Category: Development Journal S20

12/02/2020

For the first project I want to put emphasis on the mood and ambience of my environment. I was inspired by the scenography of the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It is set in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, the so-called final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In the movie, the streets are filled with retro cars and palm trees on the side. Buildings such as diners, motels and restaurants are illuminated with colorful neon luminescent signs. I was especially drawn to the scenes that are set in the evening or at night, as they have a very particular feel and atmosphere.

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I then started looking for picture references and more inspiration for my own environment. I was looking at references from 1960s/1970s Los Angeles as well as modern day Cuba (as it is very much the same as in the 1960s). The images that spoke to me the most were the ones in sunset and I especially liked the colors of the sky and the clouds. Although in the beginning I was convinced that I would try to recreate a very realistic environment, I then realized that I would rather make something more dreamy and unrealistic. I decided that I would emphasize some aspects of a sunset such as lighting and colors so that it looks more vibrant and mesmerizing than in real life.

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Sunset in one of the favorite parts of my day and I enjoy taking some time to appreciate it whenever possible. Although I have seen some very beautiful and colorful sunsets, the overall ambience is almost never as intense and rich as in edited and enhanced pictures. Therefore, in my environment I will really emphasize the pink and purple tones in the sky and the clouds. The surroundings will be in line with the atmosphere of the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The person will be standing in the middle of the road and will be looking at retro cars along the road, ocean in the distance, palm trees on both sides of the road and if possible – some buildings such as a diner or a motel with a neon sign by the road. The clouds will be pink and purple and the light will illuminate the road as well as the vast desert on the sides of the road.

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Here is the moodboard for my project with pictures that inspired me:

Here are the sketches of the assets:

Here is the storyboad:

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16/02/2020 UPDATE

Since starting to work on my project in Unity, I set myself the main goal of trying to get the overall environment as close as possible to what I had imagined and then concentrate on details. Therefore, I started by creating a desert which would be surrounding the road on both sides and would stretch until the horizon. For the desert, I created a plane and found a suitable texture that looked like sand which I applied to the plane. I then tried to figure out how to make a road in Unity and found a useful asset called “EasyRoads3D”. I watched and read through several tutorials on how to use this asset, however, unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work, as the roads would not appear in my game scene. I am still unsure about the reason for this issue and will talk to professor Sarah in class on Monday, February 17 about how to solve this.

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Besides trying to make a road, I started working on the lighting of my environment. It turned out to be quite challenging to achieve the pinkish dreamy ambience that I had imagined. Instead of being dreamy my attempts looked harshly pink and too unnatural (although I want the colors to be amplified, I also want to keep a sense of reality). I therefore added a sunset sky and pink lighting which reflects well on the sand and makes it look pink. I also added some palm trees in my scene and really liked how the pink light reflected on the palm trees, thus I am curious to see how the scene looks when I manage to add the road. I am hoping that it might look quite subtle as the road will naturally be dark and therefore absorb most of the pink light.

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For the upcoming days, I need to first figure out how to properly use the “EasyRoads3D” asset and make a road. Then I need to place palm trees along the road and either find a car asset or try to make one myself, as I still haven’t started doing that. I realized that having cars is not the most integral part of my environment, therefore I will leave that to the end and first concentrate on getting all the other components such as the desert, the road, the lighting and the palm trees right.

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18/02/2020 UPDATE

Since the last update I managed to figure out how to use the “EasyRoads3D” asset. The reason why it was previously not working was because I tried to add the road on a plane instead of a terrain which it is meant to be used on. Therefore, I changed the plane to a terrain and created a curvy road. I also managed to add a sand texture to the terrain which I could not figure out at first.

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Then I planted palm trees consistently along the road, alternating different styles of trees but mostly sticking to the most classic looking. After all the main assets were present in the scene I returned back to experimenting with lighting and trying to make it look more like I had envisioned and represented in my moodboard. However, it still wasn’t what I had imagined, thus, I scheduled a meeting with Sarah and went over some useful tips that could be done to change the overall lighting and color of the environment. I was very happy to find out that it is possible to change the coloring of a skybox in Photoshop because that helped me to achieve what I wanted. I used the same sunset skybox asset that I had previously found and changed the color balance, exposure, vibrance and brightness settings to match the skybox to the sky I had imagined.

