Week 13 - Final Presentation

Final Presentations - Reflection
There was no guest speaker for this week, each group had 20 minutes to present what they've achieved in the last 13 weeks. Each group had to provide critical feedback on each presentation, i was quite eager to see how my peers have done over the semester.

Driving Simulation
What they've achieve was very impressive. They had managed full-fill what was required by Russell a actual driving simulation included with a physical steering wheel. The first few members seemed nervous on presenting some were quite difficult to understand having difficulties explaining the process of their project. Elliot and Peter presented very well during the presentation, Elliot explaining difficult process of coding well for myself to understand. Peter stood out from the group as the leader of the project, he has shown dedication to the project by physically making the steering wheel & the manual of the processes of what they've achieved.

Aerial Rope Way
This presentation would have to be my personal favourite, it was presented by Dom & Eric both spoke with absolute confidence. Both the presenters went in detail on what was expected from them, raising awareness of their limitations & problems to address. Their group wiki was quite impressive using a website that looked very professional. I was very impressed on what they have managed, creating an environment to a 1:1 scale must have been a feat considering limitations of hardware.

Blacktown Motorway
The Blacktown motorway was my other preference for a project i wanted to be involved in, i was interested on how they had approached the problems that were needed to be addressed. Overall the presentation was very solid, each member contributed to the presentation they were all nervous but this did not affect the presentation. Using sporting movements as a basis of their design was very interesting, something that i would never thought of. The interactivity of the design was also well shown and the group justifies on their design decisions excellently throughout their presentation.

Virtual Museum
The virtual museum was the project i least understood throughout the semester in regards the outcome of the project, i was eager to see what they have achieved in t heir 13 weeks. Each member contributed to the presentation, again some more nervous than others. Having spoke to Aram throughout the semester on the project i can confidently say he was very knowledgeable on the project. It was pretty cool to see that i could interact with their project using a iPad.

 Oculus - Final Presentation

PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r269lwpdd8mwoxn/Oculus%20(1).pdf?dl=0

For our groups presentation we decided to  follow the format we had been doing for the past presentations(backbrief & IP) the structure of the presentation would be:

Daniel - Introduction, briefly talk about brief
Dara - 3Ds Max Modelling, Texturing for UE4
Andrew - UE4 & demonstration
Matthew - Gantt chart, project limitations
Shanny: Scribe for feedback

I believe we did quite well with our presentation, I noticed i started to stutter and repeat myself but overall i managed to get my point across to the audience and Russell in regards to texturing. Andrew yet again with absolute confidence presented extremely well. He has shown throughout the semester that he has the skills to presented in front of a audience. The live demonstration was very successful getting feedback from our peers saying that our project & presentation was the most well done. I believe our presentation could have done even better if we had a proper studio space to present as well as some technical limitation not being able to connect Russell's laptop to the projector.

Feedback & Criticisms 
Questions:
Questions that we were asked revolved a lot around UE4 issues and how Andrew overcame them.

Feedback:
As part of the presentation we required participants to test the Oculus Rift, immersing themselves in our environment that we have collaborated and worked on as a group.
The aim of the project was to outline and show users how dangerous using one of the construction vehicles can be on a Hong Kong construction site.
In the end, participants all agreed that they did not feel safe while being immersed into the environment because there were a lot of dangers that they have missed purely because it was impossible to see them. This included:

• Simple factors like the reflection of the glass that they are looking through, it ultimately affected their vision 
• Blind spots/dangerous objects (and people) that can not be seen at all whilst in the cabin of the vehicles

From Russell, he found it engaging when the dangers of the construction site were outlined, emphasising on the fact that the visibility whilst in those vehicles were quite difficult (correctly presenting the initial project problem).

Criticisms (from Russell):

• He found an inconsistency in scale jumping between the vehicles. Russell said that the truck was particularly off and different from the crane & excavator.
• The orientation appeared incorrect

Improvements/developments:

• If we could make it more user friendly in terms of not having to be told where to look once the Oculus is put on
• An idea - to have the dangers outlined in UE4 via glowing material, e.g. glowing people or glowing dangerous steel beams.

Oculus Wiki Page - http://code3100-oculusproject.blogspot.com.au/
Our group has dedicated a blog for project as a base for our wiki. Contents of the blog will show our groups process from start to finish and all information required to replicate our project. All individual material can accessed on our group blog.

Oculus Team
Overall i happy to be apart of the Oculus team. Seeing these names that would be involved i already knew that our group would do well throughout the semester. A special shout-out to Andrew for his ability to present flawlessly & to Shanny for taking charge during the end of the semester.

