Final Model for Project Three/Reflection

My final Project is slightly different in the way that it has been made and the original materials and methods i had planned to use. The final model is still a sorting cube. it has tope bottom and two sides (4 sides) made out of acrylic and the two opposite faceing sides, (front and back) are made with a 3mm wood/mdf board. These two sides have been painted black. The slides i had originally made out of mdf as well but drilling holes didnt work and building a frame was too time consuming so instead i used thick cardboard. I brought a green "mesh" made out of a fishing wire type substance. By cutting out holes in the different layers in order to ulter the sizing of the gaps i was able to produce three different sized holes in the slides.

Because i wasnted the slides to be easily differenciated i chose to last minute change my colour scheme from primary colours and white, to silver (mainly becasue the white spray paint was working), purple, orange, and green. i found that when the bead were different sizes some of the little beads looked more orange rather than red or yellow, and those two colours were too similar.

I decidedto match the colour of the balls to the slides so that my concept was more clear, therefore spray painted the wooden beads to their corresponding sized beads. This just mad it clearer which ones should go through the holes.

I had tried various methods of attatching the sides of the box together but i think the method that worked best was the glue although it wasnt the neatest join it worked well and was easiest!

Cost wise, the only thing i purchased was
60x30cm 2mm Acryic board $10.80
60x30cm 3mm mdf board   $6.00
30cm of green crafts mesh  $3.00
Spray paint ( i had to buy the orange and green as already had the other colours at home) $9.00 ea

..the beads, and cardboard were things i already had at home that dont need to be replaced. It was also good as becasue i didnt use all the acrylic o could use it for my DSDN111 assignment too. Meaning that overall my project i didnt think broke the budget at all.

Time wise i got it all completed in time (JUST). If there was more time i think i would have made the overall outcome more clean cut and neater.

Reflection
I think that my model is easy to understand and reflects the if else statements well. My experimentation with materials was time consuming and because there wasnt a lot of time i think i could have done better. SOme minor details i didnt have time to fix could have made the model alot cleaner.

these details to me include:

• the slides accesibiltiy in and out of the cue- it would have been nice if i was able to create tracks so they would easliy slide in and out.This would also enusre no beads could slip down the gaps of the slides.
• the slots on the side and their width- the reason for making them so big was that it was imposible to cut out the slots smaller and keep them straight. if i had more time i would have liked them to be smaller, meaning the balls had no chance of slipping out.
• The paint job on the slides-because i changed the colours reasonably last minute i spray painted them only in time for them to dry, ideally i would have liked to of doen a second coat to make it a neater paint job.
• The joins and gluig of the cube-i htought that overall it wasnt too neat. i had trouble keeping the sides together as it was such thin acrylic. although this was neater than tape it would have been nice to of not been able to see any glue anywhere. which i can accept is porbably quite unrealisitc.

time management wise, i thought that becasue this is the third project i porbably slacked off a bit. My time management between other projects and this one should have been more even and i should have managed my time more wisely. in saying that i did get it done and i thought i had some time well spent on things like experimenting with the colours and materials which was improving my model as i went along.

On a side note, personally i liked the acciedntal effect on the beads that i created when spray painting them.

YAY! i have completed coding!

Final 200-300 word Description

If/else statements

In order to control how a program treats processes, the program uses a code called if/else statements. The statements include the code which determines when something will happen (if), what will happen and/or the alternative animation (else).
       e.g.    if (something is true)
                      run a block of code

These are effective when creating animations and are especially useful when creating an interactive animation using mouse pressed functions and other codes allowing you to control the animations.

I have created what I call the sorting cube. What this cube demonstrates is the process of the if/else statements and the idea that there is a determinant which controls the next action. In my models case the determinant for the if/else statements is the slides. The slides that are inserted will determine which balls will fall to the bottom of the cube. There are 3 different sizes of balls at the top of the cube. If you insert one of the coloured slides it will affect the placement of the balls.

For example:  If the red slide is inside the cube, the red balls will fall through; else the red balls will not hit the bottom.

                If (the red slide is inserted in the cube and the black slide is not)
                  the red balls will fall to the bottom

                Else the red balls will continue to sit at the top of the cube.

Plan of attack

Rather than completely a protoype out of cardboard i have decided to experimetn as i go. keeping in mind i have other assignments to do, and i dont have a lot of time. I often find that its with the materials you use that yu run into problems. therefore i dont want to be wasting any time using cardboard.