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Lastly, I also experimented with the directional lights in the scene. I found that they work the best from the different lighting types available in Unity. I ended up using two directional lights and I placed one of them closer to the edge of the terrain on the lightest side of the sky. Because the sunset skybox that I am using already has a lighter side which looks like the sun is setting there, I decided to maximize that effect and emphasize the illusion of light falling from that direction. Therefore, the shadows from the palm trees fall in the “correct” direction and the scene looks more natural. The other directional light is pink and comes from the opposite side than the first directional light, therefore, creating an illusion of a pink reflection on the opposite side of the trees. Therefore, the other side of the road where the sun is not setting is much darker and more purple. I also tried baking the lighting, however, my computer’s processing power was not enough to be able to do it and after 6 hours of waiting I gave up, as it was still showing an estimated time of 20 hours.

Inspired by synthwave/vaporwave art and music styles, I decided to bring the pictured retro-futuristic landscapes from 2D into 3D. The common themes among most of these synthwave landscapes include forward-moving perspective, vibrant sun on the horizon, wireframed terrain, and neon gradients. The compositions tend to evoke a retro/nostalgic feeling often associated with synthwave; some might describe the feeling as akin to “riding into the sunset in a DeLorean.”

However, these landscapes limited to 2D representations; we do not get a 360-degree view of the entire environment. Thus, I hope to create an interpretation of a synthwave environment in 3D. Key goals I wish to accomplish include making the environment behind the viewer — facing away from the sun — interesting in some way as to promote more active head-turning, as well as creating a more dynamic environment with subtle movements (i.e.: swaying palm trees). In addition, I hope to incorporate synthwave/vaporwave music, likely as ambient sound. Lastly, I hope to add some personal touches to the environment that expand on the ideas and feelings surrounding the composition while staying true to the retro-futuristic vibe of the environment.

UPDATE 2/15/2020 6:13AM

Working draft of the basic synthwave environment is more or less finished.

Features:

• Neon grid
• Subtle (mobile-friendly) bloom
• Distant mountains
• Massive flat sun
• Dope color scheme

Findings:

• Chromatic aberration seems to be already-present in the Cardboard (visual artifact or intentional? Either way, it works in my favor)

UPDATE 2/16/2020 3:13AM

Managed to obtain an Android to live-test the environment.

New features:

• Grid now moves
• Added statue as audio source + fitting music

Fixes:

• Tweaked colors to compensate for mobile screens
• Adjusted skybox rotation for better aesthetics

12 FEB

I was inspired by a traditional myth and would like to create a myth world with fantasy. The myth story is about the river god who provides a multiple choice for a boy to test his honesty. The boy is a carpenter and he lost his axe in the river. Then the river god showed up with a golden axe and asked him if that is his. But the boy answered no. The river god then took out another axe which is a silver one and asked him again. But the boy still said no. At last, the river god took out the original axe and returned it to the boy. In addition, to reward his honesty, he also gave the boy the other two golden and silver axes. Initially, I would like to design my own three choices and by choosing different options, the scene will change as the story goes in different ways. But considering the focus of this first project and the feedback from the professor, I decided to only keep my first scene at this moment. So I would like the character to picture himself/herself in a story and myth, which can raise his/her curiosity to explore in some sense and create a feeling of alternate reality.

Different from the original story, my main character here is lost in a magic place and he/she wants to find ways back home. The river god will show up and give the three options at a time. It’s not testing the honesty anymore but can possibly help or hinder the main character going back. To start with, I have some online pictures about the river as reference, since my story is going to happen near water. I don’t want it to be too bright and cute but maybe focus more on the feeling of mysterious.

