Monday 10 November 2014

Post 3: Ethical Statement

All the work that I have produced for this project is my own or has been provided for me by my teacher.

Tuesday 28 October 2014

Post Six and Seven:Advanced Tools and Techniques

Task Two
Explain how advanced tools and techniques have been used to create, edit and integrate digital media outcomes. 

I have used different advanced tools and techniques to create, edit and integrate my digital media outcome. In my design i used a variety of advanced tools, in my case i used weight/UV painting, rigging, animating, rendering my character, etc. However, i will only mention two advanced techniques that i used to develop my outcome.

First Advanced Technique
The first advanced technique that I used to create, edit and integrate my digital media outcome is rigging. Rigging is applying a rig which is basically like a skeleton or "armature" to my model so I am able to move its limbs and give it life-like movements. In order to use this advanced technique, the tools I used were the armature, bones, subdividing, extruding and duplicating. The armature allowed me to give my mesh, movement that resembles a robot/human (cyborg) ei. shoot blaster cannons . In order to do this I used another tool called a bone and placed in the center of the torso, of my mesh and then subdividing that bone into three different bones to control each section of its torso. I also used the same technique when doing the left arm and the left leg of my model by subdividing into the relevant amount of bones needed for the limbs to move (for the shoulder, elbow, and wrist). After creating my models torso and one side of limbs, I mirrored the limbs to the opposite side, this meant that the length and volume of the bones on each side of my mesh are equal to achieve perfection.

Second Advanced technique
Another technique that I have used to create, edit and integrate my digital media outcome is animating.The tools that I used for this technique were key frames, pose mode and armature. In order to create my animation I used pose mode. Pose mode allowed to me to move different body parts of my mesh into different key poses.  I made my model perform the walk-cycle by at first (after adding rigging which i mentioned for the first advanced technique) parenting my mesh to my rig so that when I move/rotate a bone, the associated body part will move with that bone kinda like placing the bones inside a human body to make/help it move. Pose Mode is the mode where I am able to move my models body, arms and legs, with this I was able to move it to different positions and then record those positions as key frames to create an animation. This resulted in the finished animation.

Task Three
Discuss why advanced tools and techniques have been used to createedit, and integrate digital media, and how their use has enhanced the outcome.

I created a rig which would work as a skeleton for my mesh. Rigging is an important advanced tool to use in the creation of a model as this is what grants me access to manipulate my models limbs into different positions once I've parented the mesh to the rig so I could then record multiple key frames which would finally produce a movement (in my case kneeling down, shooting cannons, reloading, tumbling, and dying). I then moved my character into different positions and recorded them as key frames, this was done after I had parented my armature to the mesh. I then used the key frames to create an animation, which is a another advanced technique. 

In editing digital media, advanced tools such as rigging allows different movements in the positioning of a models limbs. Using a specific bone in the rig, you can edit the position of any part of your model. This allows for your model to perform an endless amount of poses to create an endless amount of different animations.

Integrating my model was when I used the advanced technique called "Parenting". This meant that taking more than one object and putting them together. Parenting is basically used to put singular/multiple objects known as children under one object that becomes the parent. What this does is when I move, rotate or scale anything to do with the parental object, it also affects the children of that specific object as well. For example when i move the bone in the neck the neck also moves. This gave my character motion.

Task Four
Student can evaluate how the application of advanced tools, techniques affect the quality of digital media outcomes.

In my design I used a variety of tools and techniques however not everyone is capable of using these tools, if we use the available tools to the best of their ability, we will find that making their character will be easier, furthermore we are able to learn to use these techniques from video tutorials and applying them to our own model, this is how we are able to learn the techniques and use the tools by ourselves, if we apply these to our model, we will excel in their digital design, by experience with the tools and techniques, the outcome is determined. For example a student with a great knowledge of creating a 3D model we will excel in creating a character on the other hand a person with little to no experience will not achieve to a high standard because they do not have enough knowledge to apply to their model.

Term 2- Post Two Questioning and Research





Snake Eyes
Snake Eyes is from the movie called 
"G.I. JOE"


Aesthetics- Snake Eyes has a very muscular body visible on his black overall suit. This suit makes him look very strong and it also represents him being a modern ninja. 

