Just before spring break started at our school, I traveled with my school ITS theatre troupe to the North Carolina state competition. I brought my sound design for Dead Man's Cell Phone with me to compete. This was a very new experience for me as I had never competed with a theatre tech presentation before. I knew what I had was good work but I worried I wouldn't be able to present it all properly within the given time frame. Our school has a lot of great tech people and I wanted to put my name up there with them by getting a superior score.
thankfully I was very prepared going into the room. We worked the night before with our teachers and fellow tech students to put the finishing touches on our presentations.When I went into the room I was relaxed and ready to show them what I had. Everything went smoothly as I quickly went through my sound plots, cue sheets, and played cues off of my bluetooth speaker. In the question portion I didn't get any questions that left me at a total loss which I took as a very good sign. At the end of the competition I got my scores back. i received a perfect score and critic's choice (an honor given to the best person in each field). While I will not be taking my sound design on to nationals, (due to my ability to only compete with one event and a critic's choice in duet acting) presenting my sound design at State's was a valuable experience. It helped me learn to explain the choices I made in the show clearly and concisely. It also gave me even more appreciation for the technical side of creating a working sound system as I had to explain the challenges I faced in rigging up speakers and creating a working speaker chain. These are skills I will be sure to take into the future as I continue to do sound work. -When and what competition I went to -The competition in summary -Important takeaways
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Most of this past week was spent trying to solve one very specific issue. The school's internet stopped allowing our VR computer to use Google Drive. This meant we spent several days trying to figure out how we could access the assets we had put there in order to get them into the game. Unfortunately nothing we tried worked and we eventually concluded we would have to use a flash drive to transport any additional assets.
After we came to that conclusion it took roughly the rest of the week of the computer to wipe the flash drive then store all of the assets and scenes we had to it. Now that that's done we're finally back on track and next week I should be able to finish the UI menu. Next Week I will: -Finish the UI menu Recently the main thing I've been focused on is creating sound for our upcoming production of Dead Man's Cell Phone. One of my responsibilities in doing this is to find the program we will use to run ques during the show. I have used QLab in the past and was pleased with the results but I knew this show would require a lot more our of the software. I would need to learn how to cue cross fades as well as run and stop multiple ques at once. There isn't any starting tutorial when you boot up QLab so I was unsure if I would be able to figure out everything on time.
A brief word on excellent customer service. Even if your program isn't super intuitive (not many pieces of software that deal with sound are) a lot of this can be overcome with a good network of customer support. We emailed QLab late on Sunday evening and received an email back within the hour which had shortcut suggestions and tutorials to watch. I was so impressed in fact I decided to write a blog post just to commend this software. Beyond just that customer service feat we have found that this program does everything we could want and more. You can even edit cues minimally within the program to set them to start and end at certain places so you don't have to go back and forth between audio editing software and QLab. The full program is quite expensive but we've found that the free items included with the basic download gives you everything you need to run a basic show. I'm actually looking forward to running the show because of the ease I'll now be able to navigate with. I fully recommend this program for anyone who wants to run a sound for a show. -What is QLab? -Customer service goals -Should you use it for your show? This week we continued to make really good progress both on 3d models and the coding side of our project. we were finally able to finish simplifying models for our demo GAD room. This means that's when you load the GAD room you get significantly less lag. The file was reduced in size from 233 MB to 536 KB.
We also got a lot of things working in VR this week. After a frustrating couple of weeks struggling to get VR items to work, it was a breath of fresh air for things to function well on the first pass at making them. We imported doors into the GAD room scene and were able to make a working, intractable door prefab. We could then clone this prefab around the scene and have multiple working door. By the end of the week you could walk around the GAD room and interact with many objects. You can now open doors and pick up items such as keyboards and recycling bins. For my share of the work this week I finished making the grasping animation for the hands. After that, with the Unity side of things going for smoothly I decided to start making a couple of promotional pieces of artwork while I wait for the chicken model to be complete. The first piece I made was a simple logo-like chicken head. It turned out well enough that I decided it would be a good header for my Blog page. Now that I'm warmed up in photoshop I should be able to make several more of these logos to be used as promotional items or possibly in the game's minimap to show you item locations. Next week I plan to: -Create logos for more key items and enemies within the game -Start working on animations for the chicken monster as soon as it's model has been completed Recently I have been spending a lot of time working in Adobe Audition making sounds for the DSA Troope 5765 production of the Diary of Anne Frank. Previously I hadn't done any audio editing for anything other than videos or games so having to make something that would play in the real world posed a number of new and interesting challenges for me to overcome.
