Project "Well City"

The following images and videos below is the final fabrication of our project "Well City".

Below is a link to download the final version of Well City.

Team E-volve - Well City

Enjoy.

Trailer

Extended Trailer

External view.

Another external view.

Looking down into the pool area.

Pool area.

Kitchen and living room.

Looking down into the well.

Pool area.

Look up into the night.

Main pool area.

Bedroom.

Fixing Well City

The last couple of days I've been working on fixing up my teams fabrication. During the presentation we had some major problems, first it was the building flashing, second is the map runs very slow. Firstly I fixed up some of the textures, the fish tanks looked see through and not that visible during the night, so I added the wet and frost effect to the tank making it more visible. The swimming pool's texture has also been changed, it now has some ripple effect instead of being a clear flat looking surface.

Since I had to go a couple of steps back this involved redoing some of the things that was previously done. The lighting is now fixed up, extra lighting fixtures also have been added and also light switches. The lighting colour is still a warm yellowish orange colour, but it is not as intense and bright as the previous one. The doors, and their rotations have been fixed up, this part was really annoying, sometimes the doors would disappear once in a while. Some parts of the building was flashy and had to be covered up with a solid then textures, this also was done with gaps within the building.

Placement of the buildings had to be redone, making holes and placing them in, also covering up the bits that are open on the sides. Covering up the bits that were open was done by using solids to fill in the gaps, then the land was modified so it would look natural.

The final result, personally I think it is alot better, this time you can actually walk around the map, but there is still a bit of lag when playing on high specs, either than that everything else is all good.

The images below displays the process of fixing up well city.

The living room's new lighting.

Master bedroom's new lighting.

The light switch.

Fixed up doors that open the right way.

The new water texture, notice the noise ripple effect.

The fish tank is now more visible during the night, thanks to the wet and frost applyed to it.

Extra lighting and fixtures.

View from inside the pool looking up.

The gaps that have been filled with solids.

Placement of the well houses.

Finally finished everything.

Final Post – Contribution & Collaboration

At the start of the semester I thought having random people in your group would not go so smoothly, as I didn’t really know them well enough and haven’t worked with them before. But as the weeks progressed and collaboration comes into play I got to know my team a little better. I’ve learnt why Jeremy had put us into random groups, like he said “in the real world you cannot choose who you want to work with” this statement made is true. In most cases, working on the same project you usually don’t get a choice who you want to work with, so this became a good learning experience for each of us and will prepare us for the real world.

As time progressed further into due dates you can see which individual of the team really put an effort to what they do and the amount of quality. When we had a group discussion on who was going to do what, I choose to build the entire model with the kitchen which was done in Revit. Working out the room layouts took a while to do, as some spaces of the building were not clearly defined.The ramp area took a while to figure out, but the most important thing to me was to try and get those two conceptual perceptive views provided by the architects. As the end result I think the two views we had looked really similar.

Whilst I was working on the building Jackey was working on the terrain for the placement of the building. The model was then handed to Wirada for placement of furniture and textures of the building. I helped Wirada out on the ideas of textures in building, the final texture of the building was chosen by myself, it was a standard texture in sketch up which I adjusted the colour so it would look similar to the conceptual design, I also suggested using white window frames just to keep similarities. Another one of my tasks was water, I created the pool area using water volumes in Crysis and added a water type texture to it.

I then added windows to the building, when re-building the model, windows were taken into consideration for two reasons, one was lighting issues, and the other was to have a visual relationship between the exterior and interior spaces. Fish tanks was a main feature of our fabrication, this was a must have as the tanks resembles life within the well and gives it a different experience. I also had to redo the entire lighting of the building, as the previous one the colour of the lights were not adjusted, they were just basically default lighting placed onto the map with no further adjustments. I also contributed to the team blog with some of the weekly updates. Throughout the weeks our team was constantly giving each other feedback on individual’s thoughts and inputs into the fabrication, this is important to having a better outcome.

In conclusion this course was a great learning experience, real-time environment is not only fun to do but I think it will one day become the standard of presenting your works to a client. Collaboration was the main key area of focus; all those twelve collaboration topics we talked about were all experienced by each team in some way. Working with my team was cool; (they were all new to me) we had good times working with one another, it’s good to know that you can still have a bit of a laugh now and then, but when it comes down to getting serious work done, we get it done. From this real-time experience, at this moment in time I think I'll be definitely be using Crysis for my graduation project.