Aside from that, I created a simple storyboard to illustrate the positions of my main objects in the scene, which includes the god, the three options (three flowers in this case) and water. I originally have four scene in total and this is just the first one, so it’s very simple but also direct. But I will definitely add more stuff like more lands or creatures in the water. 

For the possible difficulty I may come cross, I think one of the biggest one is how to create a god, because I don’t want it to be too realistic and hopefully it should echo with the style of the whole environment. 

13 FEB

I firstly created the terrain and built the water surface with online assets. The water material is dynamic, and I adjusted the parameters to make it match my desired style better. I pick a spot for the main camera which is a small piece of land separate from others, by which I would like to create a sense of isolation for the person who is going to look around from that spot.

Then I started to plant trees on the lands. I initially planed to have trees all over the islands. But it seemed that it would take too much laptop power and time. So I randomly create some different plants, mostly at the side the camera will directly face. To create a spacious view with spatiality, I tried to make the plants relatively small than the landscape and also played around the field view of the camera a lot. However with a larger field view, there will be more easily  distorted view at the corner when rotating the camera. So I changed back the camera view to normal. One more detail about the plants is the contradiction between the two islands, where one is full of withered plants while the other is more vividly growing. It’s one more setting I made aimed to make the world feel tricky and abnormal. 

 To increase the sense of immersive, I tried to fill up the space in the  field view. For the sky part, I wanted to add some clouds. I made the 3D model of the group of clouds in Rhino and then imported them into Unity. And I decided to apply water material to them as well. In this case, the floating clouds can also be viewed as bubbles, which can indicate the unrealistic and alternate part of the environment. And it also raised the question that whether it is on a lake/sea or in an underwater world. I duplicated a couple of clouds to make them surround the whole piece.

In terms of the creating river god (in this case water god may be more precise), I also imported a model I made in Rhino. It is a human face in low poly and I still apply the water material to match his identity. Since it is boring if it’s static, I modified the material a little bit to separate parts of his face and they are also dynamic, which again match his identity as a floatable and abstract god figure. Besides, I made this face super big compared with other elements, so that he can be emphasized in the whole scene and it also indicates the god power is beyond imagination.

18 FEB

As for the skybox, I meant to make the surrounding dark with the only strong light behind the god face. Instead of a harmless fairy tale, I want to present the mystery with uncertainty that there could be potential dangers or tricks when the user is exploring this world.

I also need to create three options that the god provides. Basically I picked the tree branch model and applied three different materials. I also added emission to make themselves glow a little bit. To further highlight them, I made three glowing water spheres to wrap them. To decide the position of these three spheres took me a while. At first I placed them in front of the god in a row, but later I found it would cover part of the god and look loose in the scene. So I then placed them surrounding the camera in three directions. In this case, when the camera rotates, there can always be a main object, the tree branch, in the field view. It indicated the current situation and I believe can raise some curiosity.

19 FEB

Since my water is very dynamically floating, so I think adding some audio can help strengthen the immersive feeling. So I added some peaceful water floating sound here.

At last, I manipulated the directional light mainly to make the environment dark but some building details still visible.

1. Idea Development:

My first idea of the project was inspired by one of my favorite movies since childhood “Alice in Wonderland.” I planned to recreate different scenes in the movie with a focus on landscape, lighting, interactions, and movements.

For example, by eating the mushrooms in one scene, the person can experience a change of scale.

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I sketched out different scenes I wanted to include in the project as indicated in the image attached below.

However, it would be extremely difficult for me to include all such details and interactions in my first project. After hearing suggestions and feedback from Professor Krom and other students, I reconsidered the feasibility of the project and decided to focus on one scene I want to create from the movie.

The concept I want to focus on is fear and mystery. Hence, I choose the scene where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat. I name the project “Wonderland Syndrome” as I want to evoke a feeling of confusion, fear,  and impossible to escape just like a syndrome for anyone who experiences it. The overall scene would be dark with the only source of light coming from the moon and a few fireflies. There is only a dead tree standing near the canyon, reaching the moon on the sky. This will create a sense of loneliness and desperation. On a branch of the tree, we will find the Cheshire Cat sitting there with its signature scary smile. There is only one straight (or curvy, I haven’t decided yet) road in the whole scene that leads to nowhere. Please find the new sketch below.

