11/09- First individual Coaching with Kees. We discussed my ambitions for this Minor which are being able to combine my gained skills here in Maya, CLO and Substance Painter with my fashion knowledge we build up on. Developing my skills in Maya will open me many doors for visualizing accessories for my Collections in Detail and using additional programs in combination (Mudbox and Substance Painter), I would love to create environments in Maya such as stores to present clothing later on as well as providing an interaction between the viewer and the environment.
Another program that will support me is CLO, which I am familiar with but only in pattern techniques not in Animation. So it will allow me to see it not in a complete Fashion context but from a different new perspective which is a chance I should definitely take.
7/11 - It was a really good coaching session where we discussed further how I can implement my maya modeling goal in our project as well as the
template that will help me guide me through the process of achieving my goals. I also agree with Kees that my process book is still very vague because I put all the classes in general since that I what I am use to at AMFI but for now I will separate it and section it more so it will be clearer for me to distinguish as well as for you to follow my development easier. In addition to that, I was happy to hear the process book in general looks good and that I am on the right track. This motivates me to continue further and keep on working.
Another point is to keep track of my sources which I will add to my previous work and keep on tracking throughout my further process.
2/11 - This personal coaching lesson was very helpful since I could talk about my part in the group which is holding everything together in the design document. Since in the past few weeks I was not able to work a lot I will still follow my goals that I set (see Personal Goal 1 and 2). I got good feedback for my added technical features in the process book for the Unity, Maya and CLO classes. I need to complete the base level in VR tech and IDE which I will discuss with the teachers again because it was not very clear for me that this is something I can already do now. For me the outcome of our group project would proof my base level in these classes, but I understand that it is an individual pass or fail, so I will look more into that.
For my further personal goal I was proposing an addition to Danielles campaign idea, which would be a Virtual avatar interacting in her campaign and being present as a persona/target group/ brand ambassador.
Since during the coaching it developed that it might be off topic with the minor since it is not closely connected to our project even though I could develop my skills in animating and in CLO, I will wait for the VR days, join talks and lessons about Virtual human being and Digital human Creation to see how I can link it the best way possible to my development and the project in this Minor.
INDIVIDUAL COACHING
Feedback on what to add in my process book:
- Explain the group situation more
--> that we got stuck, how we solve it, why we got stuck, how is the energy and motivation lacking and how to get it back
--> explaining how I reached the Base level in IED and VR tech (looking back on brightspace to the conditions and connecting it to my personal development and findings)
I am continuing with my Goal 1 since I can see a clear development in my modeling skills and the advantage I can get out of it.
In addition, I want to add another goal which is texturing. It is for me closely connected to Modeling but since substance painter is also very compatible with CLO I can continue working with it in the future. For me, it is also very interesting to see the compatibility between two programs such as Maya and Substance Painter.
LEARNING TALKS
Examples:
As I explained above the idea for a campaign for the publication and rising awareness of students I would like to create a virtual identification for the VR experience. Therefore I visited the VR days for several talks about this topic which was very useful and interesting. My main point of what I learned there was that virtual beings are often created too realistic, since there is no perfect human why would there be a perfect avatar? The gap between. realism and virtual widen a lot and it would be very interesting for me to find a balance between that. How can we create something abnormal that seems fitting in our reality?
Therefore I want to try creating a virtual student that guides the people in the game through the factory. This will add to the identification of the game to the HvA and UvA students as well as a clear user story. If there is time left I would love to make the virtual students' Instagram more for promotion for the game as well as really recreating their life including snapshots from our game, the campaign, the animations and scenes with details.
I feel like for me at this point everything finally comes together. I can see how I can combine my interest in fashion and my future with this project, by taking interesting challenges trying out this, and exploring new skills. I also realized that the process actually helps me to understand my development because sometimes I have the feeling of having a slow process but when looking back at the things I created really motivates me to keep on going.
I will also try to implement it in unity with the help of teachers, but also to step out of my comfort zone even though unity is not my learning goal. For me it is important that the game developers in our group don't feel like
I have the ideas and they need to execute that but we also talked about it
and they said they are always happy to help but also appreciate that I
want to try it myself.
I spend a lot of time in the first week of the 4th sprint on Daz studio and combined it with different programs to see its compatibility. I soon realized that it takes a lot of practice and insight into the program to create something really different from the given template. I got lost in details which you won't even notice in VR or for our purpose of the game.
It is a program that I will definitely look more into in the future but for the current time span that we have, there are higher priorities where I can also gain skills in different fields and it contributes more to the actual VR game environment.
So to conclude I can say I am very happy I looked into DAZ and made some progress which I know is very useful for further projects, but for this moment it seems like a lot of work to learn another program besides Maya, Substance painter, a bit of unity which are all completely new for me.
In addition to that, I felt like implementing it in the VR game was very forced and I had to look for so many reasons to put it in that it didn't feel like it would belong there or contribute something helpful to the game, rather than an unnecessary detail that is the most time consuming for me since I have to learn a completely new program.
So I decided to still challenge myself and dive a bit into unity, just some small interactions, like a moving machine or creating smoke for the factory. So in exchange for this learning goals I am creating a small one for this sprint, to have a small interaction in the VR environment.
