This was an incredible week. First and foremost it was cathartic and refreshing to turn in the Mid-point Check-in. The Check-in really allowed me to assess where I was in the grand scheme of things and in some respects refocus some energy in places that were falling behind a bit.
After the Check-in, the script was more or less locked down with changes to cameras based upon current tech and the feasibility of a positive outcome. The changes also streamlined our workflow and had the wonderful effect of narrowing down the choices to three cameras,
Test footage was then played within stitching software and then we made some leaps in the mix of 2d footage on green chroma and adding it into our 360 material. It was quite relieving to be able to fully integrate the two because it possibly solved a major struggle for production… which is less than two weeks out now.
Hello! This is Maria and Gordey with the Bizarre Barber game.
This week we had to finish some client work, so we didn't manage to to much, but still:
This week we had to finish some client work, so we didn't manage to to much, but still:
- Registered domain name
- Made midpoint check-in
- Watched Unity live lecture about caveats with working with LWRP (we watched it with awesome Asier Arranz!)
- Figured out how to make some optimizations for the current physics
- Checked out NVidia FleX for Unreal and investigated the opportunity to translate to project from Unity to Unreal. Since Flex is not really optimized for much physics interactions (a lot of stuff is calculated in GPU and supposed for VFX only), we decided not to implement it just yet.
- Made some data analysis from our collected playtest stats:
Blog Post # 7
This week my partner worked on building the 3D assets for
two other scenes. He finished all the assets for the Grandma’s House scene,
which looks great. He also began working on assets for the Apartment scene.
While he did this, I worked on baking the normal maps and textures for the
Basement scene. I finished texturing all the static objects and got the models
in Unity. I then set them up and the Basement scene is looking really good! Looking around, I might add another painting for the wall or something else to liven up the space, but overall, it is perfect for the specific memory sequence.
Next week, I’ll work on getting the actors in the Basement
scene. My partner started working on the animations for the actors in that
scene, so hopefully we can get those completed as well. Once that's done, the Basement scene will be completed. Additionally, I started a list
of sound assets we need, so I’ll start looking or recording later next week.
Thankfully, we are on schedule for having a prototype by the
end of August. I can’t wait!
This week I was thinking over all the details for the scenes, interactions, props, UI etc. I am also writing the game design document that will include all these details. I found the rest of assets for the house (indoors) scene, we also had a bug with Unity Collaborate this week – the assets disappeared from the file, so we had to add them back again and it took some time.
I made some more research last week and added more info and review screenshots and analysis into my internal document. There are a lot of patterns I found out and so I will work towards the wishes of the players. Among the wishes was feeding, so I decided to include it in the prototype. Also, I am drawing more storyboards and sketches to think of the best ways to reward the player, to set the time frames, to create time-dependent tasks that would be fun to play, etc, all based on the many reviews I read. Was going through the list I made to make sure that some of the wishes are included in the current prototype and the rest are on the roadmap. One of the screenshots is below (the player's name and tile are removed).
This week we also scoped all the scenes we are planning to work on, made a breakdown by week estimating the approximate time it may take to complete. We started with the feeding scene, added all the assets needed, made sure the scales are right and the map locomotion works. Looking forward to the next week!
I made some more research last week and added more info and review screenshots and analysis into my internal document. There are a lot of patterns I found out and so I will work towards the wishes of the players. Among the wishes was feeding, so I decided to include it in the prototype. Also, I am drawing more storyboards and sketches to think of the best ways to reward the player, to set the time frames, to create time-dependent tasks that would be fun to play, etc, all based on the many reviews I read. Was going through the list I made to make sure that some of the wishes are included in the current prototype and the rest are on the roadmap. One of the screenshots is below (the player's name and tile are removed).
This week we also scoped all the scenes we are planning to work on, made a breakdown by week estimating the approximate time it may take to complete. We started with the feeding scene, added all the assets needed, made sure the scales are right and the map locomotion works. Looking forward to the next week!