I would like to thank my group members for their efforts and contribution, and Jeremy and Graham for their support and guidance.

Cheers
Wilson.

Final Presentation

During the final presentation today we had some guests in the audience. Due to Jackey's exam we were booked to present last. Every teams presentation went pretty well, they all done alot of polishing since the last presentation. Most teams polished up on textures, and adding in furniture into their fabrication. Its good to know how they all collaborated together to produce something really amazing, but collaboration in some of the groups was a little bumpy.

When our group went up to present, their was a major problem which was the flashy lights. This problem caused everything to lag dramatically, and the viewers were getting quite annoyed. Lucky Jeremy seen the photos we posted up before hand, which proved that we didn't have the problem before and that the lighting went pretty well. Either than that I guess every else went pretty smoothly. If I get time I'll probably go through and try find out what is causing the flashy effects and lag, cause it is really annoying to have, especially when you work on a project so long and hard and the outcome is not what you expected.

More Image Captures

Below are some more images captures I took after finishing the lighting. Note these shots were captured during the night.

The ramp gallery. Having windows helped provide natural lighting to these spaces that would of been dark in the original design.

Entry, living room and dining room.

View of the well area and the fish tanks that are hung within the walls.

External night view of the exterior.

Another external capture.

Last Group Session

I got to uni around 6pm today with the work I done, which was completed windows, fish tanks, and the well water. I loaded it up in the labs and noticed that my textures for some of the glass and water did not show. This problem was resolved 30mins later when all you had to do to save the texture was rename it after you inputted the settings. Today I had to take out the lighting that Swati done yesterday night. The lighting was very dull, and the colour of the lights didn't seem to make the place any better, this had to be changed.

After I fixed the texturing problems, Wirada started to work on AI within the environment, the AI used is pretty good, she used some smart objects which made the AI do all sorts of actions such as sitting down. Jackie then finished placing doors within the building. I started to work on re-doing the lighting, at first I set all the objects to cast shadows, I added simple lights and adjusted the colour of the lighting to orange, this made the building feel more warm and welcoming. The light's colour multiplier adjusts the intensity of the lights, this setting had to be carefully adjusted, upping this value too much could over brighten the rooms. My team mates and I were really impressed by the lighting, I never thought I could get the perfect setting on the first few go's of trying.

Then disaster strikes, the screen froze, had the blue screen pop up, then restarted. Our work was all on the primary drives, which we all know cleans out every time you restart, so we are now delayed a few hours back, so tragic. I'm really feeling on the down low right now.

I finally finished re-doing what we lost, which was, placing the fish tanks, and lightnings. Lighting then became a problem, problem was I couldn't get that cool light setting I had before, I got it quite similar but not as wow as before. I think it wasn't as good as before because the first time we saw it was also the first time experiencing lights. Anyhow the end results are shown in the images below. (Please note that the images shown are taking during the night)

Lighting in the top floor bedroom.

On top of the building, looking down into the well.

Master bedroom.

Another bedroom.

Dining and living room.

Pool area.

I quickly checked the placement of the glass to the window frames, all good. I had to leave so I reminded Jackie and Wirada the tasks left which needs to be done, the presentation room, fixing up the flashy elements within the building, adding doors and AI again, put in lighting fixtures so it doesn't look like nothing is lighting up the rooms. Once these tasks are done the building is going to be grouped into one object, holes have to be made on the land for the building to sit in. The placement of the well buildings are up to Jackie and Wirada.

Hopefully all goes to plan.

Fish Tanks

The fish tanks in well city is one of the most important features that we must have in our fabrication. The fish tanks gives the well a sense of pure escape, a relaxing pool area that when looked up upon the inner walls are decorated with fish tanks. Personally I think if our fabrication did not have these fish tanks it would just look really plain and ordinary, the feeling of the environment will defiantly be alot different. I did get the fish working inside the fish tank, but problems occurred, as my tank was fairly small, the fish would at times swim out of the tank and float around in mid air. This problem did not get resolved, I couldn't risk a finished fabrication and have fish just floating around outside the tanks.

Below are images of my progress to completion.

The shape of the tank.

Testing out the water inside the fish tank.

Another view of the final tank form.

Swimming inside the tank, which has vegetation.

Placement of the fish tanks in the pool area of the building.