Wednesday 29 April 2015

Week 8- Communication Presenation (Driving Machine Team)

29/04/15

Team: Driving Machine/ Steering Wheel




Members:
  • Peter Mitchell
  • Elliott Johnson
  • Daming Yan
  • Neville Pan
  • Vedran Kuljic

Presentation:

Pros:
  • Clear and precise slides
  • Expanded on points/ added new information
  • Great use of graphs (visual diagrams) e.g. Cheney Model --> Explained the graph/ model step by step helping us to easily understand it
    • The self created animation/ video was very creative and explained the Cheney model futher
  • Well prepared presentation- the group members knew exactly what they were talking about
  • Clear and well understood pros and cons- great integration of images and other visual devices
  • Talked a lot about different topics relating to communication e.g. the environment, verbal/ non- verbal, forms of communication --> well researched to help us understand the communication topic

Cons:
  • Some slides were a little bit inconsistent e.g. text size
  • Didn't relate as much to the project (Driving Wheel/ Steering)
  • Mainly one person did most of the talking which felt like he did all the work while the rest of the team members just stood behind him.
    • It was clear who prepared for the presentation and who didn't --> Also evident when answering questions, the same people who spoke the most in the presentation.

Feedback
  • Good foundational knowledge but needed to be more condensed
    • Condense generic ideas
    • Show experience
  • Use the term collaboration and how it relates to the group
  • Talk more about the team structure and the project specifically
  • Using feedback to correct end product 
  • Repeated information e.g. Cheney model explained and then shown in an animation 
  • Too much interdependency
  • Team is missing leadership/ hierarchy because of this there is a lot of miscommunication/ no clear roles
  • Specificity 

How does communication relate to our project (Virtual Museum)?
Communication is an important component that must be implemented and worked on in every part of our lives from communicating to family and friends to communicating in a professional work scenario. Through the presentation it has been made evident of how communication has changed throughout the years and how it shapes the way we deliver information to one another. The group explored different platforms in which they primarily communicating through, such as Facebook and email. These are the platforms that our group uses, however we have found problems in using these platforms because not every single member, at first, had access to Facebook therefore information had to be passed back and forth which led to a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

A miscommunication was also evident in the early stages of our project, when the people at the museum didn't voice clearly of their intentions and capabilities of different software, this had led to our group changing software and approach. By this miscommunication, this had made us more active in our communication with the people at the museum, this is to ensure that we are meeting their needs and that the end product will be something that they can easily use and manipulate. We aim to communicate directly to someone at the museum who is directly involved with the project (Dr. Ian Ewart), this will be easier than passing a message to Russell who then passes it onto the representative at the museum. This will minimize any miscommunication or confusion.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Week 7- Change of plans

After our presentation on planning, Russell shared what he discussed with the people at the Museum of English Rural Life. There has been a change of plans and alteration to our original brief. The people at the Museum prefer to use a software which they all can use and is easy to update and work on. Unreal Engine 4 and 3ds Max seem to be too difficult to use and maintain. For that reason, Russell has decided to change our software to Revizto which you can put your 3D model into an environment, very similar to Lumion. We will know 3d model the museum in Sketch Up, as suggested by Russell, and then imported into Revizto to create the environment, lighting and other effects to make it look as realistic as possible. For the 3D objects we plan to test out 123D Catch and then use 3Ds Max to clean it up.


This change isn't too harming to our group and what we originally plan, in fact it has actually made it easier because we all know how to use Sketch Up quite well and by the sounds of it Revizto it quite an easy software to learn in a short period of time. I would of liked to use UE4, after seeing its capabilties, to build up my skills in a new program but for the purpose of the assignment, it is important to meet the needs of the clients and this is the best solution we can give them.


The image above is a model of the museum modelled in Sketch Up by someone from the museum. There are a lot of problems with the mode like messy modelling techniques (walls sticking out and not joining together), however this will assist us in starting our version of the museum. We will also use the plans provided by Adam, which was mentioned in the previous blog posts.



The images above were taken and made by Dr. Ian Ewart from MERL. He took a series of photos from different angles which created this 3D model of the facade of the building and churning device. The process that he used is very similar to 123D catch. As a group, we hope to develop something similar for our objects.

Monday 20 April 2015

Week 7- PLANNING Presentation

Prezi Presentation

Click here to view our Prezi presentation


Video



Click here to see our video on YouTube

Music by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMyVicWuO_M 


7 Images


Click here for the reference list to the images



1000 words

Click here for our 1000 word document about planning

Week 6- Preparing our presentation (Planning)

The first week of mid semester break we all focused on creating the prototype museum and jug that Russell wanted to show on his trip to Reading. We also continued experimenting with UE4 and 3Ds Max to find the best way of how to things like UV mapping and light mapping in UE4.

The second week of mid semester break (non- teaching week) we continued on our individual sections for the Theme of Collaboration presentation (our group was assigned Planning). Besides spending time on the actual presentation, we worked together to create the video that was required which further shows our understanding of the topic planning.

