My initial research for this project spewed a wide variety of ideas and potential projects for this assignment however I had noticed a trap of behaviour I had fallen into in my other projects that I will restate multiple times in this evaluation. I constantly overestimated my skills and ended a project with something I wasn’t overly happy with. This was something I considered when I was planning this project. I looked over my multiple different project ideas and thought “Do I really have the skill to pull this off in a way I will be proud of?” For all but a few I found myself thinking no and this dose of reality helped guide my choice for the project. There were two remaining projects available being a sword in the stone environment project and cabinet arcane a celebration of my skills and gaming. I had planned both of these alongside the others and not wanting my ambition to leave completely I decided that one wouldn’t push my skills enough and so I came to my conclusion that cabinet arcane would be the project I would choose.

 

 

Research for this project was a lot of fun. Due to the assets being so varied I got to look at the source material of all the assets I was making along with various videos if I ever got stuck of anything like geometry problems. Investigating things like texture creation was also a lot of fun and highly informative. What I needed to research was on a need-to-know basis as whatever I decided to model next would be the focus of my current research. This meant that research was continuous outside of the initial research I did for my project at the start. I utilised primary research by taking pictures of my own home cabinet for reference for things like size and wood gradient and the utilised secondary research for all of my assets and textures. This constant research allowed me to mix model advice and texturing skills from multiple sources and allowed me to create combination pieces that still gave homage to the original designs. This can be seen In my moonlight greatsword and blade of the ruined king models where I custom textured them in certain ways that may be different from the models to add my own spin on the original design while keeping the spirit of the asset the same

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Planning for this project used a roadmap style system where I would have loose guidelines to structure my work around and keep myself on target however that was around the only planning I had as I felt choosing assets to create based on time would be a more effective method for myself as limiting myself in my previous projects caused myself to be unsatisfied with them. The two hurdles in this planning structure were that I had my work deleted and the second one was that I didn’t comprehensibly sort the assets into complex and simple. I had originally done this but decided it was unnecessary and scrapped the list. This turned out to be a big mistake as I soon found myself with complex assets with limited time and smaller simplistic assets eating my time. This is the only fault I find with my planning structure, and I admit I could have tweaked my asset list to accommodate this problem which I will be doing in future projects.

 

Despite the short Grievances listed in the paragraph above this project has been the most well planned out of all my projects and I think that’s due to all I have learned during the course. The initial idea came to me due to the thematic lists I was making before the final project. I would challenge myself to essentially another list project this one would be my most ambitious one because I would take from a selection of games rather than one specific one. This would allow me to not only have a wider range of items to work with, but it would make my project a sort of celebration of not only my own skills along the project but also of gaming in its entirety. This is what inspired me however I wanted to overcome to hurdle I always faced in these projects which was presentation. I never knew how to present my work and I always felt that although the models or particles may be well made the presentation was lack lustre. It was this that while I was watching Harry potter the Half-Blood Prince and the vanishing cabinet scene came about that I was inspired. I looked at the way this imposing mystic cabinet lorded over Draco, and I knew I wanted to present my work in a similar way. I looked to the other mystic storage I thought of off the top of my head, being the magic wardrobe In Narnia the lion the witch and the wardrobe and began brainstorming. Now I knew how I wanted to present my work however I still had not decided what items I was making and then thought of how my previous projects had gone. I overestimated my skills and by reaching high fell short of what I wanted to make. I decided this would not happen and I made my project fit this problem. The project would be well planned by not being planned. What I mean by this is that I made the project modular with a road map. This would allow me to create something that would be presentable regardless of where on the road map I found myself, but it would all be the same general idea. A presentation of the assets I had made. I could reach high with this project, but I would never fall low as there would be no low point, I could find myself at. The best project would be an interactive unreal scene with test going into intricate lore information about each model with all the models being beautifully textured and having effects and animations and this wasn’t realistic for me to achieve and due to my previous experiences, I knew this. It was the exact reason I have the project in this way. I had denied myself the opportunity to fail because I would have a finished project regardless of the state in ended in.