I also have another idea for my first project, which is completely not related to the first idea. For this new idea, I want to recreate our NYUAD campus scene but with giant campus cats (with different postures). The idea came when I was walking back from D2 and saw different cats laying down or chasing each other around in the space in front of D2. However, I am not sure if this is a good idea for this first project and if it is possible to find the assets for the project. So any suggestion on this would be appreciated!

2. Project Implementation:

I started laying out my virtual space in Unity. I put the mountains and the dead tree in the scene. I am still struggling with adding the light source for the moon, looking for additional assets, and envisioning the whole idea in the 3D space.

UPDATE 16/2/2020, 9:29 pm

I finished the basic layout for my virtual space. From Professor Krom’s suggestion, I put multiple cubes of different lengths with decreasing size towards two ends of the path to create a sense of infinity. I also fixed the camera rig to match up with the scale of the mountains and trees (instead of putting y = 2, I put y = 4).

To be added/fixed: Cheshire cat, the lighting of the moon, the color/lighting of the sky, music (if possible)

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UPDATE 17/2/2020, 7:41 pm

The idea of my current seemed to diverge from my original idea of the scene where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat. Instead, I tried to create the two different vibes along the path separated by two posts: one [1] side reflects a safer sense, the other [2] reflects the opposite with a deadly sense. In order to do that, I changed the lighting of the scene where the [1] side is much brighter than the [2] side. Also, the [1] has dense forests with a greenish platform, and the trees start to sparsely populated towards the [2] side and the green color of the platform and the trees also start darkening.

To be added/fixed: the spotlight in the [2] side, light emission from the 2 posts, and sound of strong wind (if possible)

UPDATE 18/2/2020, 8:19 pm

After meeting with Professor Sarah Krom, I decided to fix my scene a little bit. The first change is the lighting. I decided to decrease the intensity of the main light source since it did not quite fit with the night. I removed the two posts since they were not really relevant in the picture. Instead, I added two tombs from the asset package, gave them some blue light to evoke a sense of mystery and fear. I also added mountains far away to suggest the feeling of remoteness and emptiness. I added some rocks along the path to make it less flat than it was before.

On the other side of the road, I added some rocks with grass on them. I also lit up the fireflies so it evokes a sense of brightness and peace matching with the stars on the sky.

In general, I tried to make both sides of the path opposite in the sense and the feeling. To be added/fixed: sound of wind

UPDATE 18/2/2020, 10:22 pm

Sound of wind added. Project submitted.

I went to Ethiopia for jTerm, and my friend and I went stargazing on the last day of our trip. And when I read about the first assignment I remembered about that night and wanted to make something similar. After that I started brainstorming and I only had one goal set in mind, creating very peaceful and dreamy environment that would make others feel very comfortable and relaxed. There were several elements that I wanted to use, but the main ones were stars. Afterwards, I decided to test google cardboard and feel the vibe of 360 degrees environment. One of the examples was a very peaceful place with stars and different colors. After checking google cardboards I decided to make a very peaceful environment, which is going to take a place somewhere in the dessert at night with a lot of stars.  

Update 1:

After brainstorming I started looking for skybox from the assets store, luckily I found very good one which was free, after adding a skybox I started working on building a terrain. I found a youtube tutorial, which was very helpful with getting started using a terrain tool. Here is the link for youtube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWQv2Bagwgk  For now, I am kind of struggling with using a camera and lighting, but I feel like after adding more terrain, I should be fine with positioning the camera.

