Kwesi Davis - Prayer Peace & Power

[3DNegro]

WEEK 1-3

Prayer Peace & Power

Project Pitch:
In the black church, we devote time to “altar call”. Church members come to the altar, kneel and pray. They pray for themselves, for loved ones, for the church, for whatever hits their heart. If they pray long enough, a minister of the church will lay hands on them and pray aloud with them. It is a deeply spiritual moment. Virtual Reality has a unique set of features that could enhance this spiritual moment. Imagine kneeling before an altar blessed by your pastor. You then put on a VR headset. As you bow your head, your favorite gospel song begins to play. You watch the ground race away from you until you are floating high above your neighborhood. Your God's eye view is occasionally obscured by clouds or a flock of birds but the image is accurate because the GPS technology, in your headset, knows where you are on the globe. You look up and observe a bright halo above your head. Beyond the gold glowing ring are a pair of angels towering over you with wings outstretched. Suddenly, you hear the voice of your best friend praying for you. The software has called one of your designated prayer warriors and they have answered the call. They speak affirmations in your ears. You are overcome with peace and praise. You are overwhelmed with the beauty of heaven and the power of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Biography:
Kwesi Davis has worked in the entertainment software industry for over a decade.  His experiences include projects at video gaming, commercial effects, animated television and feature animation companies.  He is currently a Sr. Pipeline Engineer at DreamWorks Animation SKG.

Progress Report:

• Downloaded and played various VR applications
• Watched Unity DLL & Plugin integration videos
  
• Tested multiple 3rd-party voice chat solutions
• Built a non-VR Unity mobile app with basic multiplayer voice chat feature
• Built and ran first VR Android app (the unfinished Launch Pad Boot Camp project)
• Contacted two concept artist
• Had first production meeting with Concept Artist 1
• Watched Unity Networking video
• Watched Unity Survival Shooter videos

[DrSzilak]

This is definitely not part of my cultural experience. But, I am intrigued what it might mean for people who have experienced this "call". I really like the image of the beautiful, strong black angel! 

[3DNegro]

WEEK 4

Testing Church Scene

Built a sample church scene for testing. When I move my head, I can see drawing artifacts at the borders of the screen. The phone can't draw the room as fast as I can turn my head.  Need to manage scene complexity better.

Artist 1: Heaven Concept Sketches

PROS: Great detail, very specific, large/spacious, familiar 

CONS: Terrestrial, obviously man-made, available to everyone/not rare or special

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Blow the walls out, exposing a mountain view or cloud-scape, and let us experience an open air sanctuary. Replace the floor with a fish-filled lake for folks to walk on (as if it were solid ground).

PROS: pulls eye to bright spot in center, feeling of motion, looking up

CONS: naked lady, what aspect of this image says "heaven"?

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Give the woman a halo, wings, long flowing gown. Silhouette of cross in middle of bright spot.

PROS: birds, pillar-like mountains, dutch camera angle, felling of flight, sweeping curve, looking up, double exposure/echo images of figure

CONS: naked lady, lower left corner of image is unclear, dutch camera possibly lost in VR due to head tracking

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Give the woman a long flowing gown.

PROS: flying figure in silhouette, subtle face in background, sci-fi city on sweeping curves, POV looking up, multi-layer foreground/middleground/background elements giving this comp lots of *depth*, foreground pedestrians

CONS: dinosaur
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Replace dinosaur with a pair of giraffes or elephants and change pedestrians clothes from western to African.

Progress Report:

• Contacted musician about creating custom gospel tracks
• Did Unity Roll a Ball tutorial
• Converted Roll a Ball project to work in VR
• Re-did Roll a Ball tutorial with 10yr old daughter
• Had production meeting with Artist 1 to discuss sketches
• Read Unity VR tutorials and tried Unity VR demos
• Watched more 360 video experiences
• Built a church sanctuary scene in VR (poor performance)
• Trouble shooting video driver issues

Blocking Issues:

Periodically, as I work in Unity, I get a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error on my Lenovo Y50.  When the error happens, I have to restart Unity. This is very annoying. I have tried updating my video diver, but this did not solve the issue.

[Mindshiftvr]

That church scene is gorgeous!
I would be very interested to know what you learned about third party chat software.

[pathofjordan]

Nice! Waiting to experience it!

[DrSzilak]

looks great!

[doriandargan]

This looks amazing!!!!

[emre_tanirgan]

Loving the concept art! Are the artists you've gotten in touch with people you already know, or are you looking for them on a specific online community/website? I'm thinking that I might need help with my project eventually down the road, so I'd like to start thinking about where I can find good technical artists to work with.

[3DNegro]

@emre_tanirgan, the artists I contacted were both folks I met at the 2015 CREATIVE TALENT NETWORK animation expo.  They were selling prints of their work, so I networked with them and got their cards.  But I am sure there are plenty of talented artist on http://www.deviantart.com that do contract work.

[3DNegro]

WEEK 5

Artist 1: Heaven Concept Sketches (continued)

Two more sketches trickled in to complete the first round of concept images.  This first round was all about getting comfortable with the initial ideas. In the next series of images, we plan to push the ideas much farther and re-use elements that we like.


PROS: city architecture looking more specific, flying whales are interesting, angel, the cross
CONS: the angel appears to be moving away from viewer, angel's back is to viewer
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: Angel turns around and welcomes viewer


PROS: no comment
CONS: concept seems rushed and vague, no new ideas here; can do better
POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT: no comment

Testing Intro Scene

Here a test scene to host the introduction instructions and the content navigation menu.  In theory, this would be the first thing the user sees.  This scene would teach users how to use the interface and show them how the click interactive components in the virtual environment.  When they are done with the introduction, they would be presented with the content navigation menu. NOTE: This video starts with the user looking down at the floor.

https://youtu.be/nYNMGAU-xqU

Progress Report:

• Finished first round of concept drawings with Artist 1
• Designed intro scene/menu
• Modeled an environment for intro/menu scene in Blender
• Imported model
• Setup materials
• Leveraged menus and camera from Unity VR demos
• Built particle system for intro scene
• Tested user experience with intro scene

Blocking Issues:

What you see, in the Unity Editor, is not what you get in the GearVR.  Specifically, the near clipping plane appears to be farther from the camera in the GearVR than in the Unity Editor.  I could not figure out how to set it properly, so I ended up scaling my scene such that near objects were not clipped away.

The USB port, on the GearVR, is not useful for developers.  Data transfer does not appear to be possible; which means I have to remove the Android phone from the GearVR every time I need to rebuild my app. This is extremely frustrating and time consuming. @MissFacetious mentioned a wireless method for pushing builds to the phone.  I will test that wireless method soon.