http://ernestdevjourneyswitholp.blogspot.com/2017/08/olp-week7-museum-multiverse-collab-art.html
OLP WEEK7: MUSEUM MULTIVERSE COLLAB ART BLOG: PLAN, LAYOUT, BUILD PART 6 (FINISHED TEXTURING FIRST MUSEUM SCENE AND ON TO BUILDING THE REST OF THE LEVEL MAP)
Okay so this week I manage to progress pretty well with the texturing for the First Museum scene but before I get into that I got some breaking news, BREAKING NEWS!!!!! My Oculus has finally arrived WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!! As you can tell by my expression I am pretty happy about it. Now I can use this device to add more leverage with creating game experiences and well as playing them in the future.
Okay moving on, I have manage to finish texturing this scene to the point to where Hess and I were satisfied. This will be the main part of the demo where puzzle style game mechanics will be used in order to progress within the museum. Style wise I went for a more modernized feel for the museum room using mostly textures that consist of Metal, Marble, and Stucco for the walls. The nameplates for each statue piece may appear a little dark but I wanted to use that to set it up as an omen for events to come as the player progresses. Here are a few screen captures of the room without the dynamic dark lighting.
Here are a couple of screenshots that can give you you can idea what this scene may like with the dim dark lighting.
In addition to finalizing the textures for this scene I have started building props assets in advance for the next scene which will be unique art gallery the player will enter once they pass through the hallways. I am trying to make assets in as well as reusable modular room pieces to save up on time with development. Here are a few assets of paint frames I have built for the next scene as well as reusable modular room pieces I will be using to build the next set of hallways.
So this coming week I will be building/texturing more props to quickly add to the next scene built scene as well as build the hallways connecting to the next scene using the modular room.
My VR
Journey 2.6 – Take
More Risk
PROJECT NAME:
CARNIVAL |VR
ENGINE:
Unity
PLATFORM:
Mobile VR
TYPE:
360Video Experience
GENRE:
Documentary - Caribbean Music Festival
August 6th,
2017
The
more I dive into creating Virtual Reality, the more I realize how much more
there is to learn - but boy oh boy this is so exciting. Creating 360 videos
makes me feel like I’m levitating. It’s a familiar feeling, which I remember
from my Brooklyn College days when I took my first cinematography class with Mr.
Bill aka Professor Hornsby, and got to “play" with that Bolex camera. No excuses,
Bill would remind us – the only thing that matters is what your audience sees
when the light go down. I get the same excitement when I turn on my Samsung
camera and preview my scene on my Samsung phone, and feel the same
responsibility to the audience that’s been engrained in me.
LAST
WEEK,
I received the Launch Pad team’s review of my proposal, and agreed with most of
the comments. My project is ambitious, and the post schedule is aggressive, but
I am doing the work necessary to be ready to shoot this project in February
2018. I’m shooting every week now, and will continue to do so with more
professional cameras. The one comment that stuck with me was – take more risk.
I’ve always been a little bewildered by that statement, because I feel like I’m
risking so much to create this project. I should
be spending more time looking for paid employment, but finding a job has been
impossible. I’m over qualified, under qualified, not enough recent history, not
enough relevant history, blah, blah. This is the reason I registered my LLC,
and have been working to generate income with my company – selling TV shows,
tee shirts, hats… whatever it takes. My TV producing partners and I finally got
to pitch one of our show last week. The company was eager to buy it, BUT our show’s star was on vacation and
took two week to set up a Skype, so the company passed.
Ah,
but I digress.
Risk…take
more risk! After our video conference last week, I now realized what this
phrase means. I’ve been tossing an idea in my head for a while now, but didn’t
have the wherewithal to figure out a solution, so I’ve been quiet about it.
After the review, I decided to give it a whirl, and I’m now researching how I
can get the Carnival/VR audience to actually play a steelpan in the Experience.
I’ve seen examples of playing the drums and a marimba in VR and hopefully I can
add this to the Experience when I publish the finished product. Maybe, that’s
an entirely different project – music lessons in VR. To be determined.
I
finally got all my footage stitched last week!! I reached out to an Oculus Launch
Pad (OLP) 2016 cohort who was kind enough to help me. We encountered a number
of technical challenges, and it took two days to get all the footage stitched
and uploaded to my Google Drive, but we did it! I’m not completely happy with
the footage, BUT I’ve learned a lot from my mistake, and I know I’ll do better
when next I shoot.
I
also spent the weekend shooting a steelpan player (panman) to get a sense of camera
placement and the sound quality that the Samsung can capture with this
instrument. I filmed him in Culver City on Friday, then again in Newport Beach
and Laguna Beach on Sunday. I’m looking for the right setting to film him to
help tell the story of the pan. The beach setting in Newport Beach didn’t work
as well as I had hoped, and the indoor dance floor setting in Laguna Beach was
also a fail. I should have a new tripod in a week and will be better able to
film him at his next performance.
My
Social Media Strategist submitted her proposal to help create a buzz, and
audience traffic for this Experience. Her proposal looks great and is right on
target, but way over my budget. Luckily, as a member of a certain organization,
I can get ten hours of pro bono work from her.
Finally,
I spent a few days chasing hotel and AirBnB accommodations in Trinidad for
February 2018. It’s amazing to find that most hotels have been booked already,
so I’ve sent family and friends on a mission to find accommodations for five in
one location. Of course, I already have backup housing in two private homes,
but I’d prefer something closer the Queens Park Savannah, where most of the Carnival
action takes place.
