Week 12 – Reflection and Thoughts

Overall, I have enjoyed working through this module. Although the workload has been quite intense, the module has been very interesting. 3D modelling is not one of my strong points and probably not something I will be continuing very much with. However, it has been great learning new skills about 3D modelling, animating the models and learning the piece of software itself.

I feel that the group worked well together and we managed to split the workload up into manageable sections that each group member could work on. As I did not feel I would be able to complete as much of the modelling as the other group members, I only took a small proportion of the modelling and worked mainly on the audio and post-production parts of the project. Our group managed to work well to the timeframe that was laid out during the first week of the project with only minor changes when certain bits took a little longer than anticipated.

The parts that I modelled for the group went well and I managed to produce all the parts allocated. I did struggle with a couple of parts but was able to ask fellow group members who were able to point me in the right direction.

Finally, I think our overall product we created as a group has worked well and has met expectations we had in the first few weeks. The animation does what it is meant to and shows the engine

Week 12 – Presentation

During the final week of the module, a presentation will be given to the clients, volunteers from the Museum of Power. The presentation will show the clients which model our group chose to create, how we went about researching and planning the animation and then finally how the model was modelled, animated and put into a video.

The presentation is split into four sections so each group member is able to talk about one thing. As I had mainly worked on the post-production parts of the animation, this is the part I will talk about. This includes rendering, video editing, adding text info and audio editing.

Week 11 – Rendering and Video Production

The last stage to create the animation was to render the 3D Studio Max file into video files. If this was done by one group member in one go, it would have taken a few days to render. To cut this down, we split the rendering up between the group members. One group member took the environment part of the animation to render and the other part with the engine rotating was split up into 3 sections between the other 3 group members.

After all the sections had been rendered, it was my task to create the final video. To begin with I collected all of the rendered video files from the other group members. I then used Adobe Premiere Pro to place all of the renders onto a timeline that matched our original storyboard. Once I had all of the video files in place, I started to add in the text facts. As the machine was so unusual and almost unique, it was hard to find information and facts about the engine and its use, so the research for these facts was taken from information found at the Museum of Power. Most of the text facts are displayed whilst the engine is rotating in the animation.

The audio that I edited during the previous week was then added into the timeline to add to the video. We decided, as a group, not to include narration in the final video as the noisy environment of the Museum of Power would make it hard for anyone trying to listen.

Finally, the timeline was rendered out to a Windows AVI file and also a QuickTime MOV file.