Apollo Journey

Building VR simulations.

Internship assignment

Apollo Journey is a company that wants to grow more and bind new stakeholders to the company. To realize this growth, it is necessary that they promote their company more. I had the chance to do a business promotion assignment where I build a prototype for a VR simulation with gamification elements. This prototype can be used to show new customers what VR can do and what you can achieve by letting the customer experience it. This will help Apollo gain more recognition and easily bind new upcoming stakeholders to the company.

The end result

Research & Ideas

You can check out all my research, devlogs and everything about the project at a different website. Link here below ( it is in Dutch, sorry! ).

https://sites.google.com/view/eindstage-jordy-bushoff/homepage

I will develop a VR simulation by building an interactive VR experience where I will build the Apollo journey to Mars with interactive situations and puzzles. This idea came from the name of Apollo Journey. It fits the situation and company perfectly.

Having a playable prototype, that is the assignment and that's what I want to achieve. I want to explore what VR brings to simulation/game design and creating interactions with 3D assets. I'm going to discover the world of VR and how I can create it myself with programming and 3D assets for prototype purposes.

Design approach

Design document

You can check out the design document in the link below. ( sorry it is in dutch )

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRKxVSHd57W0ryoKRzzE8IB_Yx-tR33tR7Gj1BaYFtbhChW9oS3m4eBOaxbQqxJFw/pub

Art style document

You can check out the art style document in the link below. ( sorry it is in dutch )

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSQJ4qU1jRIEgOGUmFp_rFzmFGMH7i_2hO2g_ex3HNk9o23-YsvmqBjIIsbRH_jSw/pub

It was time to make a scene after the research and defining of the art style to try things out. I had to keep in mind that the game would be run on the oculus 1 and 2. That ment they were for android. This ment that I must be carefull in how much I can use and how I build my 3D models. I have a limit on what I can place in the world that I want to create.

Storyboard

I indicated to Apollo Journey that I like to first come up with my own vision and then discuss this with several people from the company. This was agreed and I then started working on the storyboard. Through my research such as tell a story, sell your vision, add relevant images, get to the point, research your audience, set goals for your presentation and ensure a professional but approachable attitude during the presentation, I was able to focus on the preparing the presentation and storyboard.

I had already laid everything out on the pool table in preparation. I laid out the storyline neatly from start to finish. When we were still collecting people, others had already taken the time to look at them, grab some picctures and lookedat them closely and then put them back. When everyone was present I started my presentation. I knew through my research that I had to maintain a professional yet approachable demeanor during the presentation. This made sure I went through my story and moments and made sure that they could also ask questions and we could discuss it together. We continued with my presentation like this until we had gone through everything.

Here above you can see the final chosen storyboard of the project formed at the end of the presentation and discussion. We also discussed the different scenes that would be there and so we formed the top row, as scene 1, and the bottom row, as scene 2.

Shaders

You can check out the devlog about the shaders in the link below. ( sorry it is in dutch )

https://sites.google.com/view/eindstage-jordy-bushoff/devlog/gebruik-van-shaders

Enviroment shader

The Artist of the company tolled me it would be nice to implement an enviroment shader to the world. It would be cool if there would be sand on the rocks and all the models in the world, because there are sandstorms on mars. Thats when I begun working on it. We even made it so that there was sand on the tops of the mountains to make the scene more natural and lifely

Without the shader.

With the shader.

Clouds shader

I first made the clouds as a particle system. But this was not great and I wanted to see if shaders could help make it much better.

Acting as one of the characters in the simulation

I wanted to be the actor for the communicator at earth. I thought it was funny and it gave a nice touch to the videos that the player was watching in this simulation.