On the technical side of things, I have been changing the way the puck moves in my game and the physics of the ball. I want my game to not rely on the Unity physics system.
I have also been exploring the world my game lives in. At the moment, everything is generic with simple textures. I am changing this by drawing inspiration from Polly Pocket toys and the artist Massimo Uberti. Both the toys and the artist play with scale and transforming the physical world. This is still in progress, but I am excited for how it is turning out. Below is some images from this development process.
I have also been exploring the world my game lives in. At the moment, everything is generic with simple textures. I am changing this by drawing inspiration from Polly Pocket toys and the artist Massimo Uberti. Both the toys and the artist play with scale and transforming the physical world. This is still in progress, but I am excited for how it is turning out. Below is some images from this development process.
Inspiration
Polly Pocket
Massimo Uberti's Neon Light Installation
Tilt Brush Sketches
Unity Implementation
That's it for this week! Thanks for reading
- Ciera
Oculus ID: Ciera_Jones
Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Medium: @cieraej
Email: ciera.jones.cj@gmail.com
Website: cierajones.com
Blog post #8
This week we have our concept artist drew a few layouts for our Chinese Kitchen. It's not a finished work yet regarding the color tones and the finish look. We realized it is related UX a lot. We have reached out to Ryan from OLP17 to discussed it more.
This week our developer also work on our first main interaction and realized there are a few limitations we need to overcome. We may choose a few steps instead of completing the whole experience since some parts are tricky. We will continue to work on this part this week.
#MURDER- Week 8
By: Nir Netzer
This week was intense, but we got a lot done. We are filming this Thursday and there was a lot to get done. We had to find a location, complete the cast, find all the props and so much more.
Producing this prototype is definitely a financial investment for me. But I am all in and I am grateful for the opportunity. It’s not an easy expense for me, but this is a smart investment. I’ve been doing VR for about 3 years now. This is where my eggs are and that’s my path of creation and career. I will spend about $2k only for the production (and will do the post by myself), and that’s with a lot friend’s help and my wonderful team. Me, Azra and Cherryl worked our asses off this week, and we got some awesome stuff done.
For the location, it was kinda hard to find a fancy house for less than $500 a day. I already have so many expenses on the actors, props, insurance, etc. I couldn’t bite the bullet on this one. So at a moment of despair, I got a great idea. 2 years ago I produced a 360 marketing video for a luxury real estate company in Beverly Hills. I approached the same company and offered to produce another marketing video for them for free, if they will let us film there for one day, and they agreed right away.
So…
We are going to film the prototype in this lovely 5M property in Beverly Hills-
https://www.thestanleybeverlyhills.com
Here are a few photos as well. So I’m very excited for that.
I also wanted to use the Aggy for this shoot. It’s a remote control moving tripod a friend from the making360 community developed. It’s amazing. He basically connected a remote control to an electric wheelchair base. I am renting it for all of my studio work. BUT, he went to burning man with it, which was a bit of a hit (ps, It’s like half of the city stopped working. It’s crazy).
I really want to add motion to the piece. VR comes to live when the camera moves. It’s apart of my cinematic style and I really want it to be shown in the prototype. So I was re-thinking about it and we decided to get a wheelchair and tie a tripod to it. That’s what I have to work with now and to be honest. I think it will actually work better.
The problem with the Aggy (and all the robotic dollies) is that- A you need to hide but still see where you’re driving you’re the camera. B it will lose connection with the distance. Therefore, I think that a wheelchair can work better. The cameraman is already hiding, below the camera on the chair, and he can better navigate the camera. With today’s tracking software available, I can mask out the bottom easily and seamlessly from a moving shot. MochaVR is really good for that. Shot out to Nathalie who helped extend my license. So if I am positioning the camera above the wheelchair high enough to mask out the chair but low enough so it won’t feel too high, I broke a new ground.
Other than that, we broke down the expenses for the shoot, cast almost everyone, booked a behind the scene photographer, found a place to get police uniforms at an affordable price and broke down the shot list. Here is a link to our shot list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UyfP_3c5Nz0ski3xtv0G5PzgPxZsa05soTiJXtxmbg/edit?usp=sharing
Cherryl is putting together the call sheet, finding the wheelchair and help to finalize the insurance. Azra and I met 3 days in a row for almost the whole day to get things done. Everyone is very excited about the shoot and so do I.
Week #8
This week our HUMANO team continue to work on the main characters animation and sound.
Later on this week we will start our VO with RXNIN LLC!! #CantWait
We can't believe the deadline is coming soooooo soon, we are going to work extra hard in the next few weeks!! :#
Here's a few screenshots of one of our main characters.