THIS
WEEK, I
will review my stitched footage and select the ones I can use for my prototype.
My Post expert will then do some color correcting and stabilization on those
shots. On Friday, I will shoot the panman with the new tripod and mic I hope to
purchase this week, and on Sunday I will shoot the San Diego Carnival. Sunday
will be my last day of filming for this prototype. When this week is over, I
will begin focusing on editing and building a working prototype for the Gear.
TAGS
Samsung,
Social Media, Cinematography, Take More Risk, Job Hunting
Week 7 / Basic tools in place and progress
Week 6 Continuing to Fight the Internet Giants
This should have been over a long time ago but week 6
continued just as week 5 had ended: to resolve the issue of internet access I
was forced to stay for days on end in a house without internet access because
technicians only narrow down their ETA to a time window between 8 am to 6 pm.
Since the end of week 6 we finally have internet! On Friday
I picked up my new glasses. It takes some getting used to, I still have to take
it slow and remind myself to take frequent eye breaks, but it’s a massive
improvement to before.
I feel as though I am far behind the curve and for a moment
I almost lost my fighting spirit. But I'm not ready to quit.
Real life alley in medium resolution
Once we had internet we kicked off the photogrammetry
process again, this time aiming for medium resolution. It’s definitely an
improvement to week 5’s low resolution alley but needs cleaning up. Maybe I’ll
have to give up on the idea of using photogrammetry for the prototype. This is what the medium resolution alley looks like before cleaning up:
Here is a 360 panorama of the alley:
This is the result of over 200 hours of pure CPU time!!!
A Coyote Costume
Each conversation with the artist, Louis Still Smoking,
results in new story details. One of those details that evolved over the past few conversations has
to do with the elderly Native American model. On the phone I referred to him as
“old man.” In Blackfeet culture (but also Crow culture) we sometimes refer to
the demi-god / co-creator / trickster figure as “Old Man” or “Old Man Coyote.” We
decided to keep it ambiguous during the conversation but wanted his identity to
become obvious at the very end. For this we might let the old man shape shift
into Old Man Coyote once the viewer breaks through into the Ceremonial Reality.
Fortunately I know the producer of Coyote’s Crazy Science Show in Canada and
can borrow the costume for our final production! Here is a picture of their
Coyote in front of Vancouver’s skyline:
Proposal, vocabulary and controller challenges
I am so grateful that we were given the opportunity to
submit a draft proposal for feedback. I learned a lot from the feedback and
also realized that I have vocabulary challenges. As it turns out the designer
who figures out how the user will navigate the experience is me! Now all I need
to do is find out how to translate this knowledge into the industry typical
output of a flowchart…
In the follow up conversation with Meredith and Jewel about
my obscure controller question we realized that I am bundling multiple
questions and should break it down into its components. That will make the
search for solutions easier. Illustrating those separate interactions might
also improve the proposal’s clarity.
Experience Overview
Scene 1 / Present Reality: User
fades into Art Alley in Rapid City, SD. Can walk and explore a bit. Artist
comes, starts conversation.
Scene 2 / Past Reality: User gets
distracted from the conversation by vintage advertising 'tiles' that come
floating in. User can click on the 'tile' to release their stories or wipe them
away. More and more tiles come in.
Scene 3 / Ceremonial Reality:
System overheats, walls of Art Alley blast away. User floats out into peaceful
landscape where all creation is in harmony.
Controller components
1.
User hovers controller over advertising ‘tiles’
2.
User clicks controller to release stories from ‘tiles’
3.
User clicks controller with swipe in any
direction, which makes that selected object fly to the side and dissolve after
a certain distance/time
4.
Object’s trail when swiped makes the background
(Sphere 1) become transparent which opens up the view to a beautiful landscape
beyond (Sphere 2)
5.
The transition from Scene 2 to Scene 3 is a type
of portal transition from Sphere 1 to Sphere 2
Of the controller components, 1 and
2 are basic interactions.
Tania pointed out that maybe a
customization of the Vive and Daydream swipe option code might be a solution
for controller component 3.
Meredith suggested looking into gradient
transparency to full invisibility for a custom built low poly "sphere."
The separate polygons are necessary so that Unity will see them as separate
objects instead of the whole sphere disappearing at first swipe.
Where do we go from here?
Thanks to everyone’s support I now have a couple of leads to
look into for my controller interactions. Another emphasis for next week is
collecting materials for the tiles and the 2D animated avatar who will walk
first time users through their interactions.
This is very short blog this week. After last weeks posting, I took a serious look at what I was developing and was not happy w/the look and feel. The color palette was all wrong and I was getting lost. So I decided to restructure the space and the architecture. I am much happier w/what I have now. This is a screenshot of the revision. More details to follow so that it reflects the story. 
I am building the fishlaphon and meeting this week w/the coder to add interactivity. This is just the preview.
After receiving feedback on my proposal, I felt I am on the right track, but I need to tighten up on certain areas: regarding making intention clearer and its market appeal. So really need to do some research and
Next weeks goals:
I am building the fishlaphon and meeting this week w/the coder to add interactivity. This is just the preview.
After receiving feedback on my proposal, I felt I am on the right track, but I need to tighten up on certain areas: regarding making intention clearer and its market appeal. So really need to do some research and
Next weeks goals:
- Theme music, sound effects, music for the instrument
- interactivity
- Building and testing
- UI design
- Work on proposal