His sword is called the Mikimoto Sword, a legendary Arashikage blade forged of laminated steel and considered as unbreakable.Snake Eyes usually carries one sword in a scabbard on his back. At times however, he is know to carry two. He also carries a gun which is a bit weird because ninja does not carry gun, usually carried on Snake Eyes thigh in a holster. 
He is one of the best Joes out there, he has an excellent skill set.His face is not visible from his helmet, it would make it very difficult to explain his emotions and Snake does not speak. He took a vow of silence when "Storm Shadow" killed their master which was reviled on the second movie that proves Storm Shadow did not kill their master but "Zartan" (another character form the movie) did.

Colour Palette- Snake eyes whole suit is Monochromatic. It just goes from black to grey and with some white areas when hit by light.
Style- Snake Eyes style represents modern day ninjas, this is shown by his overall costume.
Accessories- most of his accessories are weapons (sword and guns) and the bracelet with mini-missiles and bullets and also his unique helmet which covers his whole face (cover his identity).
Personality- Snake eyes is very serious and never talks.

Captain Jack Sparrow
Captain Jack Sparrow from the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean.

Captain Jack Sparrow also known as Captain Sparrow is like any other pirate. He has a beard which makes him look very aggressive and fearful. He also has a crazy hair style covered by a head-rag where his pirate Lord symbol dangles. On top of that he has tri-corn hat. His clothing looks like a normal pirate.His weapons are a pirate cutlass a heavy curved sword with only one, but deadly, cutting edge. A dagger often held on in leather shases or belt. A one shot pistol which he carries on his belt.Captain Sparrow sails along with his crew.



Colour Palette- Captain jack sparrow's color only shows dark brown and golden brown color. It is kind of monochromatic because the colors only shows brown, and also the only non-brown color from his attire is his bandana and scarf.
Style- Captain jack sparrow's style is in the 1600s'-1800s' where most of the men wear suits, boots, big belts, hats, and funny hair styles. The way he talks is also from the time period.
Accessories- captain jack sparrow's accessories are his tri-corn hat, bog boots, pirate sword, compass, one shot pistol and his dangling things on his hair and facial hair.
Personality- He has a great sense of humor and always trust his gut and also he is kinda clumsy.


Spider Man from the amazing spider man film




Spider man is a super hero created by marvel and also in the marvel:avengers, however he was not a member on the avengers 1 and 2 films. Spiderman is a normal kid going to a normal school but he went to a lab where his dad worked and went inside a spider chamber where we was bitten, after that his whole life change. He gained super powers and he became a night vigilante wearing blue and red colored suit to hide his identity. His also a villain in the story, a former doctor from the lab who is developing healing/tissue replacing medicine which also happens to be his dad's partner on the lab where he used to work.

Color Palette- Spiderman's color palette is very unique because is contrast, it is not monochromatic like my other two examples. but the colors are from the primary color wheel and together red and blue creates violet. in the film his suit is not noticeable in the dark however it kind of blends in during the day unlike snake eyes who needs to stick on the dark areas because he would be noticed immediately during the day.
Style- Spiderman's style is very unique because from the name itself he created a suit which has spider webs on it which signifies spiders and also he has  a logo/icon on his chest showing a spider. This is also why the people named him spiderman because of his costume apart from his webs that he developed. his style also shows kind of a ninja style like snakeeyes because they both are wearing suit the only difference is the color.














Monday 19 May 2014

Post 5 - Conventions of a Digital Animation

Task One: Achieved
Explain the standards and conventions used to produce digital media outcomes.

The standards and conventions that I used to produce my digital media outcome include things like the folder I used in order save my rendered images, the resolution of my rendered model and the image type file that I used to render my mesh.The standards and conventions are the properties of the whole design, these properties can be either that we are designing a 3D model, it can go through the 12 principles of animation.

To produce my digital media outcome some of the principles I used included the "Straight ahead and pose to pose" principle and the "Appeal" principle. The "Straight ahead and pose to pose" principle uses two different methods to create the movement of a character in an animation, in my case I used the pose to pose method. "Straight ahead action" means drawing out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, while "pose to pose" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in the intervals later. 

