Group work

On the 28th of October Our group

Scott Ayling

Alex Fricker

Jessica Vile

James Youngs

Matt Franklin

We all went to the Museum Of Power in Langford, to decide which engine we would like to model.At the museum we looked at many different pieces including:

Paxman steam engine, Plane Engines, Car Engines

We eventually chose the Paxman Horizontal Steam Engine we decided on this one for the following reasons:

It looked the most interesting engine there

It was one of the largest to model

It had the most visable moving parts
As we had such a large group we though it would be more challenging to model one of the more complicated pieces.

After we decided to model the Paxman Steam Engine we took loads of different photos to get as many angles on all of the different parts as we could,we could also use this at the end to measure our finished model by.We also took videos to show us how the engine moves, this could help us when modelling.

On our first meeting on the 29th of October we reviewed all the images and video we took at the museum.We then divided the engine up into the 6 main components and then decided who could model which part, taking into account every ones skills.

This is what we decided
Scott - Piston and Case

James - Wheel's There were two wheels which meant one could be made and then cloned.

Jessica - Ball

Matt - Crankshaft

Alex - Box

We set a week to complete this first task.

On our Second meeting on the 5th of November we reviewed what each of the group members did.Overall we were all on time and finished modelling all the parts We then chose what jobs were next to do:
Scott - modelling the dredger

James - backgrounds and title text

Jessica - backgrounds

Matt - Engine

Alex - Engine

We set a limit of 4 weeks to achieve these task.

Our third meeting was on the 12 of November we reviewed what everyone had done so far and made sure everyone was OK, we also got together to give advise and any help that was needed.

We struggled with the current method of creating the waves, so had to re think our ideas.

Our fourth meeting was on the 19 of November we reviewed what everyone had done so far and made sure everyone was OK.There were a few problems that we experienced however, Scott had made the water and as it was such a high resolution using ray trace,when rendering it it took a very long time, as it was so detailed.

We had to make it faster so therefore took the effect off the water, so it now doesn't look as good.
Our Fifth meeting was on the 26 of Novermeber we reviewed what everyone had done, and made sure there weren't any things we had missed.

Scott - finished modelling dredger, and water

Matt - finished engine

Alex - finished engine

Jessica - finished background and text

James - finished background

Matt was then given the task to start making textures for all of the models, the rest of us had to start the animation, common textures used were rust, steel and other types of metals.
Our sixth meeting was on the 3rd of December, animation and textures are nearly finished and ready to render, we started to create the title text "Paxman Horizontal Steam Engine".

On the fourth of December we all got together to check the process and review our model, we tried putting it all together, but realised we had to render them all separately otherwise it would take too long.

We now had to create the camera angles using 3DMax, we had to make sure everything we wanted to be seen was seen by the camera.This was done by creating a path constraight following a spline.

The rendering took around 14 hours which wasn't expected. This was a slight problem as once we began to render we knew we were not able to edit it again. Once the rendering had finished, we bound them all together in Premier Pro. This was much easier then rendering it all together as one.