In the first term of my virtual reality course at UAL I was introduced to three main artefacts that I would have to complete in class and then finish off in my own time outside of class. For these three artefacts I would have to combine different skills that I had learnt and use a couple of different softwares that we had gone through in lessons.
The first artefact that we started was the 360 virtual world, where we had to film a variety of different locations around the LCC campus with a Theta 360 camera which meant with each shot whilst you viewed them you would see them as 360 pictures. This was very different to what we are normally used to especially me because this was the first time that I had ever used a camera like this so initially when started I was confused as to how to use it but then I realised it’s just a camera that has two separate lenses that can capture every bit of the environment that I was in, then take the separate pictures and “stitches” them back together to create one seamless single image that you can rotate 360 degrees around in every direction and the image is still there. Our group idea was to create a visual tour around the LCC building through a series of 360 “gateways” that before you entered through them you would have to choose the next destination and once you got to that location you would be able to look around, there would be a some information about that certain location and then another option to move forward through the tour or go back to the previous location. Whilst actually filming that location throughout the campus we realised that we would not be able to get all the locations that we wanted and that with the amount of locations and options that we had planned to include it would just not be feasible to create this idea so we cut the number of 360 pictures by half, that we would only have 3 main locations and from there we would be able to choose any options/destinations that we still kept. As a group of three we performed and work really well together, I feel that at the start of the project when we where figuring out what the idea was there were some disagreements on how and where we would eventually film, but in the end we decided on a what we wanted and how it would be easiest to film. Especially with cutting our scenes I think we chose the right scenes to cut by eliminating the scenes that either didn’t make much sense being there or the scenes that seemed the easiest to film. If we did this project again we most likely would have chosen to do a different idea, maybe something that would include more options and destinations to go as I feel that the more destinations that you include the more immersive the whole experience is as a whole, so to ensure that we would have the time and means to do this we would choose an idea faster, not necessarily different as a whole as we would still want to follow the idea of a tour around the campus but maybe we would have chosen more locations and possibly different floors of the campus to really slam home that idea of immersive.
Virtual world building was the second artefact that we were introduced to. This was essentially a very creative and independent task where we would have to build the city that we grew up in on Unity and we would have to include the three of the major landmarks from that city to really create the immersive experience.
We were allowed to import 3D images from websites such as Sketchfab and Unity Assets to make sure that I was saving time and effort and that the project would be completed to a high standard. Once we had all the important landmarks imported and set up on Unity we could then add in any decorations and extra bits to the world to make it look appealing and interesting to the viewer.
The reason I chose the landmarks I have included is because they are the major landmarks of London and if I want to really display this city then they were the obvious choice. The London eye is a massive tourist attraction and is a world renowned ride on one of the most famous rivers in the world. Big Ben is possibly the most famous clock in the world, it is well known for being constantly under construction and plenty of taxpayers money is spent on repainting the structure.
Tower bridge is also a very well known landmark in London, it’s well known for being mistaken for London Bridge and had a dark reputation many years ago.
Honestly if i had to do this artefact again I would include more roads and possibly distinctly London houses to add to the immersiveness of the project. I did include red phone boxes and letterboxes along with old London lamp posts but I feel if I made a section of the world just a house I could have really demonstrated the feel of London urban living areas.
I’m very happy with how this project went, I would not change very much as I think what I have really works.
The third project was a Virtual world avatar. I had to create an avatar that either is modelled off of me or could be slightly different but then I would have to explain why I didn’t choose to do it myself.
For my world building task I wanted to get a low poly look for it because for me I think that’s a really cool look for a world after being a loyal Minecraft fan for a while and lowpoly worlds being a big part of my life I wanted to make a filter that represented the worlds that I was so familiar with.
For my filter I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to include the lowpoly aspect to it so I came up with the idea that I would have shapes rotating around the suspects head.
Looking back I would have definitely changed it up abit such as having a lowpoly character as the filter or having aspects of a lowpoly aspect added to the filter to really give the impression that I was following the idea of lowpoly.
I am very happy with how it turned out, the way I made the filter was quite complicated so that’s 100% that part that I’m most proud of but I do feel like I could have done a better job on the actual idea because looking back it feels like quite a rushed project from my part with not much planning for the artefact.
Overall all three projects came together well amd and I’m very happy with how they turned out.