Difference between Straight ahead action and Pose to pose:
  • "Straight ahead action" creates a more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic action sequences.
  • "Pose to pose" works better for dramatic or emotional scenes, where composition and relation to the surroundings are of greater importance.



This image above shows the resolution in which my rendered images come out. I kept the resolution to 1920x1080 as that is what the HD preset sets it as to make my animation come out with high definition quality. This also shows the specified "frame rates per second" which in my case was 24 fps (frames per second). Frame rates basically are the link between the timing of the animation and the timing of the real world, this means if the animation is running in 24fps, it changes frame-run at 24 frames per second in real life. I used 24fps as that is the standard animation value. 



This screenshot displays the location of which I saved my rendered images to make my final digital outcome and also, It shows that I saved it to a location where I could access it without delay and confusion. Furthermore the standards that we use go to the type of image we save in such as PNGs and JPEGs, when I rendered my animation I rendered it in a PNG form because it gives it a nicer quality and it supports transparency. The .PNG image type has 'lossless' compression basically meaning no information is lost during the compression of the file into a smaller size, allowing your image to be left with the original quality it initially had. In contrast with the .JPEG image type, the file has 'lossy' compression meaning it gets rid of irrelevant information to compress the file to a very small size, in other words it means the file loses its quality.



This image displays the file-type I used in order to produce my digital media outcome. I used the PNG image file because it displays better resolution and thus better quality (as i mentioned above). Also if you export the animation as a video straight away the video ends up as being corrupt, but i chose to export it has an image (PNG) because it allows me to have a better control of the entire animation.

Task Two: Achieved
Discuss the positive and negative implications of adhering to digital media outcome and conventions when developing digital media outcomes.

In my case when using "pose to pose" then a positive would be, me having the ability to freely move my character into different positions for each key frames without me losing the shape and volume of my character. Also the blender automatically moved the mesh into the next key frame without me having to do anything this is very useful because it saved me time. However a negative would be the mesh moving into the next key frame in a different way then what I had originally intended and as a result I had to position my mesh in such a way during the intervals, so that the animation would run smoothly. For example, during the walk cycle animation process, having an image at the background is really helpful all you just need to do is move the arms and legs into position where the background image shows where it suppose to go. The image in between the walk cycle background is called 'post to pose' by positioning my character into place it made it easier for blender to make the animation.

Task Three: Excellence
Evaluate how the application of standards and conventions affect the quality of digital media outcomes.

The application of standards and conventions affects the quality of digital media outcomes as they determine the level of standard of which the audience views the animation. If applied correctly, positive implications could include things such as the audience creating a connection with your character. Applying standards such as High Def resolutions, frames that flow at a nice rate and rendering out your animation in quality images allows your animation to be viewed at a very high standard. Applying conventions such as principles of the 12 principles of animation not only affects the quality of your animation, but the outcome of the connection with the audience.


Task Four: Excellence
Discuss the relationship between standards and conventions, in relation to the requirements of digital media outcomes.

The relationship between standards and conventions are is that they are essential in order to create a well and organized animation, without using the standards and conventions the overall design becomes disappointing. Standards and Conventions complement each other, they both work together to create an overall better design, for example when animating a digital design, the frame rate is 24fps in 1920 x 1080 HD, with this the animation can use conventions like 'secondary animation' which allows a character to move multiple limbs as well and using the standards will create a product which looks smooth. During rendering the animation is captured frame by frame which is then saved in separate images, by using conventions such as slow in and slow out, the 24 fps is able to snap the setting in whatever frame we animated in so it looks as it was in a video file (after effects) as it was in Blender.



Wednesday 12 March 2014

Post 4 - File Management

TASK ONE: You will need to explain how asset management and file management are applied in the development of digital media outcomes.

What is an Asset?
An asset is an element that can only be manage using a certain program/software.

Assets used in Blender (software)
  • Lamp
  • Armature
  • Camera
  • Cube
How asset management and file management are applied in the development of digital media outcomes? 

First of all Asset Management and File Management are both vital in the development of digital media outcome. They relate to how we structure and organize assets and files during the process of content creation. During the walk cycle project the assets that i used are the blender specific elements like the armature, meshes, camera and lighting whereas the files used would be the blender save files and the .png images which will allow me to create the walk cycle animation.

