Scene was set in forest, our main character is very lonely because she is the only one left of her species, so she couldn’t show herself to other animals or people. She looks at bears, they are busy looking for food, she looks at birds, they are feeding their children, seems like everyone is busy about doing their own things. As time passes, her mood starts to effect the forest’s health, trees are starting to die, animals starts to think what is happening? (not finished)
Final idea
I kind of changed the whole idea of the story, because I think it’s kind of impossible for me to finish it, so I changed it to a much simpler version, and I did a very rough sketch:
The story is basiclly the main character is having a walk in the forest, and suddently realised that she’s late for something, so she she starts to run, after nearly tripped over twice, she woke up on the table in school/home.
I did rigging several times and this is the best one I get out of all of it.
I struggled when adding on the controllers, I looked up many videos on YouTube and other viedo websites, many of them are talking about very basic controllers that only tells you how to create a controller from bottom to the top, so I spend a while try to create other parts, but it didn’t work well, therefore I went back to YouTube and thankfully I found a video that’s doing a character controllers, which helpped me to add on the shoulders and hands.
Mixamo testing
I also put her into Mixamo and had a play around with different animations.
I import it into maya, the clothes are effected, it’s pierced into other part of the model.
After a bit of playing around, I started to make my own animation, here is the first time tried:
Overall I think this is not bad, but I’m going to make the motion slower. In this video, I’m working in 25 frames, so I will add more frames to make the motion more fluent.
Here is the final walking scene which I’m really appreciate with:
this is the first version of enviroment
I did it all in low poly, so it’s easier and match the character as well.
Animation
Final animation
I couldn’t export the animation from Maya, therefroe it’s very blurry, I tried to find out why it’s not working for around 2 hours.
I’m really interested in the project as we are developing a character ourselves. Fantasy is always the first thing that jumps into my mind before I even start my brain storming about that I might do, and this time I decided to follow the steps of our first project we did in Virtual Principle. As I did an enviroment about trees and lake in the first project, I want to make this avatar an elf (Something links to trees or forests)?
Some changes..
AS the week passes, I noticed that I want it to become closer to reality while still keeping the features of elf, therefore I made the clothes simpler, more like somthing that we will be wearing in reality. (Also becasue making a huge dress is probably too much for me right now? I don’t think it’s going to come out nicely, when doing the animation it will probably go wrong as well…)
Modelling
I started the character in Maya, it was alright until I start to model the hair.
The first time I modelled the hair right from the model of the body, and when I make the model smooth (by clicking 3 on keyboard), the hair looks like spikes instead of hair, so I found some help from YouTube, “simple character modelling”, it tells me to copy paste the scalp and model the hair from there, and it was alright. (forgot to take photos of the hair when modelling)
Spent a lot of time just looking at what is virtual reality and how I want to link it to other topics, have thought about talking about the future, but I feel like it’s hard to find evidence to support the point, because it is about future and no one can predict the future.
Accidently found an articale about VR and geography, it’s talking about how google map is using the ability of VR to get the street view and the agmented reality skills when using google map and walking to somewhere and you can turn on the camera on your phone and it will have the direction on your phone sceen. I found this quite interesting, and also thought that as VR is a immersive world, so it must be used in geography to improve either teaching or exploring the field sites.
Tried to find an ebook of Virtual reality in geography, but it’s so hard! Most of the websites are just a summery of the book rather than the original copy. And one of the website ask me for 80 pounds for the paper copy of the book!
I think this city operations is a little bit off track of what I’m researching..? Did quite a lot on that but figure out that I don’t know how I can connect this together..
In the end, I don’t feel like this is the best ability that I can show with this project, because I kind of pushed the date of working a lot, I feel a bit hurried in the end and the accident with the computer is even worse with the time that I have got. During the time that I’m creating the objects, my maya has craushed a lot, I think it’s because there are too much pieces in it.
However, I do like the tree trunk that I made the first time because it has much more tension than the second one, eg the branches are much larger and the whole tree is much higher quality. The proudest object is my leaves, I spend a lot of time on it, but it went wrong many times, I tried to start with a cube, adding edge loops on it, but I can’t use every vertex, there’s always a lot of useless vertexes.
