Blog 1: February 11, 2018
For my 1st attempt at creating an alternative reality experience, I want to create a peaceful environment. Ever since I was a kid, looking at a picture or listening to a song that emanated peace would make my day better and would make me forget of whatever I was stressed or worried about. I believe I can create a similar type of experience in this project, and I want to achieve such through an activity I am personally connected to: camping. I believe that nature has a way of making humans forget about worldly concerns as it provides perspective and makes us look at the bigger picture: why worry about the menial job-related, school-related, or anything-related thing that is worrying us when there is a bigger,captivating landscape we can draw our eyes to. The complexity of nature and how simply it can make me forget about my worries is a juxtaposition I want the users experience.
As seen in the picture, the user would be set in the middle of the tent. The user would be able to look outside and see the night stars and then look at the tent from the inside if they do a 180 degree turn. Inside the tent I would have a sleeping bag and some snacks(as seen in the picture, I am obsessed with doritos, coke and oreos as they are the staple cuisine of my camping trips). I also hope to play music in the background that emulates the sounds of nature (crickets chirping, sound of the wind, and the sound of the leaves being hit by the wind). However, given that I haven’t explored the extent to which I can use Unity in order to create such environment, the three main things I want to portray in my environment are: self-discovery, nature, and isolation. I am open to create an environment that does the aforementioned in a more technically feasible way, but I thought that the tent environment was a good starting point.
Blog Update February 18:
After experimenting in Unity, I was able to learn a little about changing the sky, working with the terrain asset, and importing the tent asset. I imported a sky asset that makes it looks like its night and it has a moon on it, which is something that took me a while to accomplish. I also learned about importing the terrain asset, but I am having problems editing it. I wanted to extrude the terrain so I can create mountains, but for some reason my laptop is unresponsive to this command. I am also having problems synchronising my laptop and the Google VR SDK for IOS, but I am hoping to fix this in the time coming.
Blog Update: February 20
As I continued to play around with the terrain, I realized that for my purposes the terrain wasn’t necessary, and I could achieve a similar result using a terrain composed of a cube object. This proved to be extremely fruitful and easier to manipulate and play around with as I added new assets. After creating the terrain and setting the camp site in the middle, I decided to start adding trees around my campsite to create the illusion of nature. As I did this, patterns emerged, and I was able to create clusters of trees and duplicate them to populate the entire terrain faster. I then added extra elements to the campsite to make it more relatable and believable, like tree chunks located in a circular pattern with some axes stuck in them, torches, bushes, and rocks to surround the site.
As a final step, I wanted to fill the viewer’s sight with something as you could steel see the blueprint of the Unity IDE far in the horizon. My original idea was to play with my initial concept a little by creating an enclosing environment surrounding my terrain in order to create a juxtaposition between the openness of the nature that is near you and the enslavement of the box that covers it. However, after realizing that the box surrounding the terrain dims the lighting in a way that prevents the user from seeing the nature and the campsite that surrounds him/her, I decided to populate the horizon with mountains. As a final touch, I added music to the environment to further cement the illusion of nature. The music is composed of a mixture of wind sounds, animal sounds, and dry leaves cracking, which I hope makes a better experience for the user.
Another problem I encounter was to build and run the environment on my iPhone. Xcode couldn’t run the code and it was requiring some form of “provisional file” from my iPhone. As a result, I resorted in running the application on Android, and after installing the necessary software, I was able to make an apk file that can run on any android phone.
As a camper with over 10 years of experience, I can attest that this environment really makes me feel like I am back home in one of my usual camping outings, secluding myself from society and just letting the openness of nature enclose me, revitalize me, and inspire me. I am happy that I was able to create a peaceful environment through my campsite environment, and seeing the beauty of the final result definitely obliterated the copious amounts of stress I accumulated as I made this project.