Week 7 & 8
Well we are finally getting the hang of Quest. Although the process of learning the program is a constant journey(it was quite unintuitive when we first attempted quest), we seem to actually be getting places with it now. We should have it fairly well worked out before the prototype. It seems to involve a lot of knowledge of scripting so we may have to brush up on our coding skills since we havn’t been coding for 2 years now.Ted also went through a number of tutorials on the web to get the basic idea of how to trigger an event in Quest3D. For our project, we need to have trigger points in front of certain buildings to enable the text box to pop up. Ted realized that, to do this, we need to have the most up-dated position values to be calculated in order to determine the distance between the trigger point and the walkthrough camera. However, instead of setting the logical flow to calculate the current position there is collision template already available to use. We just need to learn how to modify this and add new logical arguments of our own into the flow chart .
Meanwhile, Tim is still modifying 3D models so they are easier use within quest. Initially he had created each element of the models as separate objects arranged hierarchically under the name of the model (e.g Courthouse or School of Arts), however during the transfer process the hierarchy system was lost and we ended with a massive amount of really disorganised objects. In order to solve this problem, I had to go back through all of the models that I had created and find any objects that could be grouped together and merge them together into 1 object. (e.g. Stairs, Pylons, Frames etc.) This is a very lengthy process and it may take tim even the whole next couple of weeks to complete it. In the meantime he has made some low poly quality models for Ted to use within quest to create the scene. Then it should just be a simple process of then replacing the low quality models with the high quality ones. We are hoping that Quest will keep the textures when we transfer the models into it, however I have a feeling that it will. I'm pretty sure that even if it does lose the textures during the transfer, It should at least keep the UV mapping.We still have lots to do but things seem to be coming together and we are feeling confident that we will have it all sorted for the prototype.
We have been trying to get hold of Dr Prangnell, but to no avail. Tim had tried calling him and emailing him on numerous occasions, but he hasn't gotten back to us. Its been about 2 weeks since we last spoke to him and although he did say he would be away for a week (during week 6), he should be back by now (week 8). We'll try him again on monday and if we cant get through to him, we shall call the front office and see whats going on.
posted by Tim Davidson @ 10:54 pm
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