Monday, September 24, 2012
Grades for EXP1
Hey guys,
If you want your grade and feedback for EXP1, send me an email (at stephen.b.davey@gmail.com) saying who you are, and I'll email you back with how you did.
Experiment 2: Week 3
Hey guys, once you've made your posts for this week's task, add a comment to this post with links to those blog posts. Just make one comment each that has several links, one link per post you've made for this week.
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
As for this week's requirements:
- Upload images of 3 sketches of your chosen house, showing how their structural systems might fail over time without maintenance. (Most horizontal wooden surfaces should be caved in, concrete should be cracked and full of holes and what's known as "concrete cancer", roofs should be missing tiles / panels, glass should be mostly broken, steel should be rusted, aluminium should be slightly rusted, wood should be mostly rotten, etc)
- Name 2 natural disasters your house has been through (for some suggestions: earthquake, cyclone, hail storm, tsunami, hurricane, fire, blizzard, flood, lightning strike, volcanic eruption) and what damage your natural disasters would cause to it (eg, fires would leave most of the house's timber scorched black or completely burnt, floods would leave water marks and cause rot, an earthquake would cause major structural damage, etc). To give you some creative freedom, I won't restrict you to realistic natural disasters. You could equally do something like a zombie apocalypse, alien attack, meteor strike, robots taking over the world a la Terminator style, or other crazy but creatively freeing thing. Feel free to take inspiration from videogames and movies for this. As always, the aim for the end result is something that creates a really cool, immersive environment.
- Upload 3 reference images that show the kind of decay you want to model in your building (eg, from www.thehiat.org, or another source you think has good examples of buildings in decay)
- Discuss your ideas for decay with another student (or me) and post comments and suggestions given to you to your blog. Things to consider: What parts of the building will break? What will grow / spread across the building's remaining surfaces (moss, mould, cracks, stains)? What would be cool to make the process of decay interactive (refer to the end of this post for ideas)? What evidence of the building being lived in will you carefully reveal to the viewer? Will you leave evidence of what disaster caused the building to be abandoned (eg, newspaper about nuclear war, used up fire extinguisher left on the ground, sandbags piled up to try stop flood water getting in, etc)?
- Post images of your progress in developing the house in its state of decay.
Some examples of things that'd be good to add for interactivity:
- Things falling apart as you walk through the building (eg, a floor falling away when you step on it)
- Textures showing how materials age over time (your Crysis environment doesn't have to be realistic - so this option could be used towards a kind of timelapse showing your house decaying rapidly over 100 years, for example)
- Sounds of the building creaking and groaning that play as you walk through (eg, wooden floor boards, doors / shutters flapping loosely in the wind, papers being blown around by wind)
- Animating things moving around loosely in the wind (shutters, doors, ceiling fans) - Animals that now inhabit the building's remains (rats, crows, etc)
Don't forget that plants would very likely grow into and through the building in only a few years. After 100 years, you'd be lucky if there weren't one or many trees growing up through the building. Grass should be everywhere on the bottom floor, particularly near cracks and joins in surfaces.
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
As for this week's requirements:
- Upload images of 3 sketches of your chosen house, showing how their structural systems might fail over time without maintenance. (Most horizontal wooden surfaces should be caved in, concrete should be cracked and full of holes and what's known as "concrete cancer", roofs should be missing tiles / panels, glass should be mostly broken, steel should be rusted, aluminium should be slightly rusted, wood should be mostly rotten, etc)
- Name 2 natural disasters your house has been through (for some suggestions: earthquake, cyclone, hail storm, tsunami, hurricane, fire, blizzard, flood, lightning strike, volcanic eruption) and what damage your natural disasters would cause to it (eg, fires would leave most of the house's timber scorched black or completely burnt, floods would leave water marks and cause rot, an earthquake would cause major structural damage, etc). To give you some creative freedom, I won't restrict you to realistic natural disasters. You could equally do something like a zombie apocalypse, alien attack, meteor strike, robots taking over the world a la Terminator style, or other crazy but creatively freeing thing. Feel free to take inspiration from videogames and movies for this. As always, the aim for the end result is something that creates a really cool, immersive environment.
- Upload 3 reference images that show the kind of decay you want to model in your building (eg, from www.thehiat.org, or another source you think has good examples of buildings in decay)
- Discuss your ideas for decay with another student (or me) and post comments and suggestions given to you to your blog. Things to consider: What parts of the building will break? What will grow / spread across the building's remaining surfaces (moss, mould, cracks, stains)? What would be cool to make the process of decay interactive (refer to the end of this post for ideas)? What evidence of the building being lived in will you carefully reveal to the viewer? Will you leave evidence of what disaster caused the building to be abandoned (eg, newspaper about nuclear war, used up fire extinguisher left on the ground, sandbags piled up to try stop flood water getting in, etc)?
- Post images of your progress in developing the house in its state of decay.
