Author: Shenuka Corea

This project was inspired by one of the cities in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. We wanted to create an environment where the actions of the user on the ground below, would affect the movements and positions of the stars.

Lauren and I started off by making a very simple prototype with a plane and several cubes. We managed to map the x and z positions of the cubes on the ground to a cube in the sky when it was picked up and moved around.

The island environment is built out of a terrain with a grid of several water tiles forming the sea reaching the horizon. We found a unity asset pack with several realistic rocks we could use and a starry skybox that we liked. The stars are spheres with a glowing material attached to it.

Each of the stars has a script attached to it that maps its location to the x and z of the rocks but multiplied, making them further away in the sky and operate on a larger scale. It also adds an acceleration to the star if the player chooses to throw the pebble off the island.

The throwing of the pebble created an unintentional fun feature. Starts often loop the loop into position and it felt like throwing the stars into their positions in the heavenly mantle. We decided to make this a main feature of the experience, rather than just rearranging stones on the island.

We added a particle system to each of the stars that leaves a trail behind it. This added the feature of being able to draw in the sky by moving the stones. We made the particles become smaller, yellower and more transparent with time.

User testing was a lot of fun. Some people stood and twirled around, some lay down on the floor as if they were stargazing and drew in the sky. Users learned pretty quickly to turn their attention towards the sky in the interaction.

We sourced some relaxed but fun and mysterious music from the free music sources on Youtube.

We realized that the experience needs a good ending scene. Something needs to happen after all the stones are thrown. Do they respawn or come back? Does the sun rise and restart the game? does another dramatic event happen?

We settled on creating a particle system that surrounds the player with stars that emerge from the center of the island and hover like fireflies. We made a second script that activated the particle system once all the stones were below a certain point in the y axis (after several different ideas of how to do this, this one worked best. This was to be accompanied by a change in music to something more dramatic. Changing the music proved to be the most tedious task but it eventually worked out!

Several people played the piece and we got some good reactions!

This project is going to be like something out of the Harry Potter universe. It places the recipient in a large, Victorian style greenhouse, in front of a planting station.They are provided with seeds, a watering can and a planting pot. If the user follows what is pretty much expected and plants the seed and waters it they end up growing a giant man eating plant that gets them eaten. Just behind them will be placed a second plant of the same species with a danger sign, an easter egg warning that the user may or may not see.

I envisioned the greenhouse to look like the ones found at the Kew Gardens in London that I visited last summer.

We first set out to find some ready made assets, primarily a greenhouse and the man eating plant. I managed to find a greenhouse that cast some nice shadows and came with a bunch of planting pots and benches. I also managed to find an animated plant with teeth. Getting the animation to loop is something we have yet to figure out. We built the planting area by combining some of the benches that came with the greenhouse.

Then, we began work on the interactions. We brought the player in from one of the example scenes in the Unity VR package. We also brought in a sphere that we will be using as the seed. Adding colliders to the pot and the table allowed us to place the objects on the surface and drop the seed into the pot. Figuring out how to detect the tilt of the watering can to start playing the particle animation of the water took some time but Max was able to figure it out.

I built an expansive terrain around the greenhouse to create a expansive forest. I sprayed the area near the greenhouse with patches of grass and a single species of tree but nothing too extreme or different so That the focus would remain more on the inside. The greenhouse was populated with strange alien plants, trees that reach above the recipient’s head and some close by the use in planters, some of which came with their own animations. The bench forms a visual barrier around the user. These worked wonders for bringing the space to life. Some of them emit clouds of spores, which became quite distracting so I ended up removing them.

To add another ‘alternate’ element to the world we added a creature, a giant butterfly in the sky. The butterfly makes the outside seem an even more daunting space than the inside.

We added some gardening equipment into the space the the recipient can pick up and play around with as well. I think it may make a fun ending to the game if the user was to pick up one of these and fight off the monster plant.

The growing of the flytrap is triggered to happen when both the soil and the water have contact with the seed for a certain amount of time. This took several hours to figure out how to do. The plant, which is already in the pot but extremely small in size grows larger and animates, lunging at the viewer.

