Dream Team Death Machine

Will :

I finished modeling the introduction to dream which is the mineshaft. It is modeled after Langford because we have read in studies that suggest to make someone feel comfortable it is important to be in an environment that is somewhat familiar. I have spent my time the past week learning ableton and producing sounds and looping scores that help amplify the moods. I also began a search for the Oculus and which led me to start communication with the head of the co SCi department, he approved us for being able to use the Oculus rift which solves a major problem in our group, I also created a production schedule for each person for the rest of the semester

Tomas:

Mae:

This week, I’ve finished two models for a twisty tree which will be in our environment. I remade one model when we realized the first version was too high-poly, then modeled another tree in a similar fashion. I’ve also researched psychological papers about VR, visuals, and mood induction which could offer us some help with making our animation more immersive. Findings in the papers included studies on what is necessary to make a user experience presence in a virtual environment. Both involvement (brought about by focusing one’s attention on a set of stimuli) and immersion (characterized by interacting with, and feeling enveloped by, a VE) are necessary for experiencing presence. If this study is correct, we need to ensure that our virtual environment is both attention-catching and interactive enough to produce a feeling of presence. Another study backs up the necessity for interacting with the environment - if responses from the environment are similar to those in the real-world environment in which the viewer’s perceptual system evolved, the virtual world will feel real to the viewer. If done successfully, a key result of presence is that a person remembers the VE as a place rather than a set of pictures. This should be our goal throughout testing of our environment. Another interesting study found a positive correlation between body movement and a feeling of presence - in a VE portraying an area with plants, some of which had leaves with discolored undersides. Subjects were given the task of counting the diseased plants. For half the subjects, the plants could be easily seen at eye level while standing; for the other half, the subjects had to move their bodies to see the undersides of the leaves. The study resulted in a highly significant effect for body movement on the user’s sense of presence and vividness. This suggests that we are on the right track when we have areas in our environment which facilitate head movement (for example, the cave has twists and turns rather than just being a straight, easily-navigable path), and indicates that the more we elicit user movement, the more immersed they will feel. Additionally, a different study consisted of testing users’ level of presence in three virtual environments (each a park manipulated through sound, music, shadow,  light, and textures). One park was modified to induce anxiety, one to induce relaxation, and one neutral park used as a control. The data showed that the level of presence was significantly higher in the anxious and relaxing parks as compared to the neutral park. This suggests that while the viewers of our environment may feel less present in the first, shortest bedroom scene (“neutral” emotions), by modifying our cave scene to be as anxiety-inducing as possible, and the field scene to be as relaxing as possible (through music, shadows, etc) we will ensure that our viewers have as high a sense of presence as possible. A final study found attempts to modify users’ emotions through a change from an “sad” virtual environment to a “joyful” environment to be successful, so our attempts to bring our viewers on an emotional journey as they venture throughout our scenes is definitely viable.

Sabrina:

This week, I worked with designing/modeling the columns and also the building that are based off the same concept. I also modeled the wheat figure that will be placed in the field. The column and building was a lot of just playing around with the edges of the model, resizing and enlarging them. And same with the wheat. It was difficult to start on the wheat, because of its unusual shape and I found the easiest way to start with was with the sphere.

On the production schedule, it says that I will still be modeling for the next two weeks. However, I finished modeling everything so I am going to start playing around with substance painter and UV unwrapping and placing textures in maya. And if there are still some models that need to be placed in the VR last minute, I will work on finishing touches and more details.

Ara:

Serpent Animation:

The animation for the serpent were originally too rigid because I used a regular rig with joint controls to animate it. This time around, I explored using an inverse kinematic spline to animate the serpent. The first animation achieved the fluidity which I desired, but it did not loop properly. The next animation had too many joints and was a step backwards in fluidity. The Final animation moves and loops fluidly, I found that using a small number of control vertexes in my IK spline was the best choice for achieving a high level of control over fluid movements.

VIDEO LINK

You Jin:

Flowing Islands -There are three kinds of looks for flowing islands. They are model assets for the environment and going to flow in the sky to give dreamy and mysterious feelings to animation. These are started from cube model and extrude faces and move and rotate with vertex of model. One is simple looking island, other one is heavily reference from the concept art to be close, and last one is randomly model but close to concept art for unity. The difficulty for these modeling is how to shape islands differently for each. Overall, it isn’t much harder than others.

Taylor:

Since last Monday, I have finished “dressing” the cave with vegetation.  I still have a few key assets to place, but all in all, it is mostly assembled.  Additionally, I have been working on lighting the cave.  Initially, I was going to limit the lights in the scene.  Then, after last Monday, after Josh suggested that we instead attached a light to the player as they navigate through the scene,  I started looking into that, as I assumed that one light would take less computational power to process than several throughout the cave.  After talking to Ben, however, it learned that all of the lighting could be baked into the scene.  This would be much less computationally expensive than attaching a light to the player, as that would require constant real time rendering as the play moved through the cave with the dynamic lighting.

I also learned that an even more computationally “cheap” method of lighting a scene is through the use of emissive surfaces.  That being the case, I made all of the walls of the cave emissive.  This makes it appear lit, and it should also cut down on the amount of computational power required to render the scene.