About the project

This project was done in collaboration with Talespin with input from AT&T technicians and SMEs.

When I joined the team, the project was still in its pre-production stages, with some of the installation instructions needing approval from AT&T SMEs. Thus, a lot of the work I’ve done revolved around getting models ready for storyboard presentations and eventually, full in-engine implementation. The goal of storyboard presentations was to run through the guided installation steps to the AT&T SMEs and identify anything that may have been overlooked.

References I used to model the installations included technical instruction manuals, diagrams, photos, and CAD models provided by AT&T.

Towards the last month of my contract with Bitheads, priorities were adjusted, and the new focus became getting one of the installations to be app-ready as soon as possible.

My Contributions

During my time at Bitheads, my contributions towards the AT&T Flex App includes:

1. Creating models for storyboard briefs
Because the storyboards required approval from the AT&T SMEs, the models created for that stage of the process tended to be low-fidelity, as they needed to be flexible in case a major change was necessary. Thus, only the parts that were directly addressed by the storyboard would be modelled. Once we got approval from AT&T, the models would then be re-done with more detail added.

2. Modelling two installations based on reference material provided by AT&T SMEs

There were various models that needed to be completed for the AT&T Flex app. Because a few of the models were already completed by previous artists that worked on the project, I completed the last two models that haven’t been modelled.

The modelling workflow varied depending on the reference material I had access to There would be times when a partial CAD file was provided, but would be lacking an important aspect of the hardware. Other times, the model required an update which wasn’t reflected in any of the reference material. Thus, successfully completing a model required a lot of back and forth between our team at Bitheads, Talespin, and AT&T.

3. Cleaning models completed by previous 3D artists
As noted by my supervisor, a few models that were completed by previous 3D artists either weren’t optimized for mobile devices, or had too many details, many of which weren’t required for this project.

4. Beginning to texture
Due to a shift in priorities, I worked to push one of the models to be app-ready as soon as I could. This included UV unwrapping and texturing the model using references provided to me by my supervisor.

Textures would be created using photos my supervisor took of the AT&T hardware.

5. Ensuring a clean hand-off
As I wasn’t able to extend my contract due to another job opportunity, I ensured that the files I was working with were well organized. I also communicated direct to the new artist to answer any questions about the files and references I was working with.