 

This obviously doesn’t mean that it was without challenges. Despite my effort to make this project failure proof and stress free as I could the beginning of the project was marked with disaster. The models I had worked on up to that point were deleted which was a large knock to my motivation. This being my pokeball and the Morningstar. The pokeball wasn’t that big of an issue but the Morningstar really hurt, and the curves and complex geometry was hard for me to make and having it gone placed me in an uncomfortable situation that meant I would either move on and not make it or I could spend time remaking a difficult model. In the end I decided to move on and not remake the morning star. This was the reason my asset list wasn’t just a list, it was a selection, and I found it invaluable in this time of lost work. I retargeted myself and set myself on a more precise vision of my project. I wanted four large assets covering the doors. These would most likely be swords as I believe this is what would best fit the length and they couldn’t be stored anywhere else as their size would not properly be conveyed. The interior would be comprised of smaller assets like the pokeballs and morning star previously mentioned and other smaller objects like potions and bombs. This was good as even though I had failed to meet my vision for previous projects that didn’t mean being devoid of one for this project would be a good idea. This new idea for how the assets would be presented gave me renewed vigour for the project and I continued. Cautious of my time running out I attempted to focus on the more complex assets however it didn’t occur to me that big did not mean complex and as such I found myself surprised when bigger objects like pyramid heads great knife did not take long whatsoever compared to the smaller companion cube with its high advanced chassis. This was an error in my planning as although I had planned out my work with how it would make my models, I had not considered that large does not mean complex and therefore things I should have allocated less or more time got mixed up. This caused problems later as the larger complex models received less time than they should have as well smaller fewer complex models received a larger amount than they deserved. This caused some stress when models like blade of the ruined king that should have been made earlier in the project and given more time were made towards then end causing time constraint issues with their creation. Regardless of this however I believe I managed to fulfil the fantasy of Cabinet Arcane. Which was displaying the models inside the cabinet with a simple opening animation. Following my roadmap, I managed to create fourteen models which featured on my list to a quality I was happy with. From doing this project I’ve learned the most effective way to plan my projects in the future in a road map style. This is central to my planning style as I found that previous planning methods were not effective and keeping me stuck to them however this roadmap style has allowed me to track my progress and end up with a conclusion, I could be proud of. I faced several problems over the course of the project like work deletion, time constraint problems and geometry errors however I managed to persevere through them with both my own determination but also the help of my peers and their advice on my work with them even encouraging me to work to a higher standard and push myself that bit harder.

 

There are still things about my project which I could improve the simplest being more models of a higher quality or going the alternate route of putting the project into unreal engine and having the interactivity I had planned later down the roadmap. This of course would require a larger time investment which I would have possibly arrived at if not for the deletion of the first week of my work.

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Problems aside however when it comes to the development of skills no other project, I have done can even compare too this one learning the program blender alongside working on this was a hard task but one I have certainly reaped the rewards from. From the basic movement controls to learning basic animation to the more complex things like coding in shape faces to transform into other shapes as well as dozens of other techniques the skills I have gained from this project have been invaluable and I can now confidently say have outgrown my skills in even 3Ds Max the program I started the entire course on. This utilisation of blender opened me up to so much for information as blender is a free program with hundreds of thousands of tutorials and addons and guides whereas 3Ds max simply doesn’t have this reach due to it being a very inaccessible software for the public. My most valued development in this field has been the discovery of texture nodes which have made my previously worse skill far, far easier and has allowed me to even improve on a skill I was too anxious to practice should the result be below my expectations.

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The strengths of my final project are that I own all the models as I created them all myself a value, I wanted to hold myself to at the beginning of the project and one I stuck to until the end. Although the project changed in scope throughout development, I cannot say it got worse or better as the way I viewed the development process made sure to excise these thoughts from my mind. What I can say though is that the project became less technically impressive, and the scope of the project got smaller which I do not view as a negative. I believe audience response will be positive and that I achieved the goal of pushing my modelling skills, something I didn’t get to express in my previous project as I was programming, and that even people with little knowledge of gaming will be able to appreciate the work off its aesthetic alone.

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In conclusion I believe my project was a success that I not only am proud of, but I also learned from, and I believe that learning is simply an extra piece of value in the first major project I have done where I can look at my work, smile and believe it turned out just as well as I wanted it to.