Project Description
A Walk in the Forest is an immersive, 360 experience created in Unity. The experience takes the user into a temperate forest on a cloudy day at sundown. The project is stationary, allowing the user to look around from a position at the bank of a lake, with two bodies of land connected by a wooden bridge across the lake. The experience also utilizes sound to make the environment more immersive, with sounds of light wind, water lapping against the shore and noises of birds and insects. A Walk in the Forest is an attempt to make a realistic forest environment in Unity, using the terrain tool and various assets to provide great detail to the user’s surroundings.
Brainstorming
The inspiration behind this project was the city that I grew up in, Baguio City, in the Philippines. The city is located nearly a mile above sea level and is characterized by its tall pines and cool weather. My affinity to forests served as the primary inspiration for this project. Another inspiration for the project came from my experiences in Europe during J-Term, walking in forested areas and parks in Germany. This served s inspiration for this project because I had not experienced a proper winter climate prior to this, and found the empty winter forests beautiful.
I have always appreciated how forests have made me feel, and I often found it relaxing to walk in the forest when I need to relax or reflect. Because of this, I was inspired to push myself to create a VR experience that was as close to a real-life experience as possible. I wanted the environment to be relaxing but also have a certain distance from the user, as if the forest had its own indifferent aura, with its ebbs and flows not being impacted by the viewer. I have always found this indifference of nature relaxing, as the environment would remain the same regardless of my current mood and thoughts. I have also always enjoyed being around rivers and lakes, with their constant movement and rhythm being similar to the indifference of nature I wrote about above.
I started off by creating a map of an aerial view of what I thought this could look like. I decided to add the bridge to make this environment more approachable, and later a bench placed close to the camera. These decisions were made in a deliberate attempt to make the environment more approachable, as if a part of a longer walk taken by the user in this experience. Below are also two sketches of that I thought the views would look like.
Process
With Sarah’s advice, I started familiarizing myself with the terrain tool to create the landscape. This was fairly easy to do, but the difficult part was making the terrain look realistic. I was not sure what paint textures to use to make it realistic, and was unsure about what combinations of dirt, gravel and grass would allow me to do this. The other issue was the trees I would use. I was able to find an asset pack that allowed me to edit trees and their number of branches, leaves, etc. but I found it difficult to achieve the effect of the barren, leafless forest I envisioned because the trees started to all look very similar to one another. I decided to change the trees to tall conifers instead. I also decided to place the camera at the bank of the river, and a trail leading uphill from where it is. This was deliberate to make it seem like the user had walked down the path to where they are standing by the bank of the river.
I used many assets apart from the trees, using rocks, tree stumps and fallen trees and a bench to make the environment as realistic as possible. I created the bridge through wooden planks using cube game objects.
Lastly, I wanted to make the scene slightly dim, to accomplish the effect of it taking place on a cloudy day. I used post processing to add ambient occlusion and color filters, which did allow me to accomplish the effect of a darker, cloudy day. I also used a particle system to add some light fog, and also found a skybox for a setting sun on a cloudy day.
I wanted to build the project to my Android phone for viewing in the Google Cardboard, but unfortunately, the scene was split in half when it would play on my phone. After trying to change the orientation in the build settings, nothing would change the split in the screen.
Screenshots from the scene:
Final Reflections:
Overall, I am happy with the project but I am still bothered by me wishing I could make the scene look more like a forest in real-life. For the following projects I want to look into how I can accomplish more realistic graphics using all the tools in Unity. I still have no idea what I will do for these projects but I realized how powerful Unity is and how much more I can do to the environments to make them truly immersive and engaging.
I really enjoyed this project because it made me think about how I arrange objects in scenes with purpose to contribute to an engaging experience. Although I still have a lot to learn, thinking about why I would place things in a location deeper than what my intuition would tell me was a challenge and a valuable experience.