Tuesday 21 April 2015

Week 7 Studio

Mobility
http://www.coxarchitecture.com.au/
Andrew Butler Guest Lecture

We had the pleasure of having Andrew Bulter from Cox Architecture as a guest lecturer. Andrew talks about how he approaches mobility in regards to how works in the architectural field. Moores Law - 'The times the are a changin' was emphasises during his lecture basically Andrew is saying that architectural companies are getting stagnate by using the same programs & methods of how they operate. Andrew features Aami Park Staduim designed by Cox, the stadium was designed in autoCAD. The negative of using autoCAD was every change made would set them back significantly due to the limitations of autoCAD essentially a program that draws lines.

Andrew also touches on Rhino: Grasshopper on how diverse & responsive it is when it comes to design work. He features his past work of the Adelaide Oval that was created entirely in grasshopper. I find it interesting that what limited him this time wasnt the program but the engineering companies that had to find a way to make this design work. Due to limitations of Revit it could not identify what were beams in the design.

At the end of the lecture Andrew gave his advice of becoming a 'toolbox' as a designer. Not to stagnate and focus on one program but to explore and learn to become ahead of the curve. If we do not adapt to this change we could be left behind in this industry.

Studio Work
Planning Presentation

Pros
Easy & clear to understand, well spoken by each member.
Uses a flow chart to showing the cycle of their expected workflow.
Clear identification(Gantt Chart) of task & expectation of completion.
Compiled a video (doodle animated presentation)

Cons
Moderately content heavy.
Video speed was to fast, could have slowed it down & added a voice over to slow things down.

The group has a clear understanding of how to tackle their project, The group has shown how they organised themselves by using social media to their advantage being able to communicate with each other using Facebook, google docs etc. Creating a gantt chart showing clear expectations of when a certain task will be completed is a good way to gauge how long they can spend on each task set. They distribute their workload evenly to each other focusing on each others strength & weaknesses.

The flowchart they produced added more depth into their planning showing each step into their expected workflow.

Oculus Project - Planning

For our project we were able to establish what was needed to be done to complete the project. We created a Gaantt chart that will clearly outline how long each task will take and the expected week it should be done. The task involved in our project are modelling, textures & materials, oculus test, lighting & setting, oculus final. Modelling the interiors will take the majority of our time due to replicating an existing design. All other task will be relatively even in regards to time, some constraints to the project would be having to borrow the oculus from Russell for testing purposes. Russell will be also be providing our site which he has already made in Unreal which reduces our time not having to create an environment. It should also be noted that the gantt chart could change in the future depending on how many problems we come across during this project.

Mid-Semester Break

Intellectual Property (IP)
Our group will be presenting on the topic of IP during week 9. We selected this topic because of large amount of content that can be covered, our research will relate back to our occulus project as well as help other groups understand the importance of IP when it comes to their own projects.

We have written some guild lines for our research that seem relevant which can be viewed below.


Progression of Excavator Interior Modelling
During the break we continued adding more objects for the interior, main challenges of the model was trying to model the cab due to its very smooth & curved surface. The aim of completing the excavator first was to be used for testing purposes when exporting to unreal engine.


3DS to Unreal Test on PC


Chronolapse test on laptop



Things left to be done are
- Cab Exterior
- Finish up the model completely by rounding edges to make it look more realistic.
- Add materials/textures & test with unreal engine.

Week 5 Studio

Russell Lowe - Presentation ideas & Concepts

This weeks lecture we covered on how to professionally organise a presentation. Russell shows us techniques & ideas of how to properly compile a presentation, commonly people would open up power point & add google searched images with some information on the slides. This method of conveying information is dull & not engaging to the audience from personal experience.
Russell explains that a successful presentation requires little to no text at all, strong images taken(photo) or made by the presenter are shown to convey a message & help the audience understand the content that is being presented. Showing large images are also a great way of recollecting what has been presented.