This week's updates are broken into the following:
1) Team + Product
2) Technical
3) Creative
1) Overall team and product update
Overall PM wise, I finally broke up into tasks per week that we need to hit per person on our team super specific to make sure everyone's time is used efficiently for meetings and for any time any one is out of office or working remotely.
I broke down what the app screen would look like upon login roughly on a whiteboard: 1) a short clip video that I've whiteboarded before showing, a video window on how to write the letter "B" "ba" in Baybayin 2) Story (the interactive portion of the app) 3) Share (sharing your name/word on Facebook 3D posts)
Here's what that would look like roughly.
2) Technical update
a) I have a ton to do, working on VRTK to polish controller and to involve grab to have a realistic brush rather than a regular controller to spew out the paint, as one would have in real life, on top of thinking about data capture (cross platform), and how much space this would take up to be statistically significant for machine learning. Controller (but not quite like gesture based data) generated within a 3D space (in feet or meters) is different to think about as voxel-based data rather than those in MNIST (2D) that are flattened data. I'm still thinking this through, so will likely reach out to friends at Applied Machine Learning (Applied ML) team at Facebook and those in Facebook AI Research (FAIR), if I can't get to Yann LeCunn to advise at some point later int he app development, I just want to make sure what we have at current prototype phase will be correct.
b) Transitions
My 3D artist, Angelo and I went over transitions for creative on what Unity assets (free and paid) would be needed for several of our animations between scenes and for character movements beyond rigging we did on our own.
3) Creative Update
a) SketchboxVR
This week we went frame by frame (wireframing) in SketchboxVR before throwing everything into Unity for the storytelling portion of our app.
Our malakas maganda storyline (creation story of humankind, Adam and Eve) is a central focus though coming at the end. This has been a good tool that I wish I started with earlier (and sometimes was breaking due to some issues with my Rift prior, had to borrow another rig from another team member to get things up and running), and helped me figure out what I misunderstood and to walk through with members of my team to make sure we were speaking the same language frame by frame in a scene to get on the same page. We ended up cutting out a lot of stuff that Angelo and I both thought were intensive for animation and specific creative choices that would be too difficult to tackle this time around
I'm having trouble uploading them so here's the Dropbox link showing malakas-maganda and the story of the split bamboo (when woman and man come out of a bamboo that splits in two once it hits land that is formed).
Here are some screenshots of what we're doing before the rest of app development in Unity.
How the bamboo hits land
How the bamboo falls
Bamboo splits and malakas and maganda come out
We wrote how they would be in a hug position, neutral stance, then walking at the end.
b) Focus
The formation of the earth with land, sky, water, and the bird is a bit heavy on the animation side (very involved), so we are making sure to create 2 really good scenes well with a lot of our other features and functionality for the final submission so that we aren't biting off more than we can chew. I also decided to group specific words to trigger each scene we want to complete, so ebon or bird, malakas and maganda would be the main ones. The rest of the words are already referencing environment or other assets in our scenes (water, land etc.).
c) 3D text in English (translation)
I'm still debating if I want to have 3D text in English as opposed to to text in 2D to translate each letter of a word for the app. 3D text can be done right, but it's tough to master without it looking funky. '
d) Sound - deciding to go with our own mixed sounds rather than paying a ton of fees for other DJs (royalties or even flat fees) to keep costs low is what we may be doing for the DJ scratch, graffiti spray, etc. next week to be worked on more once more polished controller is finished in Unity.
e) Other creative choices
For finding creative inspiration choices for paintbrush assets, I took an actual video of my teammate, Kristian Kabuay painting the word thank you "salamat/salaam" in Baybayin at this month's UNDSCVRD SOMA Pilipinas event in SF. We also honored my friend, SFSU Professor and Filipino scholar-activist historian, hip hop cultural critic and food lover, Dawn Mabalon who passed away recently, so I learned more on how to write specific letters in Kristian's book.
