At the beginning of the collaborative unit, I had some self-doubt because I was not sure if I would be able to deliver what the team required and unsure if I was able to deliver it in time to meet deadlines. I had this feeling because I was fairly new to 3D modelling. After this unit, I can confidently say that I do not have any self-doubts anymore and I can work comfortably with 3D modelling.
Teamwork is a major part of the collaborative unit and we all came from different courses and fields of expertise as well as different cultural backgrounds, so we had to find a common ground to complete the project to the required standards. One of the ways we achieved this goal was by conducting regular meetings, so all of us could check in on each other and get updates on the progress. I felt that when one of us would miss these meetings now and again, it would be hard for the team to get that person up-to-date on the progress of the team, and also wasted a lot of time getting them up to speed. This helped me to understand the significance of attending every meeting.
Having a good workflow is an important tool for a team. This helps teammates to understand what they needed to work on and what the next task is. This also helps to divide work equally, so everyone can be a part of it. I feel that our team didn’t have a good workflow, because I was requested to model a specific object but in the final video, there was a different model which was downloaded from the internet and my model was never used. This was never discussed and the decision to use a different model was made unilaterally. I also saw that one teammate would do all the work and sometimes even end up doing the work which had been assigned to someone else and perhaps this ended up being an unfair division of work.
Communication is the backbone of a team and it also helps the teammates to be on the same page. This was a major factor that was missing from our team. We had a language barrier with some members of the team and we would struggle to communicate our ideas with each other sometimes and perhaps this lead to misunderstandings. Now after looking at the outcome I felt that the VR team and the 3D modelling team didn’t have adequate communication with each other. For example. I had modelled the whole bedroom and given the texture and handed it over to the VR team and later, during the final submission realised that none of the texture which I had given was used. I was required to make a simulation of virus cells and even that was not used. This taught me two things, one is not to assume that your model will be used, and the next is to follow up with your teammates and ask what is happening with your model or if they need help with it.
The collaborative unit taught me a lot of new things like working with new software, understanding how VR performs, and how to perform better in a team and all in all, it was a good experience.