Near the end, I rushed for making low poly trees and bushes to put into the scene, I think that doesn’t suit together at all, their number of faces differs too much, and the colours are also very simple. I think I made my life hard when I realised that my files are gone, I should just go for a low poly world, in this case, at least I will have time to make other buildings and they will match together, rather than the environment I have now.
During this project, I feel I’m much more confident with maya and can proficiently save and export UV maps, not like this time, I always have to go back and check which file type do I need to export from Photoshop in order for MAYA to accept it in the right form.
At the moment, I don’t feel like I’m in the working zone, but hopefully the working flow will come back to me. I think I’m still not familiar enough with MAYA, I still have to go on YouTube a lot to look for roughly how to make something and this is really taking time, but I believe in time I will get very used to it.
The first modelling project I made when I first come across MAYA is a treasure chest that we started during our first MAYA lesson. I find it very interesting and fun to play around with 3D shapes and objects, as I have used other adobe software such as Photoshop, I think MAYA is not too hard too get start.
There’s also a challenge modelling we can do in our free time which involves some side cuts and smooth faces. I find the smooth faces hard to build because I didn’t know how to make a certain part of the object smooth, I know there is a way but not sure which key I should click or which technique I can use to do it.
Now I’m starting to build my environment. I decide to start with the tree in the middle as it is the main object in the environment. At first, I had no idea about where to start, so I went onto YouTube to see how other people is building it, some of them started with a cylinder, adding more and more slices to make the tree looks realistic, but most of them started with a cube, what we were told was to start with a cube as well, therefore after the “research” of where to start the tree, I decide to start with a cube.
I pulled up the height of the tree trunk, added branches and some roots. I extrude the faces from the cube, pressing 2 on keyboard to make it smooth.
I wish I changed the way that I’m building it, it’s taking so long, and when I turn back to the cube, the shape is twistes, I’m not sure how I can cut out the UV map with this strange shape…
I decide to keep going with it, it will figure out when I’m doing it.
It’s all twisted
After the tree trunk and roots and branches are finished, I started to look at the ground, but it’s kind of just a plane adding on textures and shades.
Leaf
Leaves are so hard, I tried to draw on a UV map of a plane, the front is ok, but the back is black, the coloured side is front, the black bits is the back of another plane.
This is the leaf I used, I croped it out and draw out the branches, then put them on.
Then I tried anouther way:
I created a cube and made it very thin, did another UV map, this time I didn’t draw, I just used an image online, cut it out from photoshop. I left the empty part clear, but it didn’t work as well, I added the image of the leaves to both side of the UV map and make them stay on top of eachother si that they are not black on the other side. But the surface of the cube is shiny in certain angle.
I decide to make the shape of the leaves and branches.
I can’t remember what I did exactly with the shape, because I was fellowing a video, it told me a way of marking out the outline of the shape, then the mash object will appear the shape I marked out, after that I edited a bit with the thickness.
I’m very happy with this outcome, however it’s been separated into many parts.
Ground
In hypershade, I turned transparent up, to make the plane see through, change the colour to make it look like water.
Single leaf
I also decide to make a single leaf, for animation, the leaf will be fulling down and flow on water.
I stared with a cube, by doing extruding and selecting vertex to make the leaf more realistic. I used the leaf that I was using for branches because it was already cut out.
Accident
My kitten accidently nocked over a cup and poured water over my computer, some of the files I didn’t upload to google drive or having another backup, so I started making modles again.
This time I decide to just make the tree with a six sided shape to quickly pull it up and get the branches on it, this time I did something different from last time, when I extrude shapes, I reduce the surface first then extrude out the shape.
I tried to make it more realistic so it can match the leaves I made before, I still have the file of leaves because I had some problems when making it, so I send it to my friend to have a look at what was wrong. I used the texture of a tree.
I separated the UV map into 6 parts, I was trying to cut more pieces because some of them are too small to paint with UV map, but it won’t cut off I’m not sure why that was.
I added the leaves onto the tree trunk, half way through it, maya remind me that it is out of coch playback memory, but I’m not sure what that is, and it’s stopping me from keep working, it’s also so much slower than earlier, so I was stuck with puting leaves on for a while. In the end I made the leaves largerso there won’t be that many pieces in the scene, I also found out a way to turn off coch playback.
I then started to build some low poly trees and bushes lying around the scene.