Paintbrush
e) I really didn't like King Spray and while my O'Reilly Co-Editor, Vasanth Mohan (FusedMan) who is also in Oculus Start, had a tutorial on how to make this in Vive, ViveSpray, I really was unhappy with the way the spray turned out when I had tried it during Oculus Connect 3 since it wasn't adjusted properly to hit the brick wall the right way.
1) Team + Product
2) Technical
3) Creative
1) Overall team and product update
Overall PM wise, I finally broke up into tasks per week that we need to hit per person on our team super specific to make sure everyone's time is used efficiently for meetings and for any time any one is out of office or working remotely.
I broke down what the app screen would look like upon login roughly on a whiteboard: 1) a short clip video that I've whiteboarded before showing, a video window on how to write the letter "B" "ba" in Baybayin 2) Story (the interactive portion of the app) 3) Share (sharing your name/word on Facebook 3D posts)
Here's what that would look like roughly.
2) Technical update
a) I have a ton to do, working on VRTK to polish controller and to involve grab to have a realistic brush rather than a regular controller to spew out the paint, as one would have in real life, on top of thinking about data capture (cross platform), and how much space this would take up to be statistically significant for machine learning. Controller (but not quite like gesture based data) generated within a 3D space (in feet or meters) is different to think about as voxel-based data rather than those in MNIST (2D) that are flattened data. I'm still thinking this through, so will likely reach out to friends at Applied Machine Learning (Applied ML) team at Facebook and those in Facebook AI Research (FAIR), if I can't get to Yann LeCunn to advise at some point later int he app development, I just want to make sure what we have at current prototype phase will be correct.
b) Transitions
My 3D artist, Angelo and I went over transitions for creative on what Unity assets (free and paid) would be needed for several of our animations between scenes and for character movements beyond rigging we did on our own.
3) Creative Update
a) SketchboxVR
This week we went frame by frame (wireframing) in SketchboxVR before throwing everything into Unity for the storytelling portion of our app.
Our malakas maganda storyline (creation story of humankind, Adam and Eve) is a central focus though coming at the end. This has been a good tool that I wish I started with earlier (and sometimes was breaking due to some issues with my Rift prior, had to borrow another rig from another team member to get things up and running), and helped me figure out what I misunderstood and to walk through with members of my team to make sure we were speaking the same language frame by frame in a scene to get on the same page. We ended up cutting out a lot of stuff that Angelo and I both thought were intensive for animation and specific creative choices that would be too difficult to tackle this time around
I'm having trouble uploading them so here's the Dropbox link showing malakas-maganda and the story of the split bamboo (when woman and man come out of a bamboo that splits in two once it hits land that is formed).
Here are some screenshots of what we're doing before the rest of app development in Unity.
How the bamboo hits land
How the bamboo falls
Bamboo splits and malakas and maganda come out
We wrote how they would be in a hug position, neutral stance, then walking at the end.
b) Focus
The formation of the earth with land, sky, water, and the bird is a bit heavy on the animation side (very involved), so we are making sure to create 2 really good scenes well with a lot of our other features and functionality for the final submission so that we aren't biting off more than we can chew. I also decided to group specific words to trigger each scene we want to complete, so ebon or bird, malakas and maganda would be the main ones. The rest of the words are already referencing environment or other assets in our scenes (water, land etc.).
c) 3D text in English (translation)
I'm still debating if I want to have 3D text in English as opposed to to text in 2D to translate each letter of a word for the app. 3D text can be done right, but it's tough to master without it looking funky. '
d) Sound - deciding to go with our own mixed sounds rather than paying a ton of fees for other DJs (royalties or even flat fees) to keep costs low is what we may be doing for the DJ scratch, graffiti spray, etc. next week to be worked on more once more polished controller is finished in Unity.
e) Other creative choices
For finding creative inspiration choices for paintbrush assets, I took an actual video of my teammate, Kristian Kabuay painting the word thank you "salamat/salaam" in Baybayin at this month's UNDSCVRD SOMA Pilipinas event in SF. We also honored my friend, SFSU Professor and Filipino scholar-activist historian, hip hop cultural critic and food lover, Dawn Mabalon who passed away recently, so I learned more on how to write specific letters in Kristian's book.
