In conclusion I managed to achieve many of the goals I set out to do in the brief. I learned about working with the L-system in houdini which meant using maths to create geometry that looks like trees and in my research I also came across new ideas that I had not seen before, such as algorithmically generated walk patterns for spiders. I learned about fresnel equations which deals with the maths/values behind light reflecting and refracting, based on this I was able to produce a sphere in maya with a realistic metal reflection.
For the Pre production group work I also researched different woods, metals and dust. The breakdown and analysis I provided of these textures would be useful to me in the future when thinking about why it is that a metal surface looks reflective or dull and being able to recreate that look in software.
One area of major frustration when working with the software was a lack of help, small problems which could have been fixed within seconds had I been able to talk to someone more knowledgeable, took hours to figure out and solve, for example the lack of mental ray showing up as default in the plugins in Maya. Tutorials are hugely helpful but insanely frustrating when even a simple thing goes wrong, I feel this is/was the biggest obstacle to my progress in this area, as I wasted many hours on small problems which gets in the way of learning useful things.
I feel the research I have done in this project and everything I have learned has prepared me to go further with the understanding of the programming side and achieve more ambitious projects next year. I'm still learning about new things that can be done all the time, what I've been able to achieve so far has given me more confidence in the areas I want to focus in.
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