My VE evaluation

Monster Cave from Diana Jones on Vimeo.

My main idea for the Scary Ride was Monsters. It was based on children’s books. Not many children’s books have ghosts in them, but many have monsters. Basing my development on the target market of children, I designed the characters to be mildly scary. I wanted the children to be scared as this is a scary ride.

My brain storming revolved around what children are scared of: the dark, being alone etc. I used these in the creation and design of my ride, cart and lighting (or lack of). I was in Waterstones one day, looking in the children’s picture book section. Many books had unusual monsters and animals, but only one book had ghosts in it. Maybe this is because they’re not as scary anymore.

Story boards were created to help the visualisation of the 3D creation. It has helped significantly with the positioning of my characters.

A risk I took was creating the bones for my characters to help them move. I did not fully understand how to use these at all, so I had to learn from random tutorials on the internet. The creation of the bone structure is the easiest part. But the hardest parts were linking them to the skin, and making sure the skin moves correctly. I understand that the envelopes can help this; I have not found the correct procedure for this yet.

One problem was Applying textures to the Waverly theatre, as it was made form a spline, it had complications. To fix this i hid the theatre and created my own walls to fit. I prefer this decision as  

the walls are straighter; they don’t have dips and hollows. Most of those were getting in my way.

Another problem was the skin of my characters, creasing and bending in the wrong places. I’ve tried to solve this using the envelopes and have succeeded on a few of the characters. However, some of the characters will not be able to move due to these extreme deformities.

My last problem was the multi-sub layering. I really couldn’t get it to work, so my characters are staying one colour. My main problem was the polygon IDing. I kept applying it wrong.

I have learnt much more about lighting, in this project. I’ve learnt their differences and how to change and manipulate them. There is so much you can do with them. E.g. Flickering lights, Fog and projecting bitmaps within them.

If given another chance at this project, I would create a better bone structure for my characters. Try to understand the bone and skin more, so that I could use it successfully.

I would manage my time more effectively. I would make my characters in the first two weeks, instead of the third and forth, creating more time for my experimental skin and bones. I would’ve aimed to have the rendering started and finished in the fifth week.