The first major challenge I faced was that things that sound good over headphones don't always sound great once you pipe them out through a sound board. This was especially hard because the sound board we have in the theatre right now can only play mono sound. This meant that whenever I made a sound I had to make sure it wasn't stereo or run it through a Mono Bus in Audition so you could hear both sides. This worked a lot of the time but some sounds I found simply didn't work without a stereo effect. This meant I had to look for new options and make sure each sound worked. Another problem I had was finding sounds. I set a goal for myself in this show to use no copyrighted material that we didn't own. This cut off stealing sounds from youtube and other video cites. There are so many unique sounds I needed to find, I often had to spend hours trying to find multiple options of sounds to show the director. Despite all these hardships I actually had a lot of fun working on this show. I got to express myself creatively in new ways and I was allowed to think outside of the box on how to make certain things. Hopefully I'll get to work on even more shows in the future and perfect my sound design skills. During a white elephant gift exchange I was able to get my hands on a pair of cheap phone-based VR goggles. Don't get me wrong these weren't anything fancy; mostly just a plastic covering with glass lenses. Still, I was excited to explore what I could do now and set our to find what the internet had to offer in terms of free VR experiences.
What I found online was a little demoralizing. Most "VR" videos were either a normal video configured to be seen with VR goggles (in other words no moving your head to look around) or used the phone's gyroscope but lacked the ability to be seen through the VR goggles. The simple lack of material that provided both was sad. This was the greatest weakness I found in the goggles. There simply aren't enough free websites offering interactive experiences. After this, I turned to apps. Here I found much more of what I was looking for. Due to google cardboard there were already many apps out that had the same format for viewing as my goggles used. There was a problem though. I couldn't touch the screen at all while viewing a video or game. This meant that games were nearly unplayable and it took a lot of time to stop and start videos. This meant that while I could use some apps to there full capacity, (such as one in which I just got to sit on one, never changing, spot on the moon) for many others I had to compromise my experience for the practical issues I had to endure. All was not lost however, Eventually I stumbled upon the discovery channel VR app. In this app I could watch documentaries in my goggles in the right format. Not only that, but they also had included a unique way to stop and start videos by using a look and go UI system. Overall while the goggles don't have as much support as I'd initially hoped, they were still fun to use and mess around with. Beyond that there is a lot of room to grow in this field and I look forward to what developments will happen in the future for VR. This week for my blog post I've decided to do something a bit different. Instead of focusing on something that specifically happened in class I want to address an ethics issue that has once again come to the forefront of the pubic eye: gun violence and video games. This past week a deadly shooting occurred at a Florida school killing 17. This has rekindled a debate in the video game world about violent behavior and how certain games may play a catalyst role in encouraging it.
Many studies have been conducted on both sides of this debate with a wide array of results. Some studies seem to prove a strong correlation between games and aggressive behavior while other studies fail to find any connection. Individual studies tend to show that video games do have an effect. Children who play more violent games tend to display more aggressive behavior. However, in society as a whole, even as more graphic and violent games are coming out than ever before, researchers haven't seen any statistically significant rise in crime or aggression. And so on the debate goes. Not everyone both sides of the evidence. In light of last weeks shooting, Kentucky governor Matt Bevin has gone as far as to directly link the virtual bullets of games to the very real bullets that were shot in Florida. This seems like a very extreme reaction to me. Video games simply haven't been proven to have that deep of a behavioral effect on people. This is a touchy subject for many people but as of right now I feel, while violent games should be studied further and adjusted to try and prevent any such issues arising in the future, games cannot be used as a sole scapegoat whenever something horrific happens unexpectedly. This past week of Game Design we left the realm of videos and moved back into the world of 3D modeling. If you've read my past blog posts you probably have some idea of how I felt to be back in 3ds Max. Max and I have a sort of love hate history. At one end I love learning techniques in 3d and the fact that I can make 3d animations is insanely cool. On the other hand our computers at school don't exactly have the graphics cards for 3d rendering and so making anything in 3ds Max requires patience and a lot of restarting the program. Needless to say I was not looking forward to diving back into 3d this year and I've been dreading this unit ever since it showed up in Schoology.