Course Feedback
Overall i am quite satisfied with the course subject the projects were all interesting in their own regards. The weekly guest speakers was a nice addition each one being unique and engaging towards our possible future. I can only criticise about the classroom space we had for the semester, the classroom did not have enough space nor electrical outlets for us to properly use our 4 hour studio time, a studio space like the square house would have been more ideal for the future.

Tutor Feedback
It was a pleasure of having both Russell and Nichole as our tutors for the semester, Russell spent most of the studio time answering questions from each group helping as much as he could. He allowed our group to borrow his oculus and even allowed us to use his laptop for demonstration purposes which helped greatly in the end. Nicole was very informative throughout the semester in regards to what is expected from us for our presentations, she has help our group achieve high marks for the presentations. Together they have worked well showing a professional standard of teaching.

Week 12

Guest Speaker - Jerry Stamoulis, Mercades Benz

Group Meeting
This week we no presentations so most of the time was dedicated on our group projects. Our group discussed on strategies on what to do for our final presentation & other work that was needed to be completed. Daniel & Macky still had to complete their part of the modeling(truck) & Andrew was still working on the environment in UE4 doing research on how to solve problems raised in UE4. Andrew managed to also texture our models in UE4 briefly showing his process to the group, Myself and Shanny had already complete out part of the modelling (excavator & crane) so together we wanted to properly understand how to texture for 3DS to UE4, we also wanted to apply decals to our models to enhance the realism of the scenes for our presentation.

Independent Study
Myself and Shanny met up on the weekend to do research discussed in our group meeting. We managed to learn how to make decals and apply them in UE4 using this tutorial . We chronolapse the process of creating and applying decals in the video below.

We also discussed strategies on how we should approach our final presentation. We have written up guild lines for our group which can be found here & also a quick draft of the presentation which can be found here.

Week 11 - Remuneration

Neill Hill - Guest Speaker

Presentation - Remuneration
- Presenation was done by only 2 members of the group - Jordan & Hayley.
- Uses a scene from a movie clip as a video opener for the presentation.
- Presentation covers remuneration in architecture as a case study.
- Presents my values as a student in regards to remuneration eg how do i add value to myself, student rates, experience rates.
 - Jordan stands out during the presentation showing confidence and understanding on the topic showing he has done his research.

Overall the presentation was well done, it was hard to come up with questions because of how the presentation specially covered architecture remuneration. Some links at the end of the presentation would have been helpful if the audience would have liked to read up on the matter.

Week 10 - Conflict

Presentation - Conflict

- Attempt at role playing a scenario of conflict between peers.

- Uses jargon terms for types of people to cause a conflict. It was easy for myself to interpret but for some people possibly Russell and Nichole it could have created some confusions.

- All members presented with confidence and was clearly spoken.

- Group covered conflict related to mostly uni group projects. 

- Presentation was well made & easy to read.

- Relates to conflict in the hextic project that we all familiar with.

- The topic of avoiding conflict was most interesting explaining its snowball effect - Avoiding conflict is not conflict resolution.

I was lucky enough to be covering conflict resolution for one of my general education assignments so i was looking forward to their presentation. They covered mainly general topics & strategies of conflict, the group should have researched on actual conflict resolution models such as the authority model or tuson model. I questioned the group on the extremes of conflict regarding discrimination i would have been nice if they group explored the serve extremes that occur in the workplace and covered some case studies on how some certain organisations approach conflict resolution.

Week 9

Andrew wallace - guest lecturer see notes in below link.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JIo6BKV22Sz7FsuNgMaj-TACMIKpLhaFWW4vM-mAwZE/edit

Oculus Presentation
Our groups initial plan was to select a topic that was content filled for our presentation. We had originally planned on doing a detailed presentation for intellectual property that was structured with relevant information as proof that we did our research. As other groups started to present Russel and Nicole expected more engaging and compelling presentations, this being our studios 3rd year we are expected to know how to properly present in a professional manner that is also engaging to the audience. 

As a group we decided to meet these expectations by restructuring our presentation, Shanny wanted to approach the presentation using minimalism as a theme for the slides. I wanted to attempt using no text for our presentation(excluding titles) and properly research and understand out topic. Our group assigned ourselves on relevant aspects on the topic and did individual research for our presentations, we compiled a draft presentation for Shanny to recreate in in-design to make looked more organised and professional.

