Description
Despite the fact that the world is ever-increasingly connected, I feel increasingly lonely and small amidst all the chaotic events taking place all over the globe. The imminence of global warming, of global wars, of global inequalities… threatens to put an end to our civilization, to wipe away the existence of everything on the small rock we called Earth. Not everyone is yet to realize that our existence is so small that it does not even outlast a blink of an eye compared to the scope of the universe, of space and time. Does everything that happens here on Earth matter?
Adopting this rather bleak outlook on our existence on Earth, I created an alternative reality experience in which the last human being stands on the surface of the moon, looking back to an explosion-stricken Earth, surrounded by nothing but lunar’s deserted terrains and relics of human’s lunar exploration. Throughout the experience, I wanted to emphasize the smallness and the emptiness that one feels when presented in such an environment, and that maybe it can make an influence on how we see our fragile existence on Earth.
Process and Implementation
Regarding the design aesthetics of the environment, I chose to stay as faithful as possible to people’s perception of the moon through realistic rendering of its surface and terrain albeit with a surreal element of an explosion-stricken Earth. By combining the two ends of realistic-ness, I hope to create an experience that is almost real, but not quite, something that has the possibility to happen in our current understanding of reality, perhaps in the far, dark future.
It was clear from early on that the “front” of the scene (where the viewers can see the Earth) will be mostly flat, dotted with some relics of previous lunar exploration (a lander and a flag). The terrain transitions to a more rocky, mountainous region that wraps around the viewer’s position towards the “back” of the scene, raising higher and almost touching the sun on the sky, which heightens the insignificant existence of the viewer even more.
The lunar terrain was built with the Terrain tool in Unity by using a normal map of the moon as well as the tool’s multiple terrain brushes. Cement was used for the material of the moon surface, and it suited perfectly.
In the front view, lunar exploration’s relics (a lander and a flag) can be seen. If the enormous distance between the Earth and the moon creates a spatial separation between the person and the rest of the human race, these space relics added a second layer of human separation to the piece: temporal separation. The only other times when there were other people sharing such an abandoned place and such an isolated feeling was back in the 60s-70s during the Apollo program. The person is lonely, both in space and in time.
Compared to the first sketch, there were some changes to the scene. First of all, the position of the sun was pushed to the “back” of the scene so that it could illuminate the “front”. If it had been at the “front”, it would have cast shadows on the flag and lander, making them impossible to be seen clearly.
Also, I originally envisioned the Earth to be slowly disintegrating into pieces, instead of smaller explosions on the surface as in the final product. Such slowly disintegrating Earth would have a stronger impact on the physicality of the scene by providing viewers with a nearly-frozen capture of the Earth in its most vulnerable form. By not showing the direct cause that makes Earth disintegrate, I hoped to ignite a sense of mysteriousness and unsettling.
However, after toying around with the Dissolve shader, I realized that I had to switch every other object’s shader to Lightweight Pipeline as well, and when doing that, a lot of them did not retain the original materials. That’s why I ended up using the particle systems to create smaller explosions on the surface of the Earth in hope of achieving the same effect of showing the viewers how small and fragile our existence on Earth is and that maybe we should embrace and appreciate it more.
Reflection and Evaluation
Overall, I am moderately satisfied with the environment albeit a failure to produce a more enticing/dramatic disintegrating Earth. Also, while there was a failure to produce a sky filled with stars and asteroids flying around (the procedural sun skybox did not allow me to add another 6-sided skybox filled with stars), I think it would not have added much to the experience as a whole. The fact that the sky is desolate, except for the ever-present Sun and the dying Earth, amplifies the emptiness of the environment.
The drastic disparity between the expanse deserted environment on the moon and the tiny size of the Earth, and everything that belongs to it, highlights how insignificant our existence is, not only for the lone person stands on the moon, but also for our entire human race. Such size disparity is nicely represented with the help of virtual reality where viewers are not limited to a flat and fixed 2D view but a free 360-degree experience.