Group Work- Dividing Work and Presenting

The next task was to divide the work up between the group. We decided this in our second group meeting (minutes by myself):

- We decided to model a Joseph Evans Reliable Steam Engine (pics and info can be found here http://www.steampumps.net/JosephEvansReliable.html).

- It was decided that we would each be responsible for a part of project but if any one of us struggles, we can share the workload.

- I will be designing, modelling and texturing the main environment the machine will be in- probably a factory of some sort similar to the museum.

- Teresa will be building the governor on the engine.

- Dan will be mainly building the mechanicals of the engine, however we will divide the model up and work on different parts each.

- Kevin will storyboard the animation, design and add lighting, and animate the scene.

- We also discussed the presentation on Friday. Although I will not be present for this due to prior arrangements, as a group we feel there is enough to talk about as we know what we are doing, who is doing it and how we will present the product. - Within the next week, we are all going to research the steam engine, prepare for the presentation, and I will begin designing the environment.

After this meeting, I began designing an environment - not knowing it had to be based on where the machine was actually used, not just a generic factory. Below is my initial design:



My first draft of the environment looked like this:



All the textures are original except the skybox. Below are the ones I created:



This brick texture was created from a photograph I took in Castle Coch in Wales:



The stonework texture below...



...Was adapted from this photograph I took in the same location:



I then created bump maps of these images in Photoshop by applying a plain grey image on a layer above the image, then applying a High Pass filter to the grey. The bump map for the stone texture was also used as the ceiling diffuse map and the stone floor was also used for the supports in the corners.

I was then informed the environment had to be representative of the environment the device was actually used in. Luckily, the textures could still be used for the new environment. First, however, there was the task of modelling the engine to deal with...