claravr

After discussing essay topics in class, I’ve decided to take a philosophical approach. I want to create something with a significant thematic depth, not anything superficial or generic. This prompted me to begin compiling a list of potential questions, notes, and musings. An obvious selection could be Baudrillard’s Simulacra and its relation to simulations and the metaverse. In a lesson a few months back, when we were asked to come up with potential essay topics, I came up with something like to that, but now I feel it’s too obvious and simplistic. 

I’ve been conducting research through reading articles, listening to podcasts, and reading essays, and I’ve compiled a list of prospective themes:

 Could life be better in a virtual world? Ideally not run by one company,

Decentralised 

 Full of creations by different people

No limits to what you could be/do/have

Who needs the physical world

Advantages to spending much of life in a virtual world?

What if true reality is achieved?

Avatars beinging indistinguishable from the real person

Would it be easier to connect to people?

You wouldn’t have to travel, easier to meet and befriend people who have same interests as you

Better for environment?/ or will more people spend time online, meaning higher electricity usage?

Avatar manipulation? Could make you avatar more beautiful/ completely different to begin with – will there be laws around deception?

Will people intentionally make avatars to appeal to people? Eg will companies know your information and make avatars that look like you? Will this affect diversity?

Is there something about the real world that would be a shame to leave behind?

Metaverse/virtual realities could be genuine realities based on what we know/ think we know of material world

Our perception of the world is a highly embellished simulation of what’s going on, we perceive only a fraction of the info that’s available to us and from that our minds  create maps

Newtonian physics states that the world is made up of atoms, and atoms are made from empty space, yet why does this world feel so real?

What is knowable and how do we know what we think we know?

Possible to live in a virtual world without being a slave to someone else’s reality?

Questions on the nature of reality are old as Time, versions of these question have been found through the centuries. Ancient Chinese philosopher asked how do I know I’m noit just a butterfly dreaming I’m me and decorates said how do I know there’s not an evil demon fooling me into all of this being real. These days the question has been rehashed into, how do we know we’re not in a simulation? A contemporary analogue of the old questions

Simulation movies after computer interned, world on a wire the progenitor 

The world is changing a lot faster than that of previous periods, people are feeling ungrounded and we’re also in a period of existential confusion

The internet has built communities but also led to fragmentation

Philosophy has a central role in reflecting on technology 

Techno philosophy as a response to neuroscience philosophy (put forward by Patricia churchland) thinking about virtual realities can help us address a number of philosophical queestions on reality -what is reality, how can we know about it, how to live a good life,

David Chalmer’s thesis of his book claims that virtual reality is  a genuine reality, the objects within it are genuine entities eleven if they’re digital entities but a virtual reality is no less as  a genuine reality. We could be in a matrix like simulation, we can’t know for sure but there’s s significant probability we’re in such a simulation. However this doesn’t make our lives less meaningful as all of this is still real as it was before.

In the matrix living in the simulation is seen as bad, but David doesn’t think it’s bad because it’s a simulation, it’s bad becasue it’s a prison constructed by machines. A world in which we chose to enter ourselves and exert out autonomy within isn’t innately bad. What makes the matrix dystopian is that people were being controlled, but is that an inevitable outcome of living in a virtual world where you have increasingly less and less contact with base reality (whether or not we can ontologically agree that it exists) in order to move up the stack 

I’m talking about a computer simulation but the same philosophical tools that we use to open ourselves up to the possibility we’re living in a computer simulation are the same that we would use to open ourselves to the possibility that we’re living in a world created by a deity, Old Testament god etc and that’s partly how we can arrive to the realisation that we’re in a sense already living on a simulation. We only perceive a small portion of the physical world as it is, and our brains don’t merely fill in the gaps, they also what gives rise to the sense that we are conscious, we all are conscious but can’t quite know for sure what’s going on in someone else’s conscious experience therefore constitutes the type of conscious experience that would make someone a genuine person in reality 

These are the models I made:

Maya paint effects I used:

Lighting went fine – I didn’t want to add too many lights so I could have a quicker render. But when it came to seeing up I camera I struggled. My situation was made worse when Maya kept crashing due to my scene being too heavy. When I did test renders I realised the ocean shader I used for the fountain and body of water was not compatible with the Arnold renderers I changed it to one of the Arnold ai surface shaders with a water preset.

