MARSHALL NUGENT
To expand my project and professional experience further, I decided to develop a PowerPoint presentation for Parker Ionics. Knowing the company used PowerPoint for most of their presentations, I decided to use what I researched from their original presentation slides and make my own dynamic version. Going over their slides for the first time, the content was hard for the average customer to understand. To make it easier to digest, the diagrams could be switched out for animated ones that I had already created. Each animation was created in their own pre-composition in After Effects. Precomposing is the process of packaging a series of layers into a new composition in After Effects. By grouping these layers together you can add animation, effects, or masks that will then be applied to all of the layers within[4].This made it easy for me to render each diagram individually and place them into my slides in a universal video format. Much like the transitions you can create in After Effects, you are able to add transitions and animations to individual slides in PowerPoint. While researching new updates to PowerPoint 2020, I came across a tutorial by The Office Lab [5], on how to create a morph animated 3D carousel. The tutorial taught me how the morph function works and an interesting way to layer shapes in a slide to create an interface that has motion. I used this to structure the overall layout and design theme. There are six circles in the carousel, each circle acting as an individual section that the presenter navigates through. The sections are, About, How, Methods, Results, Product, and Conclusion. When navigating through the presentation, the section being presented next will be emphasized with a title and short description. The following slides will be zoomed into using the zoom function in PowerPoint previously stated. After viewing the content within that section, it will zoom out to the carousal that displays the remaining sections to cover.
The design of my presentation required more attention than I had initially planned for. Consistency with the theme, type, grid-layout, and the placement of items were researched to add value to the presentation and optimize the viewing experience. According to the principle of consistency, systems are more usable and learnable when similar parts are expressed in similar ways. Consistency enables people to efficiently transfer knowledge to new contexts, learn new things quickly, and focus attention on the relevant aspects of a task [9]. The placement of elements in a way that controls how the viewer’s eye will move from image to text and travel around a design composition needed to be considered. The type needs to be organized and assigned a hierarchical role, so the viewer is led through a design composition in a way that supports the message’s intent and its ability to be understood. This allows the viewer to take in all of the design’s visual information [7]. To help with readability of my slides, the amount of words per line had to be considered. According to a well-known empirical rule there should be 7 words per line for a text of any length [6]. With these principles in mind, the design became more organized, consistent, and increased readability, and improved the emphasis of the material.
Figure 7 and 8 show a comparison of my design with Parker Ionics. Figure 7 is a slide in the presentation I was given by Parker Ionics to learn what their products were about. Figure 8 is my interpretation of the slide. It includes a description of what Modulation is and an animated video of the graph in figure 7.
In prior Digital Arts classes, I had experience working in the software from Autodesk known as Maya. Maya is an industry leader for 3D modelling and animation. Although I was familiar with the program, I wanted to challenge myself and use the free and open source software Blender. The main reason for choosing Blender over Maya was the price. Knowing that I will be graduating soon and my free student membership will come to an end, I wanted to get a head start learning a free 3D software option like Blender. In the beginning, learning new software was a daunting task. With the help of YouTube videos and the website CG Boost, I was able to relearn the fundamentals in a short amount of time. I looked up images that showed the Parker Ionics powder coating gun as a side profile view, which I used as a background template to construct the model. I also found images of individual parts within the gun so I could demonstrate a breakdown of the components. I modeled the gun housing, gun cap, and injector, then spent the remainder of the project refining the gun to make it as accurate to the actual product as I could while using low quality images to build from. While creating the gun, I ran into some challenges. The main challenge I faced was modeling the curvature of the gun. When making the curves it would create ngons and triangles in the mesh. A triangle is 3 sides or edges connected by 3 vertices. A ngon is a face or polygon that is made up of five or more sides or edges connected by five or more vertices. The extra vertices and edges in the mesh cause defects in the model that would not occur if the model were made up of quads. To fix the problem, I had to use modifiers to reconstruct the mesh, making the surface smooth when rendered with shaders and textures applied. After the model and its renders were completed, I was able to add them to my PowerPoint presentation.
For my second prototype I focused my attention to the PowerPoint itself. My theme used a carousel effect with circular icons. While researching new features in PowerPoint I found a tutorial by The Office Lab "How to create a Morph Animated 3D Carousel Agenda Slide in PowerPoint". The video walks you through the process in creating the carousel effect that displays the individual sections of the presentation. The content within each section is zoomed into.
After reading the content it will zoom out and transition to the next section.
I added short motion diagrams created in my original video to enhance the presentation.
The next evolutions of the PowerPoint will have theme, color, and font adjustments. Also a 3d model breakdown of parts.
For my prototype I presented the video above as well as a screenshot of my 3D model I was making in Blender. I am new to Blender which presented a learning curve to adjust my schedule to. I had to find time to research how to use the program so I could make an accurate 3d model for the project. This requires a ton of extra time. I decided this was necessary to do instead of creating a prototype of the PowerPoint presentation I wanted the 3d model to be a part of in the end.
I added simple royalty free sound to the video to give it some life. I also was briefed on the Faraday cage effect. A grounded metal screen surrounding a piece of equipment to exclude electrostatic and electromagnetic influences. I made additional changes to the diagram to present lines of force and transition into the Faraday cage effect.
My first version was created to get initial feedback on. I was told to fix how the powder buildup was displayed and add specific movements to the gun as it disperses the powder. I also changed the font colors on the ohms law diagram. See the results below.
Once you have illustrations made they can now be imported into After Effects. Working in After Effects allows you to put them into motion like this.
Replicating the process for each illustration and combine them together to make a short video.
This gives me an initial video ready to receive input on.
For a motion graphic you first need illustrations. I created the Parker Ionics powder gun, spray box, and voltage diagrams. The illustrations were developed in illustrator. This allows me to import them into After Effects so they can be put into motion.