Update 2:

I have continued working on my project, and started adding more terrains and editing them. I was playing around with terrain tools, specifically to sculpt, paint and detail terrain within the unity editor. I also created some terrain layers, where I added some different textures. After adding some more terrains, I decided to add some trees. I downloaded palm trees from assets store, and started adding them into my terrain. The reason I decided to add some palm trees, is that from the beginning I was going for the vibe that can be similar to or completely different to the real world. Unexpectedly positioning and changing size of palm trees, took a lot of time, since I was adding one to two palm trees on each of the terrains, and was playing around with different sizes. Beside building a terrain and adding palm trees, I decided to start working on the lighting, it actually turned out to be challenging, since I wanted one side of the terrain to look darker than the other.

Update 3:

I continued working on terrain. I also post process layer, in which I used bloom, depth of field and chromatic aberration effects. The effect completely changed the vibe of the environment, luckily in a good way. I also added the sound that I have mixed, using different inner body sounds in LogicPro software.

[Update] Tuesday, Feb 18, 2020

[Update] Sunday, Feb 16, 2020

Wednesday, Feb 12, 2020

I want to be alone; on the moon, with nobody else; maybe with an abandoned rover that lost contact with Earth a couple of years ago; maybe with a forgotten flag that was erected a century ago to mark the long-gone existence of another human being here. The chill sensation that gushes through my body as I look around the serene and desolate vastland of the moon. The sun millions of miles away look so small, barely shining the dimly gray surface of the moon. There is almost no atmosphere, the sky is a black patch of ink, dotted with lone stars light-years away. I want to immerse in that environment, I want to feel small, to feel lonely, to feel empty.

Looking up, the Earth is exploding into bits, or rather disintegrating, so slowly as if it was shot in slow-motion. What would it feel like to see our home not only from such an enormous distance but also when it is doomed? What would it feel like being the last man to survive? I want to seek answers to those questions.

Some ideas as to how this can be translated into a Unity experience:

• I should probably toy around with the skybox to recreate the sun: small, distant, weak. Also, the atmosphere is almost non-existent. The lighting should be parallel, but there shouldn’t be light scatter (which makes the sky blue here on Earth), the sky should be black

• As discussed in class, I should also toy with the terrain tool to recreate the craters-filled surface of the moon. Maybe to create some mountains as well?
• I want the Earth to be slowly disintegrating, in a slow-motion manner. I don’t want to animate the explosion itself, because then I would somehow have to focus viewer’s attention to the Earth and watch the explosion process. I want the viewer to feel free to look around, and if they look up, they will see the Earth’s bits already slowly floating away from one another

For this first project, the identity that I have decided to build upon is one that is peaceful, serene, and mysterious.

I decided on this identity as I was looking at different video games for inspiration on the type of alternate reality I would like to create. After much browsing, I came upon The Long Dark and was instantly drawn by the game’s vast, snowy landscapes. As I was looking through various screenshots of the game, I realized I wanted to capture the tranquility and peacefulness it portrayed so beautifully.

The Long Dark – Inspiration Images

After deciding on the peaceful identity, I delved into having a stronger sense of what I actually wanted to portray (would it be a snowy forest? a frozen lake? an abandoned campsite?). This was the first moodboard I created:

After doing this initial moodboard, I realized that I wanted to create a landscape that had more personality, and that was not just a forest, or a lake, or an open area. I eventually came up with the idea of creating an ice cavern, where the user would be situated inside and could see inside the cavern, or even look at the scenery from outside the cave’s mouth. This was the new moodboard I created:

Based on this moodboard, I developed the following sketches and storyboard:

Essentially, this cavern would contain glowing crystals and mushrooms, along with various rocks and potentially a stream of water. On one side of the cave the user will be able to see the cave’s mouth and have a glimpse of what lies outside the cave. On the opposite end, rocks leading to a large accumulation of glowing crystals would be placed. Surrounding the user at various points would be glowing mushrooms and rocks as well. If we are able to add sound, I would love to have sounds of water drops, water flowing, and some white noise (which could potentially be wind).

