back into Maya and started cutting and stitching damaged parts to the original base model to create my low poly model. Unfortunately at this point I realised that I was not going to finish adding all of the foliage and algae to my model within the time limit, and decided to just create the base model with damage and abandon the algae.

This project felt like quite a step up from my previous work. We were given a reference image of a vintage telephone that we had to recreate in Maya. I remember being shocked at first that the phone was so complex, and it took me a long time to adjust to having to pay attention to so many details, and to figure out how each tool worked in order to warp shapes enough to get the right effect.

I started blocking out the main body of the phone before moving up to the intricacies of the top part, for which I was required to learn how to use tools like 'flare' on cylinders and the like. Another difficult part was bridging the gaps between the dips in the dial on the phone after using the 'duplicate special' function to create each dip.


I am overall fairly satisfied with the outcome of this task. It felt impossible at first, so actually completing it was pleasing. I'm also fairly happy with how it looks, and I feel like I did a good job of modelling the details in the top of the phone. The only thing I feel could use a little more work is the cord as it is twisted in an unusual way, however I feel like I will improve in manipulating the model with practice.