Some examples of things that'd be good to add for interactivity:
- Things falling apart as you walk through the building (eg, a floor falling away when you step on it)
- Textures showing how materials age over time (your Crysis environment doesn't have to be realistic - so this option could be used towards a kind of timelapse showing your house decaying rapidly over 100 years, for example)
- Sounds of the building creaking and groaning that play as you walk through (eg, wooden floor boards, doors / shutters flapping loosely in the wind, papers being blown around by wind)
- Animating things moving around loosely in the wind (shutters, doors, ceiling fans) - Animals that now inhabit the building's remains (rats, crows, etc)
Don't forget that plants would very likely grow into and through the building in only a few years. After 100 years, you'd be lucky if there weren't one or many trees growing up through the building. Grass should be everywhere on the bottom floor, particularly near cracks and joins in surfaces.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Experiment 2: Week 2
Hey guys, once you've made your posts for this week's task, add a comment to this post with links to those blog posts. Just make one comment each that has several links, one link per post you've made for this week.
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
As for this week's requirements:
- Choose three materials to use on your imported 3DSMax model (eg, concrete, marble, tiles, sandstone, bricks, etc)
- Screenshots of your three materials in Crysis with only diffuse texture maps
- Images of your diffuse, bump, and spec (aka specular) texture maps on your blog
- Screenshots of your three materials updated in Crysis so they have bump and specular texture maps
- A clear statement of which house you're proceeding with for EXP2
- Screenshots showing your progress from having your chosen house modelled as a pristine, newly made object in Crysis to a decayed, corroded, broken form.
- Research about your three chosen materials, and (briefly) answer the following questions on each:
What is the process of making the material: _______________________
How long will the material last: _______________________
What makes the material corrode: _______________________
What are the material's structural pros and cons: _______________________
What is the material typically used for: _______________________
What are the material's environmental impacts: _______________________
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
As for this week's requirements:
- Choose three materials to use on your imported 3DSMax model (eg, concrete, marble, tiles, sandstone, bricks, etc)
- Screenshots of your three materials in Crysis with only diffuse texture maps
- Images of your diffuse, bump, and spec (aka specular) texture maps on your blog
- Screenshots of your three materials updated in Crysis so they have bump and specular texture maps
- A clear statement of which house you're proceeding with for EXP2
- Screenshots showing your progress from having your chosen house modelled as a pristine, newly made object in Crysis to a decayed, corroded, broken form.
- Research about your three chosen materials, and (briefly) answer the following questions on each:
What is the process of making the material: _______________________
How long will the material last: _______________________
What makes the material corrode: _______________________
What are the material's structural pros and cons: _______________________
What is the material typically used for: _______________________
What are the material's environmental impacts: _______________________
Monday, September 10, 2012
Experiment 2: Week 1
First off, some notes for experiment 2
The building you model should NOT be pristine. Think of what can happen to an area over a few hundred years. There are two kinds of things that would happen - slow long-term damage (corrosion, erosion, creep, fatigue, plant root penetration, termite damage, mould, rot) and quick short-term damage (storms, hail, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, gas explosions, blizzards, perhaps even a meteorite).
The difference between these two is that long-term damage doesn't usually change the shape of an object - it just discolours it, or wraps it in a new surface (mould, vines, rust, and other growths). Short-term damage on the other hand makes a huge change to the shape of even very sturdy objects, like building cores, making them crumble, start tilting, or even crash to the ground.
As for the weekly tasks...
Once you've made your posts for this week's task, add a comment to this post with links to those blog posts. Just make one comment each that has several links, one link per post you've made for this week.
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
For a checklist of what to have up on your blogs:
- Download the 3 buildings outlined in the lecture and install them to your Crysis installation as directed in the weekly tasks (screenshot the buildings in Crysis to show you've done this)
- A few screenshots of some 3DSMax models imported into Crysis (if there were any issues with the import, make a note of them below the relevant screenshot)
- 30 words posted about each of the 3 houses to show you've thought about how they might decay over 100 years. I don't need to know who the houses were made by, or who owned them. Just say how structural elements would decay, and what parts you think would break the most.
The building you model should NOT be pristine. Think of what can happen to an area over a few hundred years. There are two kinds of things that would happen - slow long-term damage (corrosion, erosion, creep, fatigue, plant root penetration, termite damage, mould, rot) and quick short-term damage (storms, hail, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, gas explosions, blizzards, perhaps even a meteorite).
The difference between these two is that long-term damage doesn't usually change the shape of an object - it just discolours it, or wraps it in a new surface (mould, vines, rust, and other growths). Short-term damage on the other hand makes a huge change to the shape of even very sturdy objects, like building cores, making them crumble, start tilting, or even crash to the ground.
As for the weekly tasks...
Once you've made your posts for this week's task, add a comment to this post with links to those blog posts. Just make one comment each that has several links, one link per post you've made for this week.
In case anyone's unsure, this week's task requirements can be found here.
For a checklist of what to have up on your blogs:
- Download the 3 buildings outlined in the lecture and install them to your Crysis installation as directed in the weekly tasks (screenshot the buildings in Crysis to show you've done this)
- A few screenshots of some 3DSMax models imported into Crysis (if there were any issues with the import, make a note of them below the relevant screenshot)
- 30 words posted about each of the 3 houses to show you've thought about how they might decay over 100 years. I don't need to know who the houses were made by, or who owned them. Just say how structural elements would decay, and what parts you think would break the most.
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