To make my terrain I got plane and made the surface bumpy and uneven with the transform tool. To make the water I got another plane and applied the ocean shader. I then found an image to use as the terrain’s texture, I gave it a pink tone to emphasis its otherworldliness. Much like my terrain the whole modelling process started off smoothly and gradually got bumpier.

For my fountain there were numerous options to do a liquid simulation, I decided to find one that my laptop would be able to handle. I went to curves, selected the ep curve and 3 cubic curve degree. I then went to surfaces  >revolve.

But when I went to press ‘revolve’ this happened.

I eventually got a shape I was happy with, but it was black, I tried flipping the mesh and adding an ocean shader but to no avail. I found out that using the side view and aligning the curve being drawn to the central part of the y axis was integral to getting the shape I wanted. I also had to convert it to a polygon then reverse the mesh.

It was fairly hard to place the fountain since its quite big, and my terrain’s very uneven, everywhere I placed it parts of it would be buried in the ground. To overcome this I went to the sculpting tools and used the flattening tool to flatten the land before I put my fountain on it.

I also got confused when the Torus which would function as a ring around a planet was too transparent no matter how much I changed its settings. I then found it it would render differently and look how I intended it to.

I encountered another problem when I wanted to put lightning between two shapes I modelled to function as lanterns/heaters. However the lightning would form in a strange way, it would curve out instead of being contained within the perimeter of the shapes.

After further research I concluded that this happened because of the irregularity of the shape. To overcome this I made two ‘dummy’ cubes and hid them inside the objects to get the lightning effect I wanted.

Another problem I had occurred while trying to model a bench curved like a C. No matter which way I rotated it, it would not bend in the way I intended. Apparently this was a lost cause, as Maya ’s bend tool is a bit outdated.

The largest problem I encountered was when I was modelling the bridge was when I was trying to align both parts. My mistake lied in the fact I made one half of my bridge curved, then copied and pasted the other half. No matter what the two pieces couldn’t align.

Therefore to get around this I simply rotated the other half of the bridge so they were identically positioned. It didn’t look the best but still worked.

All in all, the process went well and I learned plenty. I realised that I don’t have to rely on tutorials as I can work things out for myself – and learn better if I do so. Next time I think I will focus more on modelling high quality, detailed models rather than trying to make as many as possible. Doing things this way would introduce me to more tools and techniques, as at the moment it feels as if I am merely scratching the surface when it comes to Maya’s capacity.

The planning process went smoothly. At first I took the brief of a perfect holiday destination too literally, I was brainstorming places I’d like to visit such as forests and gardens. However on second thought I realised how restricting this was, it meant I had to come up with a realistic place and not take the opportunity to be imaginative and original. After coming to this conclusion I was back to the drawing board, I realised I didn’t have to stray too far from my original idea while also being experimental. The eventual choice I made was to model an Alien garden. I quite liked the challenge of making things appear otherworldly yet recognisable in terms of their functionality. I had some initial thoughts of using deformers and unconventional textures to allude to the alien theme, but I thought it too simple. This led me to imagine things Aliens might have in their garden, And I eventually came up with a backstory in which to model my environment around. 

The beings that pace these lands value peace and tranquility. This is a result of them being a far more ancient civilisation than earth, and therefore are significantly more evolved, mentally and spiritually. I felt like reflecting this was my priority. I liked the idea of water features and to reflect the feeling of harmony, and impressive energy harvesting totems to reflect themes of common good and interconnectedness. The society in which the inhabitants live is a collectivist culture with a strong emphasis on community, leading me to add group spaces in which the beings could congregate as well as solitary spaces to promote meditation and contemplation. The planet in which the garden is located had previously plagued by war during decades of totalitarian control, having such an effect, that the society that it is now decidedly politically peaceful, having many allyships and bilateral trade agreements with neighbouring planets, therefore there’s plenty of interplanetary tourism. To hint at this I added spacecraft, however I had reservations about adding them as I felt as if they might disturb the visual harmony but eventually decided their presence would add depth to the narrative.