Asset are organised in blender interface in the top right corner.  In the interface I can see all assets present, this technique is very useful during the walk cycle project. I used this technique to check whether the bone are parented correctly, and also i used this technique to show the bones and hide the bones or show the character or hide the character. This technique made it easier for me to see if everything present in my project is arranged properly.
Asset management was applied during my project when i added the camera and lighting to a separate layer to my model, by organizing my assets like this it made it easier for me to manage them all and also it reduced clutter on screen. On screen, assets can be managed in multiple different ways, including their position, size, look and relationship with other assets. The basics of managing are things like moving objects along the axis which i used on my main asset during this project was the model.




What is a file?
A file is a document of some sort that is saved outside of the application it was created in usually either in a folder stored on a computer, cloud or external device.

File management during this project mainly related to creating appropriate folders and naming them efficiently. For example, i named my folders 'INM', 'Blender', 'Gingerman', these are the folders that i used to save my files during the process. Files such as blender and images were also clearly named to make it easier to identify the content of the file, this was used when i made the walk cycle animation. When i compiled the animation into image files, many .png files were created that if I simply saved them straight to my documents the folder would very quickly become messy and chaotic. To prevent this I simply created an appropriate folder to store the files as to not clutter my other folders.

TASK TWO: For this task you will need to discuss the importance of effective and appropriate asset management and file management in the development of digital media outcome.

Starting firstly on file management, I believe my method of file management was certainly effective and helped with my animation and the importance of having a system that is efficient was displayed in my work. Basically the main reason why file management is important is because it puts your files into a logical structure. Now there are multiple benefits of it being logical. This includes making your work folders nice and clean, by doing this technique it made it easier to locate what I'm looking for rather than having all my files in one folder but this is not efficient it will only make thing even worst because as i mentioned above the part were i need to save my images in one folder to make the walk cycle animation. If i saved everything in one folder with those images it will be chaotic and of course it is not appropriate file management and most importantly it is not efficient. Also naming your files with their right file names will help identify files easier, for example naming files like 'untitled.doc', you may have been writing a lot of words in this files and accidentally deleted it because you thought that its just a useless file because of its name.This proves the importance of using proper naming conventions for files so that you never lose them/delete the accidentally. All these things apply to the walk cycle project and are important to put into practice in some fashion to improve your work.


Efficient management of assets is choosing the tool or function that will not only be effective but also make the process smoother and faster. The obvious reason why we'd want to apply this is because it will make the whole process quicker. Examples of this is not knowing the quickest ways to preform certain processes through things like hotkeys or where in the program important features are. Hotkeys can save you a lot of time and it's a good idea to take to time to learn them to really make working a lot quicker. For example, where hotkeys are useful is when mirroring the skeleton, or armature, it is possible to complete the entire process with hotkeys alone. First of all, duplicate the skeleton 'shift +d' and mirroring and selecting the axis 'ctrl+m' and 'z,y,x axis'. All of these process are done on the keyboard by just pressing buttons. Applying these sort of things in blender is important as if you don't, the outcome will be potentially delayed and you might fail to complete it in the specified time. This would apply to anyone working on a digital media outcome. After all this, these techniques should be applied in every project not just using it specifically on the walk cycle project.








Monday 17 February 2014

Post 2- Ethics of Digital Technologies

Task One

Copyright

What is Copyright?
Copyright protects original works from being used without permission from the author or owner. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the owner of the copyright for a limited time. These rights includes the following. 
  • Producing the work- This means the owner can create more copies of his work.
  • Permitting the reproduction of the work- This means the owner allow other individuals copy or reproduce more materials.
  • performing the work- This means the creator of the work can perform the work that he created or allow other people to perform his work with his permission.
  • publishing the work- This means the owner can publish his work so that people can view his work.
So basically if you're the owner of the material you own the rights of the material's distribution. Copyright is activated automatically which means that the work is automatically protected by Copyright, Copyright is simple to acquire no registration necessary . According to Copyright Act 1994 people are not allowed to reproduce the owner's work, sell the work, present the work in public, and create modifications. In New Zealand, the work is remained Copyrighted for 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which the author died. The copyright act seeks to provide a balance between the interest of authors, owners and users of Copyrighted material.