Finally, we decided to add some ambient and 3D sound.
We found a bunch of sounds on freesound.com. The sound of a tropical rain forest plays around the recipient as the plant in the cage behind them emanates, low, rumbling growls.

For my first project I wanted to create an environment where the experiencer would feel imprisoned. Instead of focusing on the prison itself I wanted to create the feeling of entrapment by creating the sense of a vibrant and flourishing world outside.

This is an alternate reality where the experience is held at arms length from the world. Able to see the briefest glimpses of light and life while unable to see them clearly or experience them completely.

The prison itself resembles a cocoon or a nest with a smooth, curved surface. The walls are of smooth concrete and impossible to climb. The curved surface is also what makes it impossible to get out of like the inside of a pitcher plant.

Through an opening far overhead the experiencer can see a sliver of sky and some overhanging branches. Some vines spill over the edge and dust dances in the sunlight. Shadows of birds flitter across the opening. The experiencer can also hear creaking branches, twittering birds and rustling leaves, but muffled and in the distance.

I built the main structure in Maya, a 3D modeling software I am familiar with. It took two tries to get it right. The first one I made looked strange when I imported it into unity and placed the camera inside it. I ended up going for a simple shape, taking a sphere, elongating it, deleting some surfaces and extruding the sides.

Importing the .fbx file of the object into Unity, I placed the camera inside it, facing upwards. I imported assets from the Nature Starter Kit 2 to play around with the vegetation.

I placed the vegetation based on how it would look from inside the trap. Looking at it from the outside is pretty strange since some of them are floating in mid air.

I found a free skybox seires from Avionix that had a wide variety of skies to choose from. I decided it was a little strange to have clouds that weren’t moving so I decided to go for one that just had a gradient and some lighting as if dawn was just breaking. Perhaps this could create the feeling that the user just woke up in this strange trap? I may hunt for some animated skyboxes as well, however.

I added a concrete texture to the main object using an image I found.

The main components of the environment are ready! My next steps would be to experiment with lighting and perhaps add a sun object overhead. I would also like to add some sound and movement to the environment. It also remains to test the environment out with Google Cardboard.

Searching through the asset store, I managed to find a bunch more assets that I could use to make the environment more lively and make the contrast between the vibrant outside world and the dingy space inside more apparent.

I found an animated prefab of a moving sky to create the feeling of the passing of time. I found another useful asset that took the form of animated beams of light that shine into the space from time to time. I introduced a little, animated butterfly, hovering in the bushes. I also introduced a little bird flying overhead. The bird was a little harder to add since the asset did not have an animation attached to it. I had to attach the animation to the model of the bird and create a script that would keep the bird looping in a circle. It appears over the mouth of the trap for the briefest of moments before it continues on it’s loop, allowing just the right amount of a delay before it appears again.

Here is the script I used to make the bird fly around in a circle:

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>using System.Collections;<br>
using System.Collections.Generic;<br>
using UnityEngine;</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>public class Oscillator : MonoBehaviour<br>
{<br>
    float timecounter = 0;<br>
    float speed;<br>
    float width;<br>
    float height;<br>
    // Start is called before the first frame update<br>
    void Start()<br>
    {<br>
        speed = 1;<br>
        height = 10;<br>
        width = 5;<br>
    }</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

// Update is called once per frame
void Update()
{
    timecounter += Time.deltaTime*speed;

    float x = Mathf.Cos (timecounter)*width;
    float y = 2;
    float z = Mathf.Sin(timecounter)*height;

    transform.position = new Vector3(x, y, z);

}
}

Finally, I worked further on lighting, changing the skybox and adding other light sources. I wanted it to be sufficiently dark inside, in contrast to the brightness outside. The extra light sources I added cast interesting shadows through the leaves on the inside surface of the space.

Finally, I added some audio to have the sound of distant birds constantly playing in the space.

Here is a link to the final product…. enjoy!