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Overall I am quite happy with the outcome of my scene. Although there are some lingering issues. When I built and viewed my project in VR for the first time, the first scene at the tube station has a lot of flickering in some areas of the building. The one common traits amongst the flickering parts is that they were all black. Of course correlation does not always correspond to causation, and despite having no explanation for it being the case, I can’t help but wonder whether this is the reason – although real research is needed. It could also be related to the type of material used in the model. In the coming days I will investigate further and come to a proper conclusion to avoid similar issues in the future.

For my next project I will spend more time searching for 3D models, as I don’t think my project performed as well is it could visually. Aesthetic wise it was quite all over the place – there was a large variety of visual styles and at varying quality. This meant there was not much consistency in the appearance of my visuals. There was a beautiful and intricately modelled and textured tube tunnel one second and very simple and visually unappealing buildings the next and due to the fact that my past discipline was artistic, this pains me. I’ve heard that you potentially colour grade unity projects somehow, and if possible I’d definitely do that in the future to help tie all elements of the project together and make a far more pleasing environment in addition to of course using models of a similar quality. I feel as if there’s little point in getting immersed somewhere you don’t want to be, therefore I want to make my scenes as visually appealing as possible. I have fantasies of one day building in Unity an environment with a consistent stylised aesthetic and visual language, but in order to do so I will have to design everything then model it in Maya. I look forward to being proficient enough make something to appease my artistic standards.

For my next project I think I’ll be in a far better position because I have a better understanding of project management. I know the elements of a project; what goes into it and roughly the time it takes to implement each part. For example, at first I had no sense of how long it would take me to write each script and admittedly this had tempted me to bee less ambitious with what I wanted achieve, solely because I was too scared to try something I was wholly unfamiliar with and didn’t want the feeling of inadequacy everyone gets when they’re learning something new. I have also noticed how difficult and time consuming to make a game that flows perfectly and efficiently. Coding meant a lot of researching, and there are many ways of accomplishing a goal, and I’ve found that some styles can make a game faster and some slower. Thankfully this term I have really surprised myself and learned what I am capable of. I have a better grasp of how long it takes me to learn something by taking into account my strengths and weaknesses in multiple components of Unity. This means in the future I can plan projects in a more effective manner and ensure my workflow is as efficient as possible. The majority of this project was built quite late just because of the steep learning curve I encountered and hadn’t anticipated.

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I firstly added a tube tunnel to my scene, added lights, then multiplied the both the tunnel and lights separate times to create one long tunnel. I then added waypoints and a mouth to go at the end of the tunnel. Then I added the bedroom at the end, and the buildings and terrain as part of my end scene. In my storyboard I originally had the intention of a finale taking place on top of a skyscraper while fireworks were set off. I then realised that this would be a bit too complicated as I needed to many 3D models for what I had planned, which had the potential of causing the scene to be slow.

The tube station I downloaded originally as a Blender file, I then converted it to FBX and imported it into my scene. Each other model was an FBX so I textured them with their pre-made textures or textured them myself by making new materials and assigning colours to them (this was the case for many of the skyscrapers I downloaded). I added these skyscrapers to the scene in order to surround the camera at the end and hide the unity background to ensure the user doesn’t get distracted from the experience to maintain a sense of presence. I also think that the large sense of scale will be impressive to the user, and capitalises on VR’s strengths as a medium.

To help facilitate a greater sense of presence in the music video I focused a lot on the timing with the song. I tried to time the explosions in my video with the music, as well as speeding up and slowing down the speed of the camera with the tempo of the song. This however wasn’t always the case, as in parts of the video I intentionally slowed it down or sped it up for the sake of practicality. For example, when the camera goes through the bedroom I slowed down the camera speed, as the bedroom was very small and at would take only a split second to pass through, meaning the viewer wouldn’t be able to see the room properly nor register the animated character. Once slowed down the camera passed through the room at a far more pleasing pace, ensuring the viewer can properly take in the scene.