Creative Commons


What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a license that the Owner can apply to their work. It allows other users to use the original content without breaking the Copyright law. Owner's content can be licences with different attributions.

There are 6 different licences to chose from. All of the six licenses have different attribution and it is necessary for the users follow. (e.i. the owner of the material licensed his work with 'Attribution-ShareAlike' as the license states you can make modifications and you can even make money from it as long as they credit the original owner.


ATTRIBUTION

This license lets other people distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long they credit you for the original creation.


ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercial as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.


ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE-

This licence lets other remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE-

This license lets other remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercial, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.


ATTRIBUTION-NO DERIVATIVES
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.


ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NO DERIVATIVES
This license is the most restrictive of creative licenses six main licenses, only allowing others to download your work and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially.


So basically Creative Commons  allow the Users to use the copyrighted material without breaking the Copyright law. This means the users can use the original owner's content depending on what Creative Commons license it acquires.

Piracy


What is Piracy?
Piracy is unauthorized production or use of copyrighted material. Piracy takes place when people break the Copyright law. It is breached by producing different file copies of copyrighted material without the original owner's permission. Two of the most popular file sharing websites in the whole world are Megaupload and Mega. 

Some facts about Megaupload:
  • They are both FILESHARING websites. 
  • Megaupload was shut down by the FBI
  • NZ police raided KimDot Com's house arrested him and froze his assets
  • They want to extradite kimdotcom
What is the difference MegaUpload and MEGA?
MegaUpload:
Megaupload's data is encrypted on their servers. They have the ability to decrypt your data. (For example if they get forced to with legal action or someone compromises their servers).

MEGA:
Same as Megaupload's, MEGA's data is encrypted on their servers. They do not have the ability to decrypt them. (For example if they get their servers removed from their possession, the person in possession of the servers will only have encrypted information.
The pivotal difference is that now when you upload something to mega, the only person that can control who has access is you. Thus leaving Mega with the ability to claim that they did not know what was on their servers.
For example the files could be movies(Game of Thrones), Games(Battlefield 4), and 'Pornography' (no example). No one would have any way of knowing except the people that uploaded and those that they allow.
Megaupload was basically 'upload and download whatever you want', so, naturally, it got into trouble because people were downloading copyrighted content. MEGA aims to get rid of that by asking you to set a key and share it with only those whom you want to.

Summary


Copyright, Creative Commons and Piracy are all related. Basically it works like this, Copyright protects your work. Creative Commons licenses allow you to share your work without other asking you personally. Piracy comes in when a individual breaks the Copyright law.



References 


  • legistation.govt.nz
  • wikipedia



Monday 10 February 2014

Post 1 RYANEL RAMA AND NICK

Group work Ryanel, Rama and Nick

In this scenario who might benefit and who might suffer?

Us People will benefit, citizens of the whole world will benefit from Geoengineering. Geoengineering will help to counteract climate chage, the government will earn billions and people will have jobs. But it will backfire to us which means there are certain consequences, for example what will happen it if stop? will it affect everything, will it cost typhoons and other natural disasters or just simply improve the whole world.

Who would hold the power in this scenario?

I'm very certain that the Government will hold the power of Geoengineering. No individual will have the certain money to build and run the whole project. The government will simply use their extra budget to build the infrastructures.


Could this new technology help to improve or could it worsen the state of society?


There are points that we people can benefit from Geoengineering. This is not a matter of money, this is saving our planet. First of all it will help counter act global warming and climate change. Some scientists predicts that the polar ice caps will melt in 20 to 40 years. Maybe it will slow them down to find another answer for our problems.


Could humanity as we know it change?



Yes humanity would definitely change in my opinion. We will not be so scared of the world ending and the climate will calm down and not fluctuate as much, meaning that the weather will be more stable and storms not as extreme. Also if they do Green the desert there will be more crops and food for the desert countries that need it like Ethiopia. As well if we plant more trees we will reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, also if we pump the excess CO2 underground the Ozone will slowly but surely return back to its original state and the temperature of the earth will go back to normal meaning that we wont be so hot.

Ryanel's comment : If we've messed up the climate by pumping bad stuff into the atmosphere, maybe we can undo some damage by pumping some other stuff up there too.