February 12

Today I started obtaining free assets from the Unity store and (attempting) to build the basic landscape/cave formations for my ice cavern. I got 3 different low-poly packages for different types of rock formations, including crystals, stalagmites (rock formations that rise from the ground), various terrains, and rocks with crystals attached. These are the outcomes of my explorations so far:

February 15

Today I made further progress in the cave. I created wall/cubes that would give me a sense of space, and which I started adding rocks to so they could make up the walls and roof. I also found a really good terrain that had a small water surface, which looked quite good, so I added some rocks on top and decided that the user/camera would be “standing” on top of the main rock, in the middle of the cave.

February 16

Today I added more rock formations in the cave in an attempt to give it more ‘personality’. I started adding stalagmites on the mouth of the cave, which I think work well with the scene I envision in my head. I also started experimenting with crystals and with different emissions/lights.

Feb 11th

For my first VR project, the keyword that I came up with is psychedelic. More specifically, I want to build an environment where the viewer, by just looking around, feels isolated, even suffocated, as if they are in an apocalyptic nightmare.

There were a few things that inspired me when I was ideating this project, the most important one being a psychedelic rock band I really like called Tame Impala. Every album they put out has beautifully designed artwork, and their music videos are always different and very well-crafted. I drew a lot of inspiration from the video of “‘Cause I’m a Man.”

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The video feels surreal and dizzy as it contains a lot of colors that clash and collide, while the camera is constantly revolving around the protagonist. It is also worth noticing that a bunch of striped repetitive patterns are used to enhance the psychedelic vibe.

Based on what I had in mind and what I learned from the Tame Impala video, I created a storyboard (as shown below). It basically shows an island in the middle of a round shaped space filled with red/dark pink-ish liquid. It has quite some specific details, such as a disco-style dance floor, an armchair, a TV and a palm tree on the island, where the viewer is located. Not shown in the storyboard are objects I will put in the water and a dome over the space.

The main idea is to create a contrast between what is on the island (reachable for the viewer) and what is (not yet) in the water (not reachable for the viewer), the former making up a cozy little space while the latter would be dark and evoke heavy emotions; the contrast results in a surrealistic feeling.

As I said at the beginning, there is another very personal reason why I wanted it to display such a strong dark identity. The notorious coronavirus is currently threatening China, especially the city of Wuhan. Thousands of people were killed by or lost their family to the pandemic. Having read almost too many devastating stories that happened in the catastrophe, I felt extremely overwhelmed and frustrated, by not only the stories but also the fact that I could do nothing but constantly check the social media and pray for the people who are suffering right now. As a result, I want this project to reflect a sense of helplessness that I was going through.

Feb 16th

With a palm tree asset (or coconut tree, I can’t really tell) and an armchair asset I downloaded from the asset store, I started putting my environment together. I also found an asset that simulates water movement in low-poly style, so that the platform in the middle of it can be obviously recognized as a tiny island. I made the television with two cubes, which will be made to display a video.

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My project was inspired by stark winter landscapes that I have experienced, in particular the contrast between a moving, rhythmic lake or river and the still, barren trees of a forested area I visited last month. I hope to create an environment that is largely devoid of horror, hope, mysticism, happiness, etc. but rather one that invites introspection, free of reflecting our own mental state into our perception of the environment. I am really interested in how we project our mental states onto our environment and perception of space and light, and want this to be as close to a genuine environment as possible. 

Below are two pictures that look similar to the scene. Although I realize the environment will look different from these pictures because I intend to use mostly low-poly assets, this is the closest I can imagine the scene to looking like in real life. 

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I intend for the user to stand on the bank of a lake on a piece of land that is heavily forested. Across the body of water in front of the viewer, there is a small bridge. For my rough sketch, I drew the primary viewing environment, with the user facing the bridge connecting two sides of land. I intend for the bridge to be rustic and untouched. I hope that this will make the user wonder about the bridge’s use, why it is there, who uses it and whether or not they can use it. 

Apart from this, I intend to play around with Unity’s environment effects, hoping to animate the water with ripples or small waves. I also want to add mist or fog, in order to re enforce the theme of loneliness in a way that invites self-reflection.

