The Final Product

My first round of senior portfolio draws to a close. It was a wonderful learning experience for myself and my abilities. First I will start with the final product. I utilized Marmoset Toolbag 4 to render out my "finished" model.  I found an appropriate sky box HDRI that allowed the elements of the model I wanted exemplified to shine.

    I am somewhat satisfied with my final product. It has the form and silhouette that I wanted but I am left wanting more. The emissive and point lights do add the subtle flair. The form is simple and elegant as I intended it to be. I especially enjoy the tail fin and the segmenting of the body itself. The side fins were acceptable but not exactly 100% satisfactory. I feel as though I achieved the basic goal of a mechanical orca, but that isn't without it's share of issues.

    So I can talk a lot about success, but I believe it is more important to address what I learned and how I can improve. I found myself with a lot of trouble tackling this project in terms of direction. For so long in the major I was bored by the narrow breadth of things to model and work on, but it appears the complete free range has had it's own negative impacts. I was modeling something for another class with a very simple reference. It was completed in minutes. That's when I recognized the error of my pipeline. I relied solely on AI generated art that doesn't hold concrete forms and are always up to different interpretation upon each viewing. It led to failed attempts at starting in a strong direction. 

    These failed attempts lacked the support of a clear reference. Thus every time I returned to work on the project I was confused about where I left off. 

    These were only two of the attempts that remained in my Maya scene. I would start working on a model only to find the form lacking. I found myself doing too much and getting lost. 

    It is now that I reflect on my time in CAGD 345W Advanced Preproduction and groan with how much I have strayed from those pipelines and how it would have reduced my confusion and lack of strong direction. Had I established a written concept, logline pitch, used AI generated art to INSPIRE a drawn concept image, and move forward with modeling. That avoidance of structure hindered my project and resulted in it being not nearly as successful as I wanted it to be.