Week 4 - group project post mortem

This was the final week for the film room project, we had to have everything done and ready to present by the Thursday. I plan to offer a brief breakdown of the project and also discuss how well I think it went, how we worked together as a team and how we could potentially improve the project if we were to attempt it a second time.

Overall I feel that the project was quite the success, our final outcome was good and relatively accurate but I do however feel that the project could definitely be improved on. Firstly I'd say that planning was essential for this project, we had a very small window of time to get this done and we really needed to maximise that time. I unfortunately left the planning phase until a little after we had started which meant we were a little behind to begin with, I started planning after the concept stage  which was a little foolish. Even once I had put the plan in to motion I soon realised that making sure the whole team followed it was a difficult task. Another thing I would have done differently was start putting everything in to engine a lot sooner as setting up the camera, positioning everything and lighting the scene were very time consuming and meant I slightly ran out of time when trying to improve textures. The main problem I had with texturing was the very back wall of the tent, much like the tent the material allowed a lot of light to pass through the material. However the material was very different, it was much thinner than the tent and the light pierced through it differently which was difficult to replicate in Unreal Engine 4. If i had followed the planning we put together then we would of had enough time to really work on this back wall material as we had allotted the last 3 days for problem fixing but instead this time was spent putting everything in to engine. Also i think our team work flow could of been a little better, maybe identified each of the team members strengths and weaknesses and plan accordingly and alter who does what.

The team worked well, just like any team we had our hiccups but we overcame them. For the next group project i would really try to plan a lot sooner and also get a lot more input from my team mates on the planning as i found there was a lot of back and fourth over this which wasn't too productive. We seemed to really be able to work under pressure when needed and supported each other when help was needed. All in all i would happily work with my team again, now we have worked together once, we understand each others strengths and weaknesses and feel a lot more confident around each other.

If i was to do this project again i would of done a fair few things differently. (as you probably guessed) I would of planned a lot more and put the plan together a lot sooner and next time ill really make sure everyone is following it and is on the same page. I would put a little more time in to the budgeting of the project, whilst it wasn't so relevant for the this project in particular; we were a little over our budget (which was rectified). I think next time ill try not to learn so many bits of new software at the same time, i used zBrush, xNormal and volunteered to put everything in to engine for the team. Whilst all this was incredibly useful and i learnt a lot it got quite stressful at times.

Here is the finished outcome, I really feel we have captured the scenes atmosphere and mood; whilst it may not be prefect and 100% accurate to the scene, I am proud of our groups effort and have enjoyed working with me team mates. As for the next project, we were briefly told bout it during Mike Kelly's class, we will be designing and modelling a sentry gun to then put in to engine with the intention of animating them. This is our first truly open design brief so I am quite looking forward to it, it is also our first solo project of year 2 so I aim to take everything I have learnt from the group projects and really try to apply it to my own work. I've also made a start on my personal project this week, I've started assembling various mood boards to gather inspiration from etc; I'll go in to a little more detail on this during next weeks post.