15/01/19 – Professional Practice.
Today we went over a few basics of Maya. Saving in directories and setting projects for scenes which allows you to work on a project and it will be automatically saved to the certain directory which reduces clutter. The save preferences and other preference settings like measurements. Also, what lossy and lossless files are and different file types for Maya.
I am going to be looking at different portfolios done by various people in the game industry. this will help me get an idea of what needs to go into my portfolio and how it needs to look.
http://www.davidshaver.net/index.html
The first portfolio I will be looking at Naughty Dog employee David shaver’s portfolio.
His portfolio gives a brief introduction and his home screen has links via images so which take you to a more in depth look at that project. This makes his home screen look extremely clean because the images contain all the information needed to know what it is. 
http://www.arashshirazi.co.uk/
The next portfolio I will be looking at is Ary shirazi’s portfolio, they are one of the developers for beyond two souls. This portfolio is very similar to the last however, It look more professional compared to the last. It also gives more information through the images giving a brief explanation of the game.
The last portfolio I will be looking at is by Jay van Hutten, who has worked on level design in movies like Maze Runner. This portfolio is different in the last two with the layout, by having quick access to all the pages at the bottom of the page. However, when talking about the past projects he’s worked on he doesn’t go into greater detail like the past portfolios, he keeps the explanations brief and lists what he did on the project.
While looking at these portfolios I have learnt that making information access able quickly is important. Also having a brief overview appear while hovering over an image will help people get an idea of what I will be going into greater detail about and if they want to read more about the project. When making my portfolio I need to have a brief introduction talking about myself then have assigned projects in one subcategory and have personal projects in another and have different categories separate like games, models and art will be different categories.
I think my animation was quite effective in telling the story of a bloke who comes across a random ball.
I think the throw of the ball was good because when you find a ball you are itching to throw it up high and catch it, or even just throw it from hand to hand.
I think if I added him slipping on the ball a bit would’ve been much better.
I wanted to apply squash and stretch to my animation, I feel like I have applied this well with the ball when it is stepped on.
I wanted to apply arcs and I think I could have done better with that because some of the movements are a bit robotic. If I spent more time on looking over the arcs I could’ve have improved the movement immensely and used less key frames.
Another principle that I wanted to use was smooth ins and outs, I wanted to have the RIG walk into the scene and walk out just the same but I realized this would have made my animation a lot longer than it had to be. I did have him shortly walk at the start of the animation.
I had used the graph more I would not have as many key frames as I side which made my bar look messy. If I spent more time on refining the movements my animation would’ve looked much better. If I used a camera to spin around the rig during the animation that would’ve looked better because it would’ve showed off more parts of the animation to add a new perspective. Whilst rendering if I added lights and maybe other objects IÂ would’ve added more character to the scene and would’ve looked a lot better having proper lights in the scene.Â
These pictures show what i drew out on Photoshop to use as reference while making my animation.
This is the YouTube upload of the animation I have done.
Some of the job options that I have are; being a 3D model designer, to this job i would need to have a 3D software, like Maya, to be able to create the models. I would also need to have the hardware, like a powerful enough PC, to be able to properly run said program. I need to have a base to higher understanding on how to 3D model to be able to get a job in that department. The employment may be a temp-contact. The way I could use this to progress my career would be to try to get hired by bigger companies, or start my own. A good thing about this job is that I would enjoy creating 3D models, and do enjoy creating them. However, a weakness of this line of work could be that I would work on a model for ages and the higher ups could just decline the model and I would have to start a new one. I could also create a lot of the models from home so I wont need to worry about not finishing one at work, or even just working from home. It’s not really a secure position. An example of this would be https://jobs.gamesindustry.biz/opm/oxford/midlands/united-kingdom/uk-and-europe/level-designer-andndash–aaa-games-andndash–south-east–uk-andndash–permanent-id97028
Another job that I could do in the future would be a programmer, for this job I would need a basic understanding of maths, English and a higher understanding of coding. I would also again need the software to run a program to create code and such, like Unity and Visual Studio. Again I wold also need the hardware to be able to run these applications. An advantage of working as a programmer is that it is a sought out job from employers so it pays well. However, a disadvantage of this would be that you have to make no mistakes in your code otherwise it could mess up the whole thing. Hopefully I could land a full-time job as a programmer for the pay. I could also go on to work for bigger companies. An example would be
https://aswift.com/jobs/senior-core-tech-programmer/
With some of this work I would have to adapt some of the work in case it needs to be censored in other countries.
This is a link to my AR Game animation on YouTube.
The first picture is my medieval house before I added any textures to it. The second picture is a rifle that I made in my free time, it was one of the first weapons I have made in 3D. The last picture shows my medieval house after I textured it with a set of colour maps and normal maps.
This is the Medieval house as of 12/02/2018.
For the first car I used the bridge tool to create the windows of the car, for the second car is used the append the polygon tool. For the first ladder I needed to use the bridge tool again. For the second ladder I needed to use the target weld tool to weld one vertex to another, for the last ladder I needed to use the merge to centre tool.
Papple 