Paintbrush
e) I really didn't like King Spray and while my O'Reilly Co-Editor, Vasanth Mohan (FusedMan) who is also in Oculus Start, had a tutorial on how to make this in Vive, ViveSpray, I really was unhappy with the way the spray turned out when I had tried it during Oculus Connect 3 since it wasn't adjusted properly to hit the brick wall the right way.
Title
Trying To Laugh At This
Graphics
Trying To Laugh At This is procedure and shader heavy, so I learned how to draw and animate procedural geometry. This was new to me, so I stepped back from particles and began drawing triangles. My work is here:
https://github.com/ATL3Y/TriangleTests
Test 1: Drawing a Triangle with a Mesh
Instantiated a mesh
Passed in one triangle
Test 2: Drawing a Quad with a Mesh
Instantiated a mesh
Passed in two triangles
Test 3: Drawing a Triangle Procedurally
Created 3 verts, normals, and uvs
Passed these 3 points to custom shader
Drew in OnRenderObj using MeshTopology.Triangles
Test 4: Drawing a Quad Procedurally
Created 6 verts, normals, and uvs and passed to shader
Drew in OnRenderObj using MeshTopology.Triangles
Test 5: Drawing a Plane of Quads
Each quad has 4 verts, 2 triangles, 6 points
Built out quad/point properties. I wanted scale and color to function as debugging.
Test 6: Animating a Plane of Particles on the CPU side
Each frame I’m:
Update quad pos
Update vert and point properties
Set material
Set data in the compute buffer
Render the object
This is ~124fps with scene view open on a 1060gtx and my target is ~250fps atm. I think I should be animating on the gpu, possibly in the shader, possibly by grabbing the data from a separate compute shader, like doing a physics pass on the gpu and then a rendering pass.
Next steps are to:
Separate / optimize physics
My a flock - type algorithm with noise for a sandstorm
Test with more particles
Learn to apply one texture per quad
WEEK 7 (8/13-8/20)
Summary
Layed out complete models for SC02: Cubic Tunnel
Added temporary models/textures to the scene
Added puzzle lever mechanics
Modeled buildings for SC04: Rainy Lands
Modeled Entrance Gate for SC01
Re-modeled kelp for SC03: Aqua Jungle
Blocking animation for Loxa and Quama
Concepts for street signs
We've made a lot of progress in putting the game together this week. The base layout for SC02 is complete and the puzzle mechanics are almost complete too. Laura has been modeling more buildings for SC01: Entrance Gate and SC04: Rainy Lands and Megan re-modeled her kelp model this week. Chana is currently working on designing some street signs to fill up the environment for SC04: Rainy Lands. Haley is working on the blocking for Loxa and Quama this week, and will finish up the animations for SC03 in a week or two. We finally have some in-game visuals to show this week!
Screenshots from SC02: Cubic Tunnel:
Was excited to submit the midpoint checkin.
Then, this week was all about avatars and animation.
I made great progress on one of the key scenes in my
experience which involves 30 different animations. I had to do a lot of tweaking and
debugging. I had several different
issues but was really pleased when I finally resolved them all through research
and observation. I blended multiple
pre-set animations and figured out how to unlock them so that I could slow them
down, change the curves, etc. The final
result is quite surreal, and I love the effect it has on the viewer in VR.
Also worked with 3 different avatars, editing them both in
blender and Medium!!, altering the UVs and textures and making final
selections. It’s incredible how one
person can be scanned in so many different looking ways. And it’s
amazing the alterations and additions that you can make in Medium.
I am having a persistent issue with the skin not appearing
on one of the hands of the Oculus standard package avatar. I asked our Friday guest speaker about this
a couple weeks ago and he validated that it was indeed a known issue. I
wonder if anyone else in OLP is having it.
See screenshot. I tried
un-installing and re-installing the Oculus packages but that did not help. Appreciate if anyone in the group has any
thoughts. Everything functions, just the hand is invisible because there is no "skin."
