Midterm VR
The Enchanted Forest
Meera Almheiri
The Proposal
To know what I wanted to do for this project the first thing I did was go over what I have done so far. I looked over our weekly workshop and focused on the specific elements that I was able to create for my classes. I’m not sure if the conclusion I came to was because of using unity as my tool of creating or if it was because of me, however while analyzing the skills I learned I found an ongoing theme in my weekly workshop. It seems that I unintentionally aim to create atmospheres in my work. I try to provoke emotion with my spaces. The spaces might seem minimal and sparse, however, each space embodies a different character and forces you to feel different energies and intentions built with it. This sparked my curiosity on what we define world building to be, if we looked at my work so far you would define it as building an atmosphere. However, for this project I wanted to create a story within the atmospheres that I like to build . Recently I have been watching a show called Once Upon a time. The show is based on Disney princesses and Disney characters, where all these characters coexist and their storylines cross paths. The TV show uses a lot of green screens to be able to display this “whole New World '' ( pun intended). This inspired me to recreate the enchanted forest that is in the show. This idea aligns with creating atmospheres, since it relies on evoking a magical experience and emotion for the audience. In addition, I am able to explore my skills within that world since it is fictional and leaves room for creativity or lack thereof. Though the inspiration seems specific, I do not aim to recreate the world exactly as I have seen in the show. The show remains an inspiration, I want to create my own enchanted forest but it will be based on similar ideas in the show. The space is not strictly a forest, my approach is to make a wide landscape that includes a forest, a castle and other little details. This way the player/ audience feels as though they are truly inside this magical world.
Story Board
For this project I want to create a large landscape and aim to split it into small parts. The first part in the one that might carry the most detail would probably be the evil queen's castle. In this castle I want to be able to recreate the dark and scary emotion that the evil queen emits. I also wanna include details from her story such as the talking mirror, and for that I would use a screen displaying a video. I would also need to include themes like dark antiques and potions and swords to show that she is evil. Then next part I would be working on the enchanted forest where Snow White resides. I would have to include the seven elves to create details showing the forest as earthy, welcoming and mystical. Outside of the forest I would include a little heart where the red riding hood and her grandmother reside and maybe a little wolf.
For the landscape I want to use trains to show a natural feel of the land, and the trees in the castle and antiques I can use 3-D models. As for the characters and their animation I would have to find the closest way of inviting their characters if I am not able to find their exact match. This might be a way for me to experiment with building characters and 3D models of them. I am using this map as an inspiration to see how I want the overall landscape to look like .
CLASS COMMENTS :
Name : Pauline Wee Comment: This looks awesome!! I love the Snow White concept, but you might have a bit of trouble getting super high quality assets. I suggest that you focus on one or two core scenes that you think might be doable!
Name : Theyab Comment : The idea is really nice but it would require a-lot of modeling and getting assets so that you can create your map that you want.
Name : Cole comment: I really like the concept and theme you are going for. I worry that maybe it is a bit ambitious as there are a lot of different places that will require assets on your map. Maybe focus on just one are to make it more in depth!
Name: Shaikha Comment: i really love the idea of co-existing storylines happening at once! i think it would really capture the user's interest and invite them to discover the different places. I think you could really take advantage of the stark contrast between the areas and experiment a lot with sounds and atmospheric feel.
Name: Phillip Comment: The concept of doing different scenes in a big forest is really intriguing! But as others have suggested, the work required to find and fine-tune the appropriate objects and buildings, especially the building interiors, is gonna take time. I would say smaller houses maybe and focus more in the outdoors?
Name: Jannah- I absolutely love the concept and idea for this. The storyboard was very interesting alone, so I can't imagine how fun it would be to explore in VR! I also think that the asset store will be very useful for this project as there are many elements- notably the nature ones- already in the asset store.
Name: Jiapei Comment: I love the idea of creating an enchanting forest! It seems that this might requires a lot of work to build so many scenes. But looking forward to your final work!
Aakarsh: I love the enchanted mirror idea! As everyone said maybe getting 1:1 assets for disney might be hard but I feel like the limitations that it;'ll place might lead to something really new and intresting (maybe a low poly disney? hyper-real shader disney? etc.)
Wendy: The storyboard is like a map but I am not sure whether building the whole forest is too overwhelming with so much details.
Douglas: I think it's a awesome idea, it is always very challenging to have several storylines that goes together, and it could also be a little bit difficult to find all the assets you need, but if you can solve these two problems, it will be such a good work.
Oliver: There are lots of elements in your scene which can make your project grandiose. And the storyboard looks like a map of an amusement park. I am looking forward to explore your wonder land. However, it may be difficult to find all these models or prefabs in similar style. Moreover, it will be good if you can add more interactive part in your scene.
Documentation and Final Result :
After a lot of thought, i realized that i should work on making one cocnept rather than multiple concepts within one. Therefore, i began to work on Alice in Wonderland MAZE. The started out by manually building the balck and white tile floors. After that i began by finding a 3D MAZE. After downloading the maze, the project slowly started to feel like it was coming together. From there, I added color to the maze, it self, and downloaded a skybox from the assest store. I changed the sound like color because I was inspired from a guest speaker we had talked about shaders. I’m playing with sunlight color. I made the color pink, so it adds a soft Alice in the wonderland
element. I thought I would finalize the game by adding the first person player, however, my game felt a little bit empty. I started experimenting with animation. And Alice in the wonderland there are characters made out of cards. I thought it would be interesting to see these characters implemented in the game a little bit. I went on sketch, fab, and searched for characters similar. I couldn’t find exactly what I envisioned, but I found these very eerie card enemy model. I decided they fit into the theme I was going for and I added them to my game. Adding animation to these two models was difficult. since these models do not have distinct, elbows and knees, the automation was not adapting to the model properly. The animation made the model look like it was walking backwards. I came up with the idea that I should add the animation to the back of the model and luckily that seem to work.
Another difficulty I faced was stopping my first person player from sinking into my game, I looked at a lot of tutorials on how to work with mesh collider’s ,box collider’s, and any collider feature. Eventually, I realize that the maze I downloaded was the reason my first player was sinking so I decided to trace the download maze and build my own using cubes from unity. I added a soundtrack that felt the most appropriate. The theme I went for, was mysterious ,eerie, with a hint of magical. My project was almost done. I wanted to just experiment with one last thing, Terrains. I tried the Terrains to see if they make sense in the game, and in my opinion they did. The game felt a little sterile and empty without the mountains. I added texture and rockiness to these mountains so they seem and look more real. I also downloaded clouds that look fake since the whole game looks very animated . finally the last touch that I added was a few more trees around the maze to put everything together.