The Aviary - Part II

Weekly Blog Entry Research & Project Updates (8)

This week marked my fifth and final consecutive week of modeling. Phase 2 of the project is now done – all modeling I intended to do this semester for this project is complete (though that may change if my Final Project proposal for another class is accepted – I will speak more to that on the next post however). The birds have all been modeled/UV Unwrapped. See specifics below.

I now move into Phase 3 next week – Texturing/Polish (this will be the shortest phase at only 2 weeks long) after which I jump into the final phase – putting everything together and making a scene to explore.

I did have some false starts UVing the Vulture in particular (Maya 2018 will need to be replaced soon),but, while time-consuming, was not a major setback and has been resolved (see the vulture feet – every time I UV’d it, the faces kept separating forcing me to merge vertices again and again); all the more reason I am thankful to have been learning Blender this semester – starting next semester I intend to do all my modeling/UV work using that program as compared to Maya (which I have been using this semester).

Low-Poly, Blocky, as conceptualized in earlier posts.

UVing the Vultures Feet provided the most trouble, but ultimately worked out through manually merging vertices after all other faces were UV'd properly (anytime I unfolded, or laid out my UV shells, the faces kept separating, so I simply waited until I was done with other UV's, and did my final layout before merging the vertices back; don't know why it happened, it's a rare problem, but I manually worked through it).

Neither the Owl, nor the rest of the Aviary Collection provided such trouble...

Sparrow - In Flight

Sparrow - On Land

Eagle - In Flight

Eagle - On Land

Dove

Crow Variants

Cable for Birds hanging off Ceiling - note custom pivot location for easy, appropriate scaling.

19 Museum Environment Assets as well as 10 Bird Assets (including Cable) made for this project.

Tentative Project Schedule

· Week 9 (This Week) – Week 10: Texturing/Polish (Lighting/Any Additional Changes) Museum Space/Birds

· Week 11 – Week 14: Putting Everything Together – Place assets in game engine (Unity); appropriate scaling, duplicating, lighting work, sound work (acoustics in Museum Space and how the glass of the birds plays with that) and final polish. I give myself 4 weeks – more time than any step earlier - but can easily be pushed to less time if I am behind in the previous steps outlined in the schedule above.