Quick Test Render

Unit 73 Planning an Audio Production

Brief Introduction
This blog post will detail all the information on my the audio work i will be including for my part of the 3D environment, including the equipment i will use, any scripts i will need, people (both actors and musicians), professional examples of audio production, sound effects and my audio storyboard. (This post will be constantly updated with new information and updates/changes to my planning).

Audio Storyboard

the audio storyboard is a version of a storyboard that mainly or entirely pertains to the planning, structure and implementation of the audio in a media production, i will be including 2 separate audio storyboards in this post. the first storyboard and the one i will be including in this section is to do with the planning of all audio in my 3D environment, the second is of the production of all audio included in my interactive story, so shall be included in that section.

There are several ways that an audio storyboard can be created however i will be creating it in an Excel document (as shown in the example below).

I will also apply a key to the interactive story's storyboard so i can easily recognize where sounds/music will play during the animation.

Interactive Story

As my section of the environment is the location of one of the interactive stories, I will be attempting to create a script based on the news article.

Flood Story links:
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/2000/11/02/Bradford+District+Archive/8049752.Woman_s_life_saved_by_quick_thinking/
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/2000/11/04/Bradford+District+Archive/8049657.JCB_rescue_heros__should_get_award_/
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/2002/09/14/Bradford+District+Archive/8023559.Flood_rescuers_in_line_up_for_award/

This script will be read out by one of the actors from the MSW tour, this readout will then be placed over/into an animation of the story (created in flash) possibly based of the art style of Roy Lichtenstein an American pop artist. Which will be drawn and animated by me.

For the audio portion of the interactive story i plan on using the recording studio to record the actor(s) reading the script.

Equipment

SHURE SM57 & 58-LCE Microphones

Elisis Oxygen M audio-25

Sound cards

Software (Cubase, Audacity, Reason)

Instruments (Keyboard, Percusion)

Portable Recorder

Condensors

Professional Examples of Audio Production

Here i am going to add some videos showing professionals and amateurs creating effects, music and recordings for various forms of media.

Water Test Render

Because i am creating an encirclement that has a river in it i have been watching several tutorials aimeing at creating bodies of water in 3DS Max.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLssOlTv9bA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed6jeOm-zNk
http://www.cgrats.com/realistic-water-in-3ds-max.html

I plan on using techniques that i have learned from all of these tutorials to make the water for my environment.

Below are a few of the screenshots and a final render i took whilst following the tutorials:

FMP Update 31/01/2013

Planning

Todays aim was more about getting all nessarcery planning and concept work for our 3D environments completed.

because i only have 2 buildings to do for my part of the group environment (the rest being scenery and riverside) i decided i would focus on the largest of the two buildings.

The building i needed the concept for today is the building near bradford beck which used to be a car dealership. some reference images are below.

Sound

Sound

Wavelength of Sound

This is the distance from the crest of one wave to the crest of the next.

Sound is a compression wave in a medium such as air or water. When something makes a sound, the air is compressed  in waves that travel from the source in all directions.

When these waves reach your eardrum it vibrates and your brain registers it as sound.

Amplitude

This is the measurement of the degree of change (Positive or Negative) in atmospheric pressure caused by sound waves. That is to say that sounds with greater amplitude will produce the greatest changes in atmospheric pressure when compared to those with a lower amplitude.

Frequency of Sound

When sound waves travel through mediums they sometimes affect the objects they interact with. The Frequency of a sound refers to the number of times an individual particle in a medium vibrates in a certain period of time, most often 1 second. This is different to the speed of the sound, which is measured by how quickly a sound passes a certain point.

Decibels

A decibel or dB is a logarithmic unit used to describe a ratio, for example this ratio may be; power, sound pressure or voltage, it is the unit used to measure the intensity of a sound, the human ear can pick up a huge range of sounds from the slightest near inaudible sound of a finger rushing along skin to the sound of a jumbo jets engines.

The smallest audible sound is 0dB which is close to complete silence and the loudest the human ear can perceive without suffering instantaneous and painful damage is 140 dB however long term exposure to any sound over 80 dB can cause hearing loss.

Flash Progress Review

Flash Progress Review

Today we were tasked with finding a professional example of a flash interface either for an interactive website or for an online game, i decided to use two examples, one of a online game and the other of an interactive website. 

And also to review the current version of our flash interface (whether it is finished and complete or not), but because i have lost my flash interface and cannot find a recent copy of it i have chosen to review the last known version and state of my interface.

Looking at a professional example

Below is a professional example of a flash interface in the form of a game.

The End

The End is a free online flash game that combines simple strategy interaction and puzzle's with platforming elements to make for a simple but effective and highly addictive game produced by Channel 4 and created by BAFTA winning games studio Preloaded.
The game runs smoothly and while it may be a simple game it offers a lot of interaction with the flash interface through the character creator that you are taken to when first playing the game. It is a good professional example of a flash based user interface.

The website for the game and the trailer are below

http://www.playtheend.com/

Scan.co.uk

Scan is an online computer store that specialises in computer hardware, software at an affordable price for UK customers, as most major online computer retailers are based in europe, asia or more commonly in the US.

The interface for the website uses flash for all the drop down menus, selections, adverts and the interactive banners. It is an easy to use interface with very few if any glitches or bugs. All this and more makes it a good professional example of a flash based user interface.

The website and a screenshot of the user interface are below

http://www.scan.co.uk/

Flash HCI - Progress

04/10/2012

Over the past 2 weeks we have been creating our Human Computer Interface using flash. Lately we have been creating our HCI icons and adding them into flash as fully interactive buttons.

These icons will be used to identify key points of interest along the routs used by our client for their Multi-Story Water Project.

Because these HCI's have to be accessible to anyone in the public we needed to make sure that the ideas and concepts for our icons were easy to identify and not too complicated. This meant designing them to follow basic recognizable elements used in icons on other forms of software and websites, such as Audio Control, which is usually shown as a speaker with several lines coming out of it to show whether there is sound coming out and how high the sound is. Or a back button in the form of an arrow or symbol that is identified with the previous page such as an image of a map to identify the back to the map icon.

The designs for my icons and HCI follow a dark industrialized theme, hence why i named the design 'Dark' and was to symbolize the dark technological boom in society that was Britain in the time of the industrial revolution.

Converting the icons to buttons has been the most difficult part of designing our HCI's thus far, as in many cases we had to recreate our icons in flash after drawing them by hand then editing them in Photoshop  Also applying the coding to the buttons to make them work and successfully interact with the different scenes and buttons inside the HCI's.