I Chose the song ‘Headz gone West’ by Nia Archives. The lyrics are short and succinct yet paint a great picture of a restless headspace. I wanted to embrace that with my music video.

Link to Padlet:

https://padlet.com/clarachilderley/9yrbet23snqb37b

I will start the process by finding the assets I’ll need. At first I had the idea to model some myself, I then however realised that it would be a bit too ambitious to do so.

Model I need:

Tube station, tube train, tube tunnel, woman, mouth, buildings, grass terrain.

The main problem I had is finding a good black woman model, it seemed like I exhausted all measures to find one. I eventually went to ‘Makehuman’ to make my own 3D character model but it didn’t seem right. Just as I had begun to think my efforts were in vain I remembered the existence of ‘Mixamo’. I found a great model on there which I will use in my music video.

After showing my storyboard to the class and tutors I was happy with the feedback I got; the main words of guidance being that I need to be careful when it comes to the speed of the camera movement, as if it’s any quicker than what the view can bear, it will initiate the onset of motion sickness – something I myself struggle with. Therefore while setting the speed of the camera I will remain sensitive to the pace I think myself and others will be able to handle.

Low poly involves using a low number of polygons in a 3D model. They are used primarily for their fast render speed.

Follow through and overlapping

The action of Follow Through and Overlapping refers to two closely related techniques which help to ensure movement has realism to it, and to make sure it seems as if the objects and characters abide by the laws of physics, including the principle of inertia.

Follow Through is the idea that loosely connected parts of a body or object will continue moving after the character has stopped.

Overlapping Action is a similar idea in that it describes how different parts of a body or object tend to move at different rates.

Arcs

Arc is the movement in circular paths.

Human beings do not move in one straight direction. They move in arcs. In the same way, the arc technique is to help animation create that illusion of movement.

Without arcs, the animation will look stiff and mechanical.

Slow in slow out

Slow in slow out is when an object or character in an animation starts its movement slow, gains speed, then decelerates. This is so that that the beginning and end of the movement is softened.

Georges Melie was well known for his use of special effects, he popularised techniques such as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, and hand painted colour on screens.

His most notable work would be Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A trip to the moon) from 1902. It is considered the first film with visual effects, audience members were astonished at the time 

Animation has since evolved, and with the technological advancements of the latter half of the 20th century, a new kind of animation was born.

In 1972 a film released entitled ‘A computer animated hand’ by Edwin Catmull and Frederic Parke. It was the world’s first 3D rendered film, it shows how a mold was made of Ed’s hand, on which polygons were very precisely drawn and measured.

The pioneering techniques used are the basis for 3D rendering we still use today in video games, movies, and special effects.

Despite the many advantages of this emerging medium, some were still sceptical that it could ever overtake hand-drawn animation.

Pros

Cons

• Limited imagination – 3D is tricky to stylise compared to the vast array of styles that can be created in 2D. There is a reason that most 3D animated characters have a similar style. You are somewhat limited by the rig when creating a character. 
• A bigger investment – 2D animation can be a lot cheaper than 3D animation. This is mainly due to the advancements in software meaning not all animation needs to be drawn frame by frame, therefore reducing production time and in turn costs. 
• Slower to make than 2D animation
• More complicated – There are several elements involved in making a 3D animation that complicate the process compared to 2D animation. When making a 2D animation, you design the characters and animate them. When working in 3D you need to model the character, animate the character, add lightning and create textures before you are able to see a glimpse of what the final animation will look like. It is a time consuming process and requires a lot of computer power to produce. 
• Software – The software used to create 2D animation is not as draining for your machines as 3D animation software. You won’t need a huge render farm with beefy graphics cards to run the software, although it would make renders fly. 
• Long lead times – Before you even get to see your character there is a lot of work involved which results in longer lead times.
• 2D animations seem to be more story orientated. When working with 3D objects, it is easier to get the ‘wow factor’ with sweeping camera moves and powerful effects, but this can sometimes distract from the story or more intimate moments.