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Two views of the environment

Update (February 14)

I was able to make a lake with the help of this YouTube tutorial that gives an in-depth tutorial of how Unity’s terrain tool can be used to create a lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeRh24-QUoI

This tutorial was also helpful with getting started with terrain painting. As of now I believe I have a strong idea of what I want to do, but I am not sure how to aesthetically implement it. I am also struggling with using the camera, the scene editor and with positioning objects accordingly. I think it will take a lot of messing around with the environment and the assets that I bring into the scene to determine what will be ideal for my scene.

Updated (February 16)

I have continued working steadily on the project and I have made the terrain look more realistic by playing around with the paint texture tool, as well as with the lighting, fog and other objects to make the scene more similar to a secluded forest. An issue that I had was finding ways to make the forest look more like a harsh winter forest, as most of the assets available on the asset store seem to be more geared towards summer environments. Because of this, I have decided to stick to a secluded forest, but have decided to add more elements to the environment that might suggest comfort or the ability to be safe alone in nature. Some ideas that I have are adding a bench and a more visible walking trail.

A big problem that I have had was the trees I would use, because these would be what would make or break the experience of being in a forest. I was set on using leafless trees I was able to create using the tree generator in an asset pack I found, but found this to be too unrealistic and also hard to make each tree in the forest appear as a unique tree. I have switched to using trees in a conifer forest asset pack I found, and I find these to be much more effective in creating a realistic forest.

Lastly, I have also implemented a particle system that creates the illusion of fog. This was not too difficult to do following this tutorial to accomplish this, playing around with the lighting to achieve my desired effect of a light mist.

Update: February 18

Today I added the finishing touches to the scene, adding some ambient sounds (rippling sounds and light wind), more assets to add variety to the environment as well as some post processing effects. I still found it really difficult to make the environment really realistic, even as I played with the painted textures on the terrain.

I am quite happy with the overall result, and I am now very comfortable using the terrain tool and with using manipulating assets within the scene. I spent some time trying to build the scene for the Cardboard, but I ran into the issue of the screen being cut in half within the viewer.

Instead, I found a script online allowing me to move the camera in 360 degrees and decided to build it for my Mac instead. This was quite a frustrating process because I tried messing around with the orientation settings but no matter what the build on my phone would remain split.

Post 1 (February 11) – Idea Brainstorm

When brainstorming potential ideas for the first project, I initially tried to draw inspiration from brutalist architecture:

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My inspiration was drawn from an indie game which I came across called Manifold Gardens but primarily from my personal preference for such architecture.

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Looking through these architecture reminded me of the Howl’s moving castle, a movie which I watched as a child. I think it was due to the brown naked concrete and the blockish characteristics of howl’s moving castle which reminded me of it.

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Howl’s moving castle is special due to its ability to move around physically and a door dial that allows the house to teleport to difference spaces. As a child, what appealed to me was how the castle allowed teleportation while being in the comfort of one’s home – allowing the user to bring some sense of familiarity while exploring the unfamiliar.

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Based on the color selected, the place would alter with it. Inspired by this, I wanted to incorporate this feature into my alternate world for one of my projects.

However, as this idea requires an interaction, it was not appropriate for project 1. I will work on further developing on this idea for a future project which allows interaction.

My second idea was to create a world dominated by objects of one chosen color. When constructing this world, I would be limited to using objects that inherently of a chosen color and play with the proportions of them to create a surrealistic atmosphere. The lighting of the world will also be adjusted based on this color. I will however, try to add a sense of familiar through trying to construct a natural landscape. For example, I would use an orange instead of the sun or the tip of a pen as a mountain, etc.

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Post 2 (February 16) – Progress Update 1

Prior to tomorrow’s class, I wanted to leave a record of the progress that has been made so far. Inspired by few of the surrealist art pieces attached in the previous post, I wanted the focus of my work to give a sense of confusion through altering the proportions of every day objects. In one word, I would describe my world as disproportionate. I also wanted to limit the use of colors for the scene as realism is not the goal for the project. Although the Howl’s Moving Castle idea is scraped for this project, I still wanted to incorporate the aspect of two main spaces – internal (where the player will be located in) and an external space. Although surrounded by a foreign and surreal environment, I want to recreate a sense of coziness through enclosing the user within an internal space.