Russell also features the most used font in advertising Helvetica. I was unaware of how many advertisements & companies use this font, the font has a clean & simple layout which is also easy to read from a distance.



Independent Study
3D Studio Max Modelling
Modelling some of the objects  was difficult due to the selected vehicles not having any dimensions to start off from. We decided to estimate the objects and using the drivers seat as a scale of reference of how large objects should be.

Week 4 Studio

Adrian Mcgregor, Mcgregor 
http://mcgregorcoxall.com/
Landscape Architect



Independent Learning
In todays studio Russell brought in the Oculus Rift for students to try and test out. There was mainly positive feedback from everyone that tried on the oculus. Russell also showed us what site we would be using for our simulation. The site involves a typical construction site that features scenarios that could potentially happen. My first impressions on the oculus was very positive, for a developers kit it was very impressive. Although i would have liked more time to test it out more.
Mass Models
I started modelling our interiors starting off with the drivers seat to get some practice with 3DS.  It has been awhile since the last time i used 3DS to model but i was familiar with the program of what mainly to use, after a day of experimenting i was getting proficient at using it again. Due to the provided images we have for reference did not have dimensions i had to estimate on how the dimensions of objects. For reference i measured my car seat to get generally dimensions and cross-referenced those dimensions with online sources. From there i will be estimating the rest of the model with the size of the cab seat. After creating the shape of the cab seat i applied the modifier 'MeshSmooth' to smooth out the edges.


Finished mass models of the cab seat & side dash of excavator.

Converting objects to editable poly to be manipulated pulling on vertices & edges. 


Week 3 Studio

Richard Goodwin - http://www.richard-goodwin.com/
Richard Goodwin a very bold, strange & interesting artist was our guest lecturer & presents his perspective on mobility. He presents & features alot of his past work such as the exoskeleton car, monument of nomadism, Denhaag parasite. There was a common theme throughout his presentation, the recreation of common objects to be restructured by his vision, this was mainly shown in his exhibition artworks and public installations. When he touched on his idea of mobility involving architecture it seemed as the theme of his presentation changed with a emphasis on adding on the existing rather than recreate. Goodwin explains his beliefs of creating new architecture around old existing architecture almost like a 'scab', I believe the point he was trying to make that architecture should be preserved rather than be destroyed & rebuilt, building around the existing will in-turn 'heal'  as time goes on. He states that future generation of architects have a role of designing to preserve.




Independent Learning
Our back brief presentation can be viewed below.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xzWq9V9tsNrCJcj5L2qJsNcK63IAe2oHhgRlFqpI5us/edit#slide=id.p

Back Brief Reflection
Our group was last to present & it had to be rushed due to the studio almost being over. i believe we could have expanded alot more on our brief but overall satisfied with how a group handled the presenation. Overall we got positive feedback from Russell, Nicole & our peers.

Oculus Project
In preparation we all had to responsibility to have the necessary programs installed to start working on the program. Programs that need to be installed are 3DS Max Student Version & Unreal Engine 4.
Over the weekend we should familiarise ourself with the programs to get started.

Week 2 Studio

Suleman Alhadidi, HASSEL Studios
Our guest speaker for week 2 was from HASSEL Studios a internationally large architectural firm, the lecture was based  on Sulemans perspective of mobility. Suleman features one of hassels competition designs flinders street station in Melbourne.

http://www.hassellstudio.com/en/cms-news/hassell-herzog-de-meuron-win-flinders-street-station-competition


Independent Learning
In today's studio I was selected to be part of the Oculus team, this was my first preference because ive always wanted learn how to use unreal & oculus. The oculus project involves modelling the interiors of machinery that are standard use in Hong Kong. In conjunction with oculus and unreal we are to simulate what it would be like to be in one of these machines on-site. 

The team
Andrew McDonald
Dara Ten

Daniel Juarez
Mathew Sinpraseuth
Shanny Lam