Here is a checklist, a list of steps in which i plan to take in order to create the cube.
1.cut out the peices for the cube (6 sides from acrylic)
2. stick all sides together minus front and back in which will have the slots in it. (this is to experimetn with sticking methods)
3. create the slides in regards to the front and back sides of the cube.
4. find appropriate sized beads for the 3 holey slides.
5. Drill holes to fit the beads through thm in each slide.
6. stick down the back side
7. insert the beads
8. stick down the front side
9. insert th slides.

i realise that this sounds all very easy but along the way i realise that time consuming trial and error may occur and that ths may change slightly however the method is a good basis for me to start with.

FInal Plan and measurements Draft (give or take)

More or less, this is a draft plan on the measuremtns i plan to follow when making the cube.

Final Idea For Project 3 and Interim

This model explains the if/else statement. IF the right sized mesh is placed in the box it will alow the balls to hit the bottom of the box. ELSE the balls will remain on the first layer.

The general design of the model, is a "box" made out of glass or some sort of see through substance. On one side of the box there will be slits/slots in which the slide containg the different sized grids will slot in. Statrting with the smaller sized grids and ending with the largest. That way it will only allow the small ones to go through when the first slide is inserted.

THe slides are the determinaning factor as to what will happen much like functions such as mousePress, mouseClick etc. etc.

Time and Cost Management
I chose not to use processing for this assignment as i find it very time consuming to work things out. therefore it seems more time efficient to stick to somehting i can manage and predict how long it will take. I will ifnd this easier than coding as i know what i am making and how i will make it. Where as in coding its alot of trial and error which can be very time consuming.
Materials i will need to investigate the costs for are..
glass
wood
wire
mesh
wooden, metal, or marble balls
and joining materials such as nails and glue

I do have a lot o these materials already at home but it wil sitll be interesting to know the cost to create my model. i will also need to keep in mind the size i want the box to be. So my next step is a detailed plan of attack.

Glass? ..or acrylic!

Making the cube..

So turns out this isnt as simple as i thought. originally i planeed to use glass. but after further thought, not only is glass almost impossible to work with it is also expensive, heavy and hard to join. Because i wanted to keep the sides transparent i decided to make four walls out of acrylic. Acrylic/prospecs can be purchased from the uni shop on Te Aro campus. It is approximately 10-12 dollars for a large peice 80x30cm ( i think) depending on how many mm thick you are purchasing. I am also using acrylic for my DSDN111 project, so i feel that it will be killing two birds with one stone. this way i can use the workshop toold to make the cube and am able to make more decidions about the outcome than if i was to use glass.

ACRYLIC IT IS..

Brainstorm for Project 3

The prupose of this project is basically to create something that can help explain a coding term or function using a metaphor. A good way to look at this assignment is to imagine that someone who doesnt knwo anyhting about coding will use my project in order to help understand a term or function. Another way of lookign at it is if a tutor was going to use my project in order to explain to their students something in coding.

From the list of examples provided i feel that i understand the if/else staements the most. As i had worked with that alot in project two, and i feel i have got my head around it finally.

if/else Statements

From the online tutorials this is the way they introduce if/else statemnts. Origjnally this made no sense to me. but after using it, it really is very simple. and i think that metaphorically it can be explained in many ways that are easy to realte to in our daily activities.

Initial Ideas

 Idea 1:

Iterative baby toy. Shapes and colours.

if you put the shape in the right shape into the right hole it will go into the circle.

Idea 2:

especially when working with animations i think of the if else statemnts as controlling what will occur. sort of like a car gear box. where each gear will effect what happens with the engine. although this isnt as clear as some of my other ideas. It what i initially related to if/esle statments when working with animations.

Idea 3:

Board game. Although it is not original it makes the concept quite clear. if you at each intersection you could roll a 4 sided dice. (the triangular looking one). depending on which colour you land on will determine which path you move. this make the determinant part quite clear.

Taking advantage of my uncreative and very intellectual ffamily members. I decided to explain my concepts to them and recieve some feedback on whether it makes sense. Out of these they all are very different concept and i had to use a lot of words to get my point across. I then came up with my final idea, which they agreed to be visually easy to understand. 

My Final Submition for Hand-in

I was meant to hve this up on my blog yesterday, but my internet at home was not working. I have come to the end of my assignment. It has been put on the victoria R Drive and has been uploaded to the classroom on open processing (this was commented on that i hadnt done it in my last project).

My Final for Project 2

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=28071

At the begining of the project i wrote that my goal is to figure out how to construct my design using processing. I would like to further my knowledge and experience with the programme learning how to incoporate human interaction, animation, and transformation and sound. From this project i have achieved that, and through help and experimentaion i think my overall understanding of "neat" coding and the prinicples of coding have improved.