Having these ideas in mind, I started working on my unity file. I decided to go with a cold shade of pink (#CC00FF) and ultramarine (#3300FF). These colors were chosen through playing around with the color options of the directional light on unity.

As seen in the previous surrealist art pieces, I took prefabs of ordinary objects – those small enough to be held with a person’s hand – and blew them out of proportion. I placed these objects within the terrain, through burying their roots, giving a sense of an abandoned landscape. Although I increased the size of most objects, I made the sizes of the trees and hills realistic to emphasize and highlight the absurd proportions of the other objects.

To construct an internal space, I used the fence prefab object and surrounded the 360 camera with it, giving an illusion of being protected. I also placed grave stones and skeletons right outside the parameters of the fence to give the fence significance and to provide a sense of fear towards the outer environment.

These are some of the screenshots of the progress so far. I still want to implement more changes with adding more depth through either adding fog or increasing the size of the terrain. I also intend to add sound to add to the ambience.

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In relation to the readings on the concepts of space and place, and presence and immersion, I realized for this project, there were limitations in both creating the most ideal environment for immersion and presence as

1. Immersion: We do not have the most high-tech gears. As mentioned in the reading, ‘Immersion is how good the sensorial informations are’ which in most cases are highly depend on the gadgets used.
2. Presence: We were limited in one key component – interaction and movement – for this assignment which could decrease the sense of presence in this particular scene. To overcome this and increase the sense of presence regardless, I added a fence around the user to make it indicate that the lack of movement is “normal” in this environment, incorporating the limitation as part of the story and scene.

Post 3 (February 18) – Progress Update 2 

Changes have been made since the last update. These are the main changes:

1. Depth (mountains, fog effect):

One limitation from the first build was the lack of depth. Due to this, it was very obvious that objects only existed within the parameters surrounding the user. To solve this issue, I added a fog effect, to make the background blend in a more subtle manner. I also layered more objects and filled with empty spaces with objects to remove the filling of emptiness. The overall size of the terrain was also increased to provide more space for objects in the background.

2. Story (lighting)

One aspect lacking was a story. I had a clear image of the world, but no clear narrative for the user and their identity. A idea of the story came to me during the development process. I got feedback that the bones mentioned in the previous build were not easily identifiable as bones. Hence, I downloaded a resource pack of a skeleton to replace the bone. While playing with the skeleton, I was also trying to make an escape portal from this alternate world. Combining these two aspects, instead of an escape portal for the user, I decided to give the portal a function – one where if objects go through it, it magnifies (giving more narrative and reason behind the disproportionate world).

3. User Location

Initially, the player was located in the middle of the terrain – again, this made it seem like the world was build for the user which I did not like. Instead of the user, I placed the portal and the skeletons in the middle of the terrain, darkened the overall lighting of the scene, and placed a luminous green light around the scene to bring attention to it and indicate that this was the focal point.

The user was relocated to the side, under the shadows and behind some trees, to make it seem like they were hiding under the shadows witnessing a haunting scene. Through this relocation, they no longer became the focal point of the world. Rather, a spectator who stumbled across this world.

4. Sound

I added sound of an empty room (which actually has a sound) and placed it under the camera rig. I also added portal sound effects and placed it on the portal to add to the atmosphere.

5. Blue adds to cold and haunting atmosphere

The previous build was very pink. I liked the visuals of it, and enjoyed playing around with different tones and tints of pink, but it did not really add to the atmosphere I was intended to create. Hence, I changed the color to a colder one – blue, to give it a haunting atmosphere. This suited the new narrative more.

There are many more little changes made since the previous builds but the ones above are the most significant.

Here are some screenshots of build 2:

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