However, I've been surprised. So far what we've done in 3d has actually not been the hell I remember it as. Last year, I often followed tutorials listlessly trying to fix my model on screen to look like the one in the tutorial, which despite me copying all the steps correctly had coming at looking beautiful while mine was... more interesting. This year I feel like I'm starting to get a hang on the principles behind 3d modeling. Part of this is due to the tutorials not only being much better than the ones we used in the past, but also these tutorials are made in a more up to date version of 3ds Max meaning there's much less guesswork that goes into copying them. This year I also feel like bones have become much easier. Part of this is due to the fact that we've been working with biped rigs instead of free form bones but even beyond that I feel like I have made some progress in understanding how to move and use them to be more life-like. In conclusion I think 3d is actually going to be fun this year and I'm looking forward to working more with it in the future especially as we move into making 3d games. Last week we finished up our first semester in Advanced Game Design and oh boy what a semester it has been. The biggest thing that stood out to me this semester is how many new tools I've learned. Last year in Game Design we mostly focused on strengthening our grasp over our old skills. We mostly worked in programs we had already used such as Photoshop and 3ds Max. This year has been the complete opposite. We did our usual 2-3 infographics in Photoshop to kick off the year but past that (and our large Unity game project in the first quarter) we have focused on new programs. This quarter in particular we focused on learning AV techniques using Audition and Premiere. This has taken me out of my comfort zone a couple of times already this year but has been extremely fun. I love learning new skills that expand what I can do creatively on a computer and what we've done so far has certainly put a big check mark in that box.
So out of the new skills I've gained what have been my biggest takeaways? AV tools take time to make a good looking final product. Much like making a video game in Unity ther's just no way to get around the fact that in order to make a good video or sound you need time. Sure knowing your way around the program can help speed up the process but videos and sounds require lots of tweaking to get perfect. Even with a story board and clips, once you import them into Premiere you will need patience to slowly craft your perfect video. Clips will need to be edited. Sounds will need to be synced. transtions will need to be added, watched, and adjusted according to the material you need to present in a given time. Everything takes patience and creativity to work. That said once to put time into a video or sound it will be good. You can very easily make something that looks good from nearly anything if you have enough patience. Going into the next semester I look forward to bringing these new skills as well as the patience to use them with me. This past week our class has been focused on video editing. To do this we've been using Adobe Premiere Pro to create videos for different projects. The thing that has so far stood out to me the most in this unit is simply how time consuming editing a video is. Without a good plan on how the storyboard of your video will go a lot of time is wasted in the editing process simply figuring out what you want in your video. For example on the last project I completed I had to make a game trailer for a game I was just given a large amount of raw footage for. This meant I not only had to find the shots I wanted in my video and cut them out of a much longer footage reel, but I also had to find and add things such as sound effects and music to use in my video.
One thing that could help the problems I'm having is the use of a storyboard. Often when I make a video I jump straight into it. I only take time to maybe think up a loose timeline of what I want in my video beforehand. This leads to many problems farther down the road and leads to a sloppy end product. Storyboards would help me plan out my videos ahead of time and keep them on task and unified in theme. Here is a good link I found to help me with my storyboarding skills: |
AuthorSamuel Henry is a Senior at DSA in NC. He has 3 years of prior experience in the game design pathway and he's looking forward to becoming a great game designer. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools Categories
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