If I Knew Then What I Know Now - Software

If I had to start the project over tomorrow, using the same set of software, I would definitely do some things differently and have a well laid out plan of work with what order to do things in with regards to programs.

I would immediately create a floorplan showing all support walls, staircases etc of my chosen location. I would use this as a base plan to test out layouts. I would make the most basic of models in SketchUp from this base plan, open the model in Layout and export floorplan and section image views to Photoshop to try and flesh out these layouts as concepts and ideas. After finalising these ideas, I would then complete my floorplans in AutoCAD, these would all then become my guide moving forward.

SketchUp would only be used for these rough conceptual models nothing more and I would bypass Lumion. Although it has speed on its side I don't feel the addition of it was actually useful to my project and only served as a way to have inconsistent materials through the renders and the 360 video.

Only after finalising my design would I create anything in 3Ds Max. I would keep everything as a white model until I was 100% sure what my materials would be, then I would create all of my material texures in Substance for complete consistency throughout the project. After adding my textures into the model I would set up all of my views that I needed to create, by previewing them quickly then set them to autosave and batch render them overnight. After that I would create a guided camera to create a video walkthrough and leave that overnight also.

Should I then still want to create an interactive game walkthrough, I would be able to export my 3Ds Max model into Unity, bring all of my Substance textures in too. Hopefully I would have been able to access a MAC to enable me to have a compatable version of the game and then I would save the game as downloadable file instead of hosting it on a website to ensure the most people would have been able to access it.

I would still use InDesign to create all of my booklets but I would have had a very basic no fuss approach to the design instead of making it look overly complex and having to break it down into multiple booklets.