Daniel's role was to introduce the topic to the audience, he had done previously well introducing for our presentation on our back briefs it was only fitting for him to have the same role again. Andrews role was to present on the relevant topics of IP & relate it back to the audience, Andrew exceeded on his role in the presentation. His explanation on each topic was clear and easy for the audience to understand, Andrew also exceeded on answering the majority of the questions directed at us, Andrew demonstrated that he has properly done his research and has the ability to present in a professional manner. Mathew had the tough role of trying to communicate the topics that our group was unsure of how to approach, although he was nervous he had done his research and showed a wide variety of examples to back up his point.

See link for our presentation
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctev1d8y8q703ub/pres1.pdf?dl=0
Draft Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11LyT1PlWX8-IV_329BCmwtjmN2QUjotWcu9ML7YWFdQ/edit#slide=id.p

Group Wiki - Intellectual Property
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LSB0ma7teWOP16RU0_Nw3nAq5gjnpJ0uj59LtUN5xvk/edit

Individual Milestone

Oculus Project Milestone

For my contribution to the oculus project i nominated myself as a the group leader. I tasked myself to attend every lecture & studio to gather information through asking questions to peers, asking questions to Russell & Nicole ensuring that our group is up to date for each studio. Every week i will create a detailed post on our facebook group on what was required to be completed with relevant information to keep all members on the same page as everyone else. My approach to leading the project was simply first come first serve, anyone who would raise their hand to do a certain task will automatically get that task. I made sure that allocation of work was fair and even between members for presentations & the project itself.

My contributions for the oculus project i was to individually model the excavator cabin seen in the mid-semester break post. Overall it wasn't to difficult to model once i had familiarized myself with 3ds. There are many improvements that can be made to my model it is currently 80% complete, leaving 20% for texturing which i understand can be tricky considering light channels & unwrapping the texture.

For the presentation my contributions was to research and relate back to our oculus project on how to approach intellectual property. I found it difficult when researching for solid information in regards to 3d modeling. While i was researching i came across a forum discussion on cgarchitects, they were discussing ownership of 3d models. There was mixed opinions with no solid information to go from, i took it upon my self to ask for help on the matter by calling IPAustralia. They were also unsure what we could protect and recommended that talk to a IP consultant. I also seeked help from a senior lecturer from COFA Selena Griffith on the matter, she concluded that our project was difficult in regards to intellectual property. For full notes that me & shanny compiled can be seen below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_JEp4v3sDthQ5IZkzKsFmI5UQMTjR4TClZt7MS6p3uQ/edit

Week 8 Studio

Rob - Cox Architecture
This week we were lucky enough to get another architect from Cox. His perspective of mobility expands somewhat from Andrew Bulters, Rob features some projects he has been involved in while at Cox one being a replanning of a city using G.I.S (geographic information system). Rob continues to cover on grasshopper primary coding to get what you want 'What language do you speak?

Studio
Communication Planning

Pros
Alot of content to present, shows that they've done their research.
They gave great examples of methods of communication both past & current. Easier for the audience to relate back to.

Cons
Sometimes difficult to hear & understand the presentation
Did not create a video for presentation
Didnt engage with audience
Did not really relate back to their own project or engage into other projects

Overall the presentation could have been more engaging towards the audience, The presentation was content rich with much valued information on their topic but in turn didn't capture the audiences attention. Majority of the time i had to read off the slides because it was difficult to understand some of the presenters. Some ways to improve the direction of this presentation was if they used some examples or case studies in their presentation.

Overall a decent attempt their presentation on planning.

Oculus Project - Communication

For the Oculus group we will primarily be using our facebook page as a means of communication, facebook will be primarily our method of sharing information between each other. Weekly update post will be done to ensure that everyone in the group is on the same page. In studios we will discuss  our individual progress & other important topics on how to tackle certain problems. Some members have also met up outside of class to work on presentations together for feedback.

During our planning stage we all assigned ourselves to do certain task
Dara: Excavator
Shanny: Crane
Daniel & Mathew: Truck
Andrew: Unreal Environment & Exporting

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.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YchWwyBlx0sXj_nonIjnJ3MGB2R2mqHML76VqM1XfMU/edit

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.

http://www.linotype.com/188/helvetica.html

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

Occulus Presentation - Week 3

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xzWq9V9tsNrCJcj5L2qJsNcK63IAe2oHhgRlFqpI5us/edit#slide=id.p

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v8yn0t9oqtwxnit/Oculus%20Presentation%20Group.pdf?dl=0

CV

https://www.dropbox.com/s/81g61sjuh2kpqqw/DARA_TARGETTEDcv.pdf?dl=0