Dazzling Digital Art

  This week in class, I worked on keyframes and multicamera sequences in Unreal. I learned how to use and export multiple cameras in a scene using different angles. In the video above, I used Cesium Ion (which I learned how to use in another class) to go to Mount Fuji in Japan. I then made three different camera views and exported it. I also created two more sequences with a world that I designed myself using a pack from the Unreal marketplace.  I also continued with the Unreal Fellowship videos and got through the Introduction to the Control Rig video. Once again, I found these videos pretty difficult to understand and I feel like they are geared more towards professionals who are more experienced in the industry. I have never used Unreal before and these videos feel a little overwhelming to me. I tried my best to follow along but struggle as animation is not my strong suit. 

This week outside of class, I worked on creating sequences within Unreal. I used Cesium Ion to plug in Google Maps and create flyovers of Tampa and Tokyo. The cameras are a little wonky in the videos, but I am going to work on making the animations smoother. In the Tokyo video, the camera spins around aggressively and I believe I figured out why. When moving on the Z axis, the camera quickly has to make up for the track it hasn't been on, so it abruptly moves. I am going to test out ways to fix this in the future. 

  This week in class, I worked on learning how to create keyframes and animations within Unreal Engine. Using sequencer, I was able to create this small keyframed animation of one of the Unreal Engine test files. It is not perfect and meant to be longer, but it is progress with animating objects in Unreal. I also watched the first few videos within the Unreal Fellowship. I watched up to Transitioning to Animation in Engine. I found these videos to be hard to follow and understand, but I tried my best.

 This week outside of class, we were tasked with watching the "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary. Personally, I felt a little disappointed by it because I really wanted to know more about the group's legendary D&D campaign that lasted many years. They mentioned it only a few times in the documentary and I was very interested in the first and longest lasting campaigns. Most of the documentary consisted of how D&D was created by combining popular war games and adding roleplay aspects to them, which is interesting, but I wish they hadn't spent so much time in the logistics of it. I wanted to see how the first players and DMs created their characters and storylines, and how they played the first games of D&D. The documentary included really cool titles for some of the people like "World's First Bard" and I really wanted to know how that came about and the stories behind the creation of bards and other races. Although the war games were fundamenta

  For the first week of class, I made and played my first Giantlands character. She is a Gatian named Scrap. I created a drawing of Scrap using Procreate. It was very interesting playing with my classmates and seeing what characters they made. Interacting with everyone in the game showed how we can work together as a class to build an interesting story.