BA5 - cs presentation

''Research the relationship between technological change and industry change. Choose two examples of important innovations that have changed the way that games are developed and marketed and research them. Record your research on your blog, so that you can present and discuss it during the session.''

This is my task for a 5 minute presentation for Contextual Studies. So, an important technological change for how games are marketed and developed are technological advances in video and for industry change is that games and game platforms are more easily and readily available/distributed.

With the technological advances for video, it has become increasingly easier to view, distribute and share videos of trailers and adverts on the internet.  Not only that, but the quality of the the image quality has also improved greatly.
For industry change, the availability of games and game consoles are extensive as the majority of people own laptops, smart phone/pad. Also, with the fact that many people have internet connection, along with the smart phones/ pad and/or laptop people can have a solid gaming platform along with portable gaming library.

I am concentrating on the marketing aspect of the industry and i will relate video technology and game distribution to that.  The two points i am looking at are also linked together.

With technological advancement in video, we can stream, view and share videos so easily on the web.  With games, we can view videos on a video hosting services (the biggest being Youtube) or on the game/company website.  According to comScore, in December 2010, 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos, with the average viewer watching 187 videos per month in the U.S. 

Some stats about Youtube:
exceeds 2 billion views a day
24 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute
hundreds of millions of videos are watched on mobile devices every month
partner ad revenue tripled in 2009
number of advertisers using display ads has increased 10-fold in the past year


For changes in gaming distribution,  there are new ways for people to play, find and buy games.  Media mobiles or smartphones are now proper gaming platforms and bring games to wider audience. Top ten bestselling apps for iPhone in 2010 were all games. Smartphones became real gaming platform due to better interfaces and more computing power.  Digital delivery has changed how games are played. Digitally delivered games have surpassed traditional sales. More people find the convenience of accessing their game library anywhere with internet-connection, and with less or no copy protection trouble, to be more important than having a physical product.

The way that these two are link is that, videos and ads are put onto the internet. They are viewed on either a pc, laptop, smart phone or pad. They can be shared via emails or social networking sites and viewed on video hosting sites or gaming/company websites.  The increase in sales of laptops and smart phones/pads and the increase in broadband connections, the increase in views of videos and adverts and the way they are shared.

http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/05/17/youtube-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/
http://blog.neolane.com/conversational-marketing/10-marketing-innovations/

BA5 - Grace

Here i am currently keeping to the Grace HDR and i have made all the handles on the units reflective, the desk is nice ans shiny too! The carpet compared looks more matte which im very glad about. In the lower images i have increased the base's size.

Before i used inverted lighting, i had set up a directional light source onto my model. In the first image it is turned off, in the second one it is turned on. There is a very slight difference with the two images; the first one is very slightly darker. I like it that little bit darker and will keep it turned off.

BA5 - Some more testing

Here is an example of a basic carpet texture i used with all the handles done on one side of the desk.  I played around with the reflective-ness of the floor with help from tips from the tutorial i mentioned in my previous post.  I want it to be obviously different texture from the desk and handles but thats a little hard to do.  The again i am still undecided as to what indirect lighting i want which could totally change the overall render.  So far the two favorites are the St Peters and the Grace resources, so i will currently focus on those two. I will keep playing about and change things up to try and see what fits best.  If i find it too much trouble, ill leave it to later and instead work on some accessories like a lamp or file case etc.

This render i used the St Peters inverted lighting resource.

This, i used the Grace inverted lighting resource.

The St Peters lighting creates a more speckled lighting effect that looks like its created by either a tree or a special lighting rig.  the Grace lighting is more natural but has a reddish hue to it too. Thats why i am still undecided. I think ill keep looking for more HDR images but for now this is working well!

BA5 - Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

Here are 3 choices to choose from for the Indirect lighting, each one rather different. I have also added a base as contrast which i may well texture later on. But for now the focus is the desk and its ability to reflect. I will ask people what they think looks better which will help me out when i finish this!

BA5 - Shiny surfaces and cool lighting.

I found that even though the rendering was looking good, i wanted the handles to e nice and reflective. So, i decided to find an online tutorial on how to create shiny things.  I went ahead and used this video here ( second part here). Even though it is for a ball, i thought i could try to adapt it to my rectangular handles. And it has indeed elevated my work and made it more reflective; the desk its self looks varnished and the handles look reflective (well the one does as i decided to just test it out on the singular one, i will duplicate to match). I am thinking about doing the same to the bottom parts to make the desk look cohesive  I will also add a base that will either be a rug or carpet to contrast against the wooden desk.  For the indirect lighting i followed onto the website provided here and played about with both the Kitchen and Grace Cathedral, San Francisco images.  The Kitchen one created more of a white light look but warped at the sides, giving a back to the future look, which isnt really realistic or what im after.  The San Francisco one gave a reddish lighting look with multiple light points creating almost a speckled disco effect. Which is not what i want as this is meant to be an office desk, in an office!

WARP!

BA5 - Addition, Lighting and some rendering

I realized that something was off on the overall structure of the desk at the back, it was just a flat face had no dimention to it! So i quickly put in a back and no it looks so much better, everything connects now.

I have now also started playing with lighting and doing some rendering shots of my desk. I will produce a turn table soon. I think i will either return to working on my chair or, i will make some items to go on the desk. e.g. a lamp. Used a really helpful and simple tutorial online for this here.

BA5 - Handles and bottom

Here are the handles!

Here i have also rearranged the non-bordered side of the desk. I do like how it is just like that but ill get another opinion and see.

And here are the bottoms.

I have decided to not have the rim around the units. Personally i think it looks a lot cleaner looking.