For this project we were assigned groups and companies to work with. I was placed into a group alongside Travis, Patrick, Shannon and Aaron. Our brief given to us from Deepa was to create an AR/VR experience or game for any purpose we wished. This gave us a lot of freedom as a group as we could basically create whatever we wanted, with feedback from Deepa along the way.
Our first meeting with Deepa involved us learning more about what is was she wanted us to create. We are to design and create an AR/VR game, app or experience. Basically we have a lot of freedom to create whatever interests us. She talked us through whether or not we want people to feel anything from what we make, if we want to help someone or just have a fun experience for everyone. We tested out a few examples to see what kind of things are already out there. These included a David Bowie AR experience and a snow-globe experience which Deepa showed us.
Useful websites and articles:
After a small group meeting on Monday we decided we needed more time to further develop concepts. And agreed that we would take ideas that we liked from everyone and try to expand on them. We have a meeting this Friday and before we meet with Deepa, as a group we are going to narrow down what ideas we would like to present to her.
These are some of the ideas that I expanded on, some are based on my own initial ideas and others are developed from group members:
- App that can help overcome fears
- Calming atmosphere purely to help the user to relax, could be set in a forest or underwater
- Mental Health Awareness
- Something to help teach kids in a certain subject, maybe Geography. Could possibly show how earthquakes happen. Movement of plates and volcanoes could be interesting in VR
In the end after a final group meeting, we all were swayed towards the idea of having an underwater experience. Each of us had at least one underwater idea, so it seemed the natural choice to continue with the idea.
We researched into underwater scenes, and existing games that involve underwater to help us decide what kind of narrative or feel we wanted to go for.
From this research Shannon found an artist Tyler Smith, whose work consisted of beautiful lighting, and we found very inspirational.
RENDERING & VR
https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/xr/getting-started-vr-development
https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/xr/rendering-vr
https://unity3d.com/how-to/create-AR-games-in-Unity-efficiently
We had a group meeting to further discuss a definite narrative. And after a few more ideas were thrown out, we all decided on a final idea. We all loved the idea and agreed with everything that was decided upon. Travis also put together a Trello for us to work from, and I found it very helpful to stay more organised
The idea for our narrative: a little robot named S.A.M is at the bottom of the ocean. He is a researcher robot who was originally brought down to the ocean along with the scientist who made him to discover new depths/species n stuff. We liked the idea of the robot going on a journey on the ocean bed collecting various objects that will convey the narrative. He will pick up a mixture of narrative focused objects as well as some silly objects. We talked about him collected damaged and hurt fish and putting them in his ‘inventory’ as it would have been his job to help endangered animals along with the scientist. We also talked about him collecting various items of trash, like bottles.
The key part of our narrative would be that the robot wants to find his way back to the scientist, only to find various objects such as, science notes, a wedding ring, family photos and ship parts. These all leading the robot to the crashed ship/submarine where the scientist is no longer alive.
We also talked about maybe having him find little newspaper clippings showing the scientist and his family. And maybe the scientist had a daughter named Samantha and she died of an illness. This little robot could be called S.A.M and it was the scientist’s main project before his daughter passed and he named the machine after her.
We wanted to viewer to discover all these things for themselves, so thought it would be best to have clues throughout the adventure before eventually seeing the shipwreck. At the end of the experience, we would like for the robot to be shown alongside his name tag to show that his name is S.A.M.
These were the ideas of location design for each area. As well as dialogue that would pop up when each item is picked up. Myself and Patrick worked on this:
We were still unsure of whether this experience would be best as a 360 video that the viewer could feel apart of, or whether it should have an element of interactivity to feel more like a game. However from our previous meeting with Deepa, she advised that interactivity is only necessary if it adds to the narrative. So we needed to think about that. Travis and the rest of the group organised a basic asset list which would be useful for us while we spent the rest of the week working on final concepts and focused on what style and lighting we were going for.
STYLE
We wanted to go for a low poly look, but still have an interesting texture to our environment. We looked into Okami, as we all liked the style of the game, and thought that it would enhance the natural beauty of the ocean
UNITY TOONSHADER
CONCEPTS
I first drew a few concepts to give me an idea on what I wanted to model as well as figuring out lighting. Travis created a document on Trello which helped us organise what assets we needed, and we could decided what each of us were doing. I also drew a few concepts to design our robot S.A.M.
MODELS
After the concept stage I moved on to modelling. We created an asset list that we then divided between us and each took assists and a creature each to model. I started with my creature which was an axolotl. I began by looking at reference pictures and then looking an existing cartoon models and art for inspiration.
I then played about with the head shape and originally started with a very realistic shape, then decided I’d rather a more spherical and cute shape. These were quick colour tests using lambert shaders in Maya.
I then went on to model my assets, and textured them using Substance Painter. This was my first time ever using Substance Painter, and it seemed a little overwhelming at first, but I really enjoyed the process and seeing the models slowly come to life with colour and texture:
I have finished renders of my models on my portfolio HERE
We also realised that due to the time we had left, and the amount that the scene could hold, we could only have 1 area rather than 5. This means we could concentrate items and a storyline in to one area and really focus on perfecting one area rather than spreading everything out just to have more area to explore.
As the file needed to be run on a laptop, I found the challenge of having models low poly to be difficult. I’ve never really thought about the poly count as it’s never been an issue before in previous projects. But I think it worked out well enough, and wasn’t as big of an issue as I was worried it would be.
The assets were then placed together into the unity scene and the lighting style was decided. I had a search for sound which could possibly be used. These are finished renders of the project and the final video which was edited by Aaron.
FINAL RENDERS
Animation Blog 