This presentation required a lot of planning. I first had to divide up each section (more detail on the previous post), set a deadline as to when we wanted everyone's individual sections completed, how we wanted to present it e.g. Powerpoint or Prezi and brainstorm ideas on how to create the video.

Progress of our video
We had a few ideas for how to make our video and we ended up deciding to make a stop motion video to explain our theme planning. We (Vivien, Grant and Tom) met up at uni on Saturday (18/04/15) to work on it, we worked well as a team as we agreed on things very quickly.







I had the task of editing the video, the process of making the video was quite enjoyable and I feel like it was a fun way of explaining the theme planning. 

Friday 10 April 2015

Week 5- Preparing our presentation (Planning)

The Virtual Museum team has chosen to do the first theme of the group presentations, which is planning.

To get things started I looked at what was required of us by referring to the CODE3100 blog and previous years work. This helped me in coming up with different questions/ parts for the presentation. For the back brief presentation we split up the presentation into different categories e.g. Brief, history, approach etc. and then I put the presentation together. This worked really well and we are taking the same approach for this group presentation.


Image above: Screenshot of the Facebook post I posted regarding the group presentation.

We primarily communicate through Facebook because this is the platform that everyone is active on and we can keep track of progress and information relevant to the project.

These are the questions we aim to answer in presentation:
1. What is planning? - Definition - GRANT
2. Why we plan? – Benefits/ What is achieves - GRANT
3. Stages of planning - VIVIEN
4. How to plan? - ARAM
5. Planning Tools - ARAM
6. Planning our project- Aim - TOM
7. Planning for the future/ if any problems arise - RIBAL

There may be more parts to add but for the time being these are the questions that certain people in the group are responsible for. 

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Week 4- Tutorials- Modeling Jug

03/04/15- 04/04/15

We were asked by Russell to develop a simple prototype of the museum with an object (jug) in it to show to the Museum of English Rural Life on his trip to England. We divided the roles- modelling the room, jug, lighting and the environment in Unreal Engine 4. We were a little bit strapped for time since we were not 100% familiar with using UE4 and we encountered some problems like texturing etc. 

I modelled the jug which was fairly simple but texturing caused a lot of problems and was very time consuming. 

Progress Pictures:







Texturing:
It took me a long time to work out how to do uv wrapping. I watched countless tutorials and I realised I did not assign the material to the object that is why nothing was showing up. I'm not too sure if my method is the correct way but since we were short of time we went with it. I will continue practising until I get a smoother and realistic texturing. 




UnReal Engine 4
The importing process from 3Ds Max to UnReal Engine 4 was fairly easy and one of my team members taught us how to apply a collision box to our 3Ds max models so in the game the player does not walk through the objects. 





Saturday 4 April 2015

Week 3- Research- Museum Plans

Progress- Week 3

As a team we decided to divide the roles (for now) into 2 modelling tasks:
1. Objects- modelling objects that are on display at the museum
2. Building- modelling the exterior and interior of the museum

Most likely we will be helping each other on whichever tasks needs more attention. 

Myself and Grant have been given the task of modelling the building. We researched online for floor plans of the museum but unfortunately there was nothing online that was of any use. I decided to contact the administration staff at The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) and I was able to get in contact with Adam who is the Project Officer for the Museum (see email below). 


Image above: Screenshot of email from Adam (Project Officer at MERL)


After explaining to Adam our aim of the project he sent me some floor plans of the museum which we will be using as a guide to model the museum.




Images above: Floor plans of the Museum of English Rural Life provided by Adam (Project Officer)

UPDATE 08/04/15
Adam, the project officer at MERL, has kindly given me more plans that were provided by the architects working for the Museum. He gave me quite a lot of detailed plans which will help us a lot in modeling the interior and exterior of the museum.


Image above: Email received on the 8th of April 2015 from Adam (Project Officer at MERL)


Image above: A screenshot of one of the many construction drawings sent to me. 
Other plans included: floor plans, site plans, sections, elevations and detailed drawings.

Week 2- Back Brief Presentation

Back Brief:

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) run by the University of Reading is a museum documenting the progressive change in the farming and countryside of England. The museum contains an extensive range of objects, archives, films, books and photographs that are of national importance. Due to its temporary closure for redevelopment, this has resulted in no access for patrons. As technology is rapidly improving this has opened the opportunity to create a prototype virtual museum of MERL. Using the latest technology such as, 3D modelling software, Unreal Engine 4 and the Oculus Rift the aim is to create a different experience in viewing the contents and surroundings of the museum. It also gives the opportunity to those who are unable to access the museum due to mobility or socio- cultural difficulties. 


 Image above: Screenshot of our group presentation layout using Prezi 

 Image above: Screenshot of the brief slide using Prezi


Link to presentation: Here

Roles for Back Brief Presentation:
  • Me (Vivien): Brief and putting the presentation together using Prezi
  • Grant: History of Museum of English Rural Life 
  • Aram: Approach to project and what software we are using
  • Ribal: Interactivity
  • Tom: Existing virtual museums
Presented in class on 18/03/15