Recoding my work

I woul dbe lying to say i got all my work done in the first week. Other papers work took far longer than i anticipated so before i went away i had not completed all that much. In fact all i had done was created the first two mouse clicks and what had happened. a handy variable i added in which was suggested to me by a classmate was the circle size variable. this mean that in each mouse click count i can just change the circles sizes by using the variable rahter than transfroming them like i did in my other code. I think that what i have done will make it easier for me to carry on. I have missed the tutorial as i was away on the 21st which is bad as i am not a very experienced codeer. but oh well.

I have decided that the logic behind the colour wheel pallete and the small circles inside was a bit out of it, it would make more sense that inside the circles there were two little circles that show the resulting colour if that big coloured circle was combined with ither of the surrounding circles. I have decided that in order to progress my code i will make it sort of never ending by making the circles transform out and then back track back in. I am definitely goin gto keep the idea of the changing circle sizes as thats what was the main idea of my intial plan that makes it different and visually exciting.

Another class member told me about a blog he was reading and a code they uploaded that was just siomple circles but as you moved the mouse over the circles they would split into four. This has opened my eyes, that i dont do enough investigating on open processing, therefore im constantly doing everything from scratch which is just making more work for myself. so i have decided to start looking at more sketches and their code, in hopes that it will inspire me or that i can even use some of theyre code in my work.

Devlopment

So far i have created my image so that it is in stages and goes form a big black dot-small black dot with 3 big black dots-big black dot 3small black dots and 3 big blakc dots. this is the basics of my design and so now i need to include sound and create some better effects. Instead of having the dots inside each other im going to make them only appear when the mouse is over the dot. this will make it more interesting.

Development 2

I have staged the clip so that it can reverse. I have looked at other open processing clips, but to be honest even the effects i would like to use i cant figue out how to relate them to mine and include it. So i think il just have to continue.

I have added in tones. I used Ben's advice and used soundcipher, and for each stage there is a tone. Finding three or four tones that sound good together, proves harder than expected. but i have found three tones to relate with the three stages.

WHen the mouse is over the circles if the frame rate is high it is unberable repetitive and sound like a beeping or ringing. so i had to slow the frame rate down to make i sound better as i cant figure out how to make it only beep once over the hovering circles. It sounds nice when its repeated though slower, the only constraint is that my clip is less smoother, but i dont think this is huge thing to stress about.

I also think i t will be cooler if i incorporate some more colour or something. as although it is effective having white space and then the coloured dotes. it would be nice to have something more interesting happen when you press the dots. i will have a play around.

Development 3

Its the night before hand- in and i have figured out how to make the colour of the dot that has been selected flash. this makes the whole clip more visually appealing and exciting. I think it is ready for hand in now which is exciting.

Reflection from presentation

During the presentation my code did a wierd thing and didnt show my final step. So after the presentation i played around with it and turns out that because it hasnt been put in stages it only does what its meant to now and then . less than ideal. Although i have tried to avoid it, its become clear that the way i have done my code has just made it way harder for myself and im going to end up running into lots of dead ends if i carry on, so i might as well, during the holidays start over and organise my code better. Now that i have the knowledge on using transformation and have breifly touched base on incorporating sound i think this will be much easier for me, then it would have been at the beginning when i started creating my code. I also have the advantage of the two week holiday so i will have more time to learn what i need to, and request help on the things that are beyond me.

Because my code hadnt gotten as far as i would have liked it to by this presentation there wasnt much to see, therefore not much for the tutors to give feed back on. The general idea of the feedback was to make it more clear in my head (and others) what exactly my clip is trying to achieve/what experience should the person get out of my work. I also need to keep moving forward and experiment with different ways to make my simple idea more visually appealing and interactive.

After the presentation i was sort of at a mind blank at where to start and what to do next. But my first step would be to recreate what i have already achieved but include functions that will make my later code easier such as mouse count, "states", and variables for the circle sizes and placement, making my clip run more smoothly. After i have created the basic idea i hope to have more time to include more interesting code to make it more interactive.

The brief clearly states it has to include transformation, sound, and interaction in order to get good marks. I want to use sound effectively but i am unsure how to go about making it look good. Ben in our class was telling me about the soundcipher or something that he used in his which uses tone scales to create noises, and suggested i use the same with the circles going outwards and back in to make a cool sort of pianoy type effect. He has a lot of experience with coding and knows what hes talkiong about and i like the idea. I have asked him to help me out with the sounds after i have finished my work. So at least i have a rough idea on sound now.

I have to keep in mind that in the holidays i have other assigments work as well as my easter weekend in australia. So in order to stay on top of my work i will spend the first week working on my code fixing up my existing code and getting something basic to hand in (in case i run out of time) and then after that hopefully playing around with other features. I have kept my blog up to scratch on word as broadband is limited outside of uni. But will upload them all as soon as i can.