Final year project

I thought it could be quite interesting to talk about my third year final project. For those of you who don’t know much about final year projects at university, I will try to explain a brief overview of what it is. 

This is consists of 4 units, 2 of those units are dedicated to the final year project, so it’s quite import that I chose something I enjoy doing, something I don’t know much about and finally something which would be a good topic for discussion. I personally chose something that I didn’t really know too much about because I knew I would be spending such a huge amount of time on the project. Already at this stage of the project, I know how to do everything and the research has been done for me to confidently complete the task.

It’s very strange in the field of computer animation. To the average person if they watch some of the animations it’s difficult to understand how something is done. What I mean by this is I could create a wall the breaks while being hit in about 2 minutes inside 3ds max. It can look amazingly realistic and it takes no effort. To the average user, it looks really complex. Yet if someone made a dynamic rig of a character which would take so much more effort it wouldn’t portray to the audience. This means for your final thesis you could technically choose something which might be visually amazing. But you would be much better of creating something more technical and original that using pre-set techniques and scripts.  

The topic I have chosen is geometry and material morphing. I’m creating a dynamic rig in which I can showcase coherently geometry and material morphing. The main character will be an ostrich, reason being is it’s an animal that beforehand I had no trivia or knowledge about the animal, this allowed me to have a fresh start and research into an animal which has a very different locomotion and structure to what I’m usually used to. Furthermore I can showcase the morphing rig using the face of the ostrich. Without going into too much detail, the rig will show when a character morphs into key poses, wrinkles will appear on the face of the ostrich.

Latest version of my ostrich model (featherless)

So my project is very technical, yet I’m still hoping to create something that should be visually entertaining too. For people who want to know more about my project, I’m currently writing up my 70+ page thesis on it. Plus I will be making a public post on my own blog when it’s finally complete.

Extracurricular Activities!

At the University of Bedfordshire, there’s a huge amount of groups and societies to join. Some of them aren’t even course/ subject area specific. As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post. I travel to university, so sadly I don’t actually personally attend any society. But, luckily because I’m studying a computer science related subject there are some societies that the university hold in which you can attend online. For example there was a CGI society run a few years ago. You could enter the weekly challenges on Facebook. Another great example of this is games jam. This may not be a weekly thing, but every year or so the university hold a games jam. I think we still hold the Guinness book of records at the university for the biggest games jam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19622596

Link is above, if you wanted more information. I know the university is holding another games jam soon. It’s something which will obviously help your CV, build your technical and your social skills. They are not compulsory but I personally think they are great fun and another example of how the university goes the extra mile! Although I think personally as a student you should try and attend as many things like this as possible. I’ve currently attended 5 game jams, a few only 12 hours others 48 hours.