1. Project Description
When I started brainstorming ideas about the environment I would create for Project 1, I realized that I wanted to make something realistic-looking but with a hint of enhancement. I had recently watched the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and was very amazed with its scenography. The scenes were beautifully set and very atmospheric, and I decided that I would like to recreate a scene inspired by the movie. A vision that I had in mind from the very beginning was a late 1960s Hollywood street with palm trees surrounding the street from both sides, retro cars on the road, some diners and motels on the sides and an endless desert in the background during a beautiful pink-toned sunset. The identity that I was striving for is dreamy, tranquil and deserted. In the finished project the camera’s point of view is in the middle of a street that stretches far into the desert. Palm trees densely surround the street from both sides. There are no cars or buildings, thus enhancing the deserted mood of my environment. Emphasis is put on the sunset, its lighting and colors.
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2. Process and Implementation
The process of creating this project started with looking for suitable assets for my environment. The road was an integral part of my scene, therefore I spent some time looking for the most realistic-looking road asset. Instead of having a ready-made road I found an asset that allows to draw a road on a terrain, thus being able to change its width and curvature. After struggling for a bit with making this asset work, I eventually tried out many different shapes of the road to see which one encompassed the feel of my identity the most. I placed the camera in the middle of the road to maximize the view on the surroundings. I created a vast desert on the sides of the road by using the terrain tool in Unity and applying a sand texture to it. I then placed palm trees alongside the road, alternating different types of trees to make them look more natural. The trickiest part of the project was creating the lighting and colors of a sunset. This was the part where I wanted to go for a more unrealistic feel and have very bright sunset colors that look more enhanced than during a real-life sunset. I found a skybox which I liked conceptually (the angle of the setting sun and the clouds), however, I wasn’t convinced with the colors and I wanted to change them. After meeting with Sarah, I learned that I could change the coloring of the skybox in Photoshop, thus I experimented quite a lot with the color palette that I wanted the sunset sky to have. I especially emphasized the pink and the purple colors. After changing the colors of the skybox I also experimented with the environmental lighting in the scene and added two directional lights. One of them is placed closer to the end of the road that is nearer to the sun and that directional light is a yellowish white color. I chose that color because during a sunset there is sometimes a ray of the last sunlight peeking through the clouds and illuminating the ground. I wanted to recreate that feeling by placing a directional light and illuminating the road for one last bit, as well as casting a shadow on the road coming from the palm trees. The other directional light acts from the opposite side of the road and is a darker color – a pink. This light emphasizes the pink ambience of the scene and makes the other side of the sunset look a bit darker. The environmental lighting is also pink to emphasize the pink feeling coming from the atmospheric clouds.
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I think that playing with the colors and enhancing them made my world into an alternate world, as it was the only more unrealistic aspect. I wanted to create an environment where one could feel like they can escape to a dreamy sunset and experience colors that they haven’t seen in the real world. Also, the road is eerily empty which only happens in very remote areas. I think this also adds a layer to my alternate reality because usually there is more traffic on roads, therefore my world suggests a more deserted feeling.
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The composition of the areas in view was carefully chosen to represent a real-life scene of a road that is situated in the middle of a desert with palm trees on the side. I wanted the user to feel like there is really nothing else in the scene except for the road and the desert on the sides. However, the colors of the sunset are captivating enough to make the user not feel scared but rather calm and peaceful.
3. Reflection/Evaluation
I think that the implementation reflects my intended identity, and when being in my environment I feel similarly as what I had imagined while brainstorming ideas in the beginning. What helps my environment to achieve the identity goal is that my environment is located in the middle of the desert with no other living beings or objects around, therefore creating a deserted feeling. The colors of the setting sun hopefully cause the user to feel a tranquil and dreamy feeling and I associate these colors and clouds with something peaceful and safe. Compared to the initial storyboards of my environment, the end result is quite similar, however, not completely the same, as I didn’t include some of the envisioned assets like retro cars and buildings. At first, I had imagined the scene to be filled with more objects, but I was also thinking a lot in terms of the mood and feeling that one would feel while being in my environment. I wanted the mood to be mainly created and emphasized by the sunset, the desert, the road and the palm trees, thus I think that I managed to achieve the mood I was aiming for in my end result.
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Lastly, the medium that we worked in was advantageous because Unity allowed to easily manipulate objects in the scene – change their position, change their size, change their color, etc. Therefore, many different versions of the same thing could be created to see which one fits and looks the best. However, in my case, the end result was a build for the computer screen, therefore, it didn’t feel quite realistic when looking at it because there was a notable separation between the environment and the person interacting with it. I would like to also build my project for either Google Cardboard or a VR headset to see whether the environment feels more capturing in that medium.