It is very difficult for me to focus, especially when I’m trying to sleep. Listening to music certainly helps block out darting thoughts, but I wanted to create a visual space that I could focus on before going to bed. Thus, I wanted this space to be peaceful, minimalist, and beautiful.
Inspired by the place I grew up in, I wanted to create some sort of dream forest that felt very natural even if it had some mystical elements. To me, a forest environment conveys solitude, peace, and has no extraneous elements that could be a distraction, helping the viewer to be more immersed in the environment. One of my favorite things is looking up at trees and seeing the criss-crossed layers of branches against the sky. Thus, I was particularly excited to create a forest in VR because the viewer would be able to look across the forest, but also up at the tree branches. Thus, I began by creating the forest using a mixture of free tree assets. I ended up removing the leaves of the trees because though they contributed to a feeling of peace, the leaves went against the meditative aesthetic I was trying to convey. Perhaps because the leaves prevented the extent to which the viewer could see in every direction which I felt was a crucial element to creating a sense of reflection. The most challenging part of creating the forest was determining the optimal density of the trees. Too little and the environment felt unnatural and bare. Too much and the viewer could not see into the distance. Something I didn’t take into account was how much space the viewer needed, so I originally placed the player camera in the center of the forest, not changing anything for the viewer. This made the environment feel chaotic and cluttered, which was the opposite of what I aimed for. I ended up creating a clearing in the trees in the space around the player camera so that the environment felt more personalized to the viewer and that they’d have more room to breathe.
Once the basic form was created, I could focus on the little details that would create the identity of dream-like peace. I began with changing the skybox to put in a night sky. I felt that a darker environment would be more dream-like and conducive to using the environment before sleeping. However, the dark skies with the barren trees gave the ambience of something dark and sinister rather than calming and beautiful. Thus, I knew I needed to add some elements that would make it dream-like, conveying the sense of being in an alternate reality rather than just any forest at night. I added blue fog which added a tinge of magic, but also aerial perspective for the trees in the distance. I added a moonray which gave the forest a white glow that made it feel more peaceful. I played around with several elements like a pond, mushrooms, mist, swaying flowers, flying birds, but ended up choosing floating orbs of light and a gentle wave. I wanted something with soft, regular motion like breathing or rocking a baby to sleep. I chose to create a wave that flowed through the entire forest because of the sense of peace it gave me and the supernatural ambience it added. I played around with the wave so that it would barely be there and then appear when fading in. For the orbs of light, I created a particle system and adjusted its properties so that the orbs would be a rose gold color to balance the cool tones of the forest. Additionally, I changed the size of the particles and the radius of the system so that the orbs would float up from the whole forest which the viewer could see if they looked upwards. I wanted the orbs of light to balance the darkness of the forest and to be something calming that also invited a sense of awe. Finally, I added soft music with the sounds of waves to reiterate the peacefulness of the environment.
I am quite happy with the results, though a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get it to work with the Google Cardboard. For some reason, every time I would build the project with the Google VR Player prefab, my computer would crash and Unity would automatically quit. I did get it to build successfully once, but in the build version I couldn’t seem to move which was surprising because it worked perfectly fine when running it in Unity. But, I suppose this is okay as I have plenty of time to figure out how to make it work. I actually pulled the environment open once last night when I was feeling stressed and it did calm me down a bit, though that could merely be a placebo effect as a result of my bias towards my personal environment. It would be nice to play test it and see how others respond to the environment and adjust my design from there. One thing I want to play around with is creating a script that changes the skybox depending on the time of the day for the viewer. This is something I want to play around with rather than definitively do because I’m not sure how the barren trees would look during the day. Overall, I’m happy that I got better at ambient lighting and creating particle systems in Unity which will very helpful for future projects. One thing I learned through this project is how much these little details contribute to the identity of the environment. I originally intended to create a dark forest like the Forbidden Forest in Harry Potter and ended up with a dream-like identity just through a few simple elements.
Link to build: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_yssadg1_JHMBkA9gciECKkH8AFv1Ikc
Link to project folder: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aKHo-y6Jyy-8rRRMqRCYTvH2BMCCXRO5
Link to class presentation slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iZphCYgfIraWx_qzIPrnPdoGto7hJEd31g_X83OTU0w/edit?usp=sharing