For this project, I kind of have an exact image in my mind, because I did a photography project about ”ClassicofMountainsandRivers“, it’s a book that’s recorded with different creatures, for example the most famous monster in China: Nian, when I was young, I was told when new year come, people blow fireworks is to scare away monster Nian. So for my photography projectthen, I was thinking about creating one or more creatures of my own by photoshopping, give them a story, and show the story in the image.
This is one of my favorite image from that serie, because I really like foxes especaily fennec fox, their huge ears are so cute. This is my original idea of how my environment look like.
Then I went to search for more inspiration images that might give me an idea of more exact looking of the environment, so I created a padlet (moodborad?)
This is a part of the board with some explainations on, talking about why I have collected these images, why they insspire me with the project.
At this point, I’m quit clear with what I want to make in the world. I think most of the world is just in the woods, the only difference is the ground is water like the image on the bottom right, the city on water, people and creatures can walk on top of it, but also are able to dive into the water.
over this semester, I have learnt about what is VR, what it can do and where it could be used. Before coming onto this course, I was still a little bit unsure about what is the differences between VR and AR, but now I’m clear with which is which. During the course except for the theories, I have to get in touch with many different software such as After Effects and unity. I really like the course and enjoyed it very much, I find most of the software alright to get o with work except for After Effect, I just find this so complicated to add different things but I did manage to overcome it by doing the 360 filmmaking project in my team, the process took me a huge amount of time although in the outcome it doesn’t seem a lot.
I really enjoyed Learning and exploring Unity, because I know it is software for making games and the project that we are actually working on is creating a space of our own and we are allowed to run around in it. Unity is one of that software that once you get familiar with it is very easy to use for me. I was sick of the introduction to unity, but I did catch up in the next lesson. During the project, I was more familiar with the tools and did create some very simple objects in unity, and played around with the terrain, making different environments whilst working on the project. For Unity, I think the challenge was I choose to build a huge park, I had to add in so many trees to make it look full, it really took me a long time to do and this makes me wonder if there is a quicker way to add things into the frame other than pulling it up one by one, because the terrain was in different height, therefore I can’t duplicate multiple objects and move them to another place.
Spark AR is a very fun software to play with because there are so many different things that it could do. It’s also software that is very close to our life because almost everyone has Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat etc, and all of them have AR filters on, so it’s kind of making sense of what I’m doing in each step. It was the same thing as unity, once I get used to this, it just turns much easier on what I should do and kind of know if I do this what will happen. But I don’t like the patch part, it was messing me up with which part of the system is right, where I should change, and what can I keep. I think I spend most of my time figuring out how to make the mask open from the middle and show the inside of the avatar. I know how to use Photoshop from my A-level photography course, so this gives me a chance to make a short cut on creating the masks.
I never thought clipping video software can be so hard to understand. After the lesson when I first opened it at home I was blank already and it hasn’t been much time. I couldn’t remember anything from the lesson and from that point I decide to make notes with my phone about different software just in case this happens again. During the project, I looked through several videos and a lot of them are a different version to mine, some buttons are in different places, and it was such a mess in my opinion. However, I did try my best to work with it, I was trying to put some 3D texts and arrows into the 360 videos, but by the end of the interface filter, I was so exhausted, and decide to leave it like that for this time. But if we have to use it again, I will try my best to explore more techniques and still remember to take notes in the lesson.
I’m currently taking notes in most of the technical lessons and in most of the lessons I am able to follow the speed whilst making the change on the computer and noting down each step and what they do. Learning about other Adobe softwares can really help with learing other similar softwares, because many of them have the same keys for doing the same sort of actions in software.
First I went online to find the face mesh template, opened it in PS, and draw what I’m thinking to put onto my avatar. I was stuck at the beginning for a while because there are so much different AR that I could make, but as I’m watching IT, it gives me the idea of maskes.
I drew two masks and thinking about how I can make both of them be seen by people, so I went to Youtube to watch a lot of spark AR tutorials on what it can do.
I know I want to make the masks move when the person opens their mouth, so I specifically looked at how to make the filter move when mouth moves and I did find a lot of interesting videos.
I remembered how to add patch and making the filter move with different facial expression, i started to create the links to make the filters move. It was not a nice time!
In the end I did managed to do what I hoped for, and I did get some help from a friend who is better than me at create filters.