This week our HUMANO team continue to work on the main characters animation and sound.
Later on this week we will start our VO with RXNIN LLC!! #CantWait
We can't believe the deadline is coming soooooo soon, we are going to work extra hard in the next few weeks!! :#
Here's a few screenshots of one of our main characters.
Name: Jarrod Anderson
Project Name: Ghosted
Genre: Horror/Action Adventure
This week I did some work for the reserve. I had a contract for a film that I just started filming but was supposed to be in 2013, but there were amendments to the trust and administration changes, so it's finally going, kind of at the worst time, but it feels good to be getting it done. Sunday was the only day we had to work on our game this week. I tried my hand at a 8 legged walk cycle. It got a lot of hits right away on twitter, so I made another gif of our ghost trap, I'm trying to think of a better name than ghost or scare trap, but nothing has clicked so far.
As you can see the animations are filler, I didn't want to put too much time into the animations as I can spend a whole day on a two legged walk cycle. I felt I got a good hold of the spider walk cycle though, and the bed's scale was changing when I was switching animations in the blend space, so I just triggered the animation when the ai is near (that's why it's so sudden). I feel it gives the gist of what we're going for. Animating in Unreal isn't as fluid as Blender so it takes me a little more time for me to make them, and I haven't figured out how to import animations yet.
I also was playing around with voice recordings, I was trying to make a reversed audio clip sound creepy. In doing this I discovered a cool trick that makes the speech sound pretty ghostly. First you reverse the audio of the speech, then you add in a decent amount of reverb, then you reverse the track again so it's playing the right away, and the reversed reverb makes it sound really cool. The only example I can think of this is when homer is talking to bart through the portal when he's in 3d land behind the book shelf, on one of the simpson's halloween specials. We have a day of shooting this week, and then I have some website work, but this week we should be able to put in more time. Summer is usually my busiest season so it's been a struggle, but we're really trying hard to get in our best work, and to communicate the idea of our game.
More game mechanics
This week, cause we are waiting for the general feedback, we have been focused on more game mechanics, in this case we have developed the torch mechanics.
This week, cause we are waiting for the general feedback, we have been focused on more game mechanics, in this case we have developed the torch mechanics.
Now the torch of the character is:
Rechargable:- The player can recharge the battery by shaking the controller, we are trying to adjust the sensibility to the sweet point.
- The battery is lossing charge quickly, so if you want to keep your light on, you should be shaking your hand each 1-2 minutes.
Focusable:
- The player can focus the torch light to see further or have a wider close view.
- This is a core game mechanics, there are objects that react to the amount of light received
https://youtu.be/Q34M9m2gwC8
- The player can focus the torch light to see further or have a wider close view.
- This is a core game mechanics, there are objects that react to the amount of light received
https://youtu.be/Q34M9m2gwC8
And another milestone almost completed is moving through an INFINITE overpopulated forest at 60fps, we are finishing our own occlusion script to save CPU time, probably next week we will share here the video with those results.
Waiting the feedback by crossing fingers! We are ready for the final sprint on the game story!
Have a great week!
- Asier
Waiting the feedback by crossing fingers! We are ready for the final sprint on the game story!
Have a great week!
- Asier
Title
Trying To Laugh At This
Animation Layers and Blend Trees
Trying To Laugh At This has opponents (“The Fears”). The Fears will fight you. Conversely, if you submit to The Fears, they will tell you a story about what they’re afraid of.
Concept Art of The Fear
I can use shaders to achieve a mysterious, fluid, layered surface to The Fear, but I need an animating mesh to apply it to.
Reference Image for Mesh - Shader FX
The Fears and the characters in their stories are not entirely on rails -- they are part of a simulation that responds to player input. I need an ai to drive their behavior. I also need to animate their behavior, possibly using custom mocap data.
The piece of this puzzle I took on this week was animating one third person player character myself. Several aspects were new to me. Here, I used a blend tree to fade between idle / walk rather than 2 separate states in the animator base layer. With more animation files, a blend tree could be super useful.
You can see how jump feels more lifelike and interesting than locomotion. This is because I’m using physics for jump but not for locomotion.
Here I use physics for player movement.
My next change was about layers. See how the animation halts when jump is introduced? I was curious if it’d feel better to layer jump with locomotion. Here I used additive/override animation layers and layer masks to apply jump and punch on top of locomotion. The wonkiness can be tuned out. I think this feels more lifelike (disabled double jump is a bug though… :/)
