A time for reflection on the process and development so far....

I think it is about time that should look back over my work and attempt to comment on the production stage of my project and what exactly have i learnt throughout this process so far.

I think i would like to firstly start off by saying that things have not exactly gone to plan, my Gantt chart that i produced in Pre-production had me finishing all base meshes for the character, weapon and vehicle before Christmas. I believe that i have been naive in thinking that everything was going to run like a well oiled machine. Hopefully by the end of this post it will show the problems i encountered in producing such a delay.

fig.1

As fig.1 shows there is a massive difference between my original concept design and and the present model that i have produced. Why do they look so different? The main reason being;

1. The basic shape and anatomy of my character had to change dramatically in order to conform with the UT3 skeleton. My original concept design was produced to look as realistic and anatomically correct as possible, however before i even began to build my model John suggested that i should attempt to import the default UT3 character that was free to download. Immediately i knew that things were going to have to change as the Unreal proportions of the body did not conform to true life. Why they build their model in this way i don't really understand, maybe they made them this way so they would be instantly recognizable.


2. My concept design had no real form or any kind of detail that would help my character stand out. I cannot believe that i never seen this way back in pre-production looking back now it looks boring and uninteresting. All the armour was flat and didn't have much shape and detail in it but this was not immediately apparent to me until i started modelling the character in 3DS MAx.


3. Having imported the UT3 character i realised that if i carried on with my original concept my character would look bland in comparison to other pre built models already in UT3. Hence the reason alot more detail was added into the back area and a Jetpack was added as this is the view point that the user would see more of when playing UT3.

So what changes have been exactly made since the original concept design?

If we look at fig.2 below we can see that my model has gone through a big transformation from the original concept in terms of scale and size. Main differences between the different stages are the proportions have changed both in width and in height. The total frame of the anatomy had been bulked up in order to not look out of place in the Unreal universe. It was strange that i never picked up on this at first or earlier on in the development of the character i think i was distracted by poly counts or something but i was shocked when i realized how wrong the body shape was.

fig.2