New design skills that I have developed while working on this project involve the technical understanding and relations between computational graphics, and the mathematical realism portrayed in real life, and its connection to the virtualization of a distinguished scene. To be more specific, understanding the XYZ coordinate systems, and the outlining of understanding different conceptual models to portray mesh, and lighting.
A big part of my design process ended up being the segmentation of the shapes in my initial chosen scene, and conceptually thinking about the different types of objects I knew how to draw, and how to map them close enough to the objects that I had wanted to draw. I think that a big part of this process in addition to that, was understanding what I had been attempting to do, and understanding any potential flaws in the approach or attempts that I had attempted to execute during the overall process.
I think that tactics from my design approach can be applied in future work through first principle learning, and the conceptualization and understanding of different tasks and how they map to other relevant ideologies that I maybe better at understanding. For example, one of the only ways I was able to tackle understanding how to develop the coin was the understanding that a circle realistically was just one giant pizza pie, and I had to focus on projecting the different triangles of that pizza pie as closely as possible in order to get a perfect circle.
Some new development strategies that I used while working on my 3D scene involved the seperation of different functions and the omitting of certain functions so I could attempt to get a working main program, while interchanging different functions and features in order to meld my program into the final project that it was ultimately going to become.
In my development strategy, this was incredibly iterative. I found that it was incredibly challenging for me to learn this initially for a variety of reasons. Though I never gave up, and I continually pushed and pursued this project with as much time as I possibly could. I found that I loved exploring the different capabilities of output that I could play with, as well as understand how to build, but this also brought up many issues and errors, and taught me many lessons about how important iteration is when it comes to automation, and how tedious it can be without.
- How has your approach to developing code evolved throughout the milestones, which led you to the project’s completion?
My approach to developing code throughout the milestones grew exponentially, as at first it was incredibly hard to do the project work and balance everything else in my life, so I dove in and struggled as long as I needed to in order to do enough reasearch and understand exactly what it was that I had been misunderstanding. I found that learning from many different perspectives, and sources helped the most, in addition to doing other projects that I could get to work, if I could not fully understand the problem at hand initially. This gave me the experience that I needed to understand something that might have been an issue, which brought me to a point where I did not have to think too hard about what it was that I had been doing, making it easier for me to indentify old mistakes, and execute sole strategies, opposed to many different ones, giving me the opportunity to clean up my code and make it more efficient.
- How do computational graphics and visualizations give you new knowledge and skills that can be applied in your future educational pathway?
I think that computational graphics and visualizations give me new knowledge and skills when it comes to critical thinking, researching, and understanding the connectivity between complex conceptual thoughts, and real life. I think that when it comes down to it, the overall architecture of a project, its build procedure, and mapping the execution of 3D graphics and its heavy utilization of math, really challenges someone to be the best type of developer they can be, because we are bringing many different skills together in order to accomplish one main goal.
- How do computational graphics and visualizations give you new knowledge and skills that can be applied in your future professional pathway?
I think that professionally, this class will be incredibly valuable. Mainly because in order to tackle problems in the correct way, it is important to take things one step at a time, and purely focus, and hone in on a specific issue. Sometimes this may involve going back to the basics, and sometimes it may even involve going ahead to understanding something that you are able to work, so you are able to help give yourself the experience you need in order to execute what needs to be done in the spectrum of the entire project. Most importantly, I think that in a professional setting, asking for help, like watching youtube videos, or researching other problems, is one of the most incredibly important skills to have.