Game Capture:

VR Storyboard:

Personal Portfolio:

Miro Board:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOTsXnB8=/

This week I focused on animations: I have completed the animations I have started last week adding some details such as the fingers/feathers movements and the eyes too.

I have also created the idle movement for seagull a as well for him to move when is not busy in particular actions. I made the bounce of the body of the character sync with the theme song designed by the BA sound design students.

I after set up the new scenes to be animated creating new animation layers to be assigned to each control that I will b e using.

I would always animate the two characters one at a time to keep things organised

This is a playblast video of all the interactions I have worked on so far

This is the next interaction I have worked on set on the pier. for this animation I also used the voice recorded they are going to be played in the game. As always I start by assigning each control to a different animation layer for different for each character.

I also use the story script to get more detailed information about the context of the animations I was working on.

the following is a playblast video for the interaction 6 set in the pier after that the player has played the mini game where he has to get as many ice cream as he or she can.

For this scene we also needed a child crying since that all the ice creams fro the cart were eaten by the player and the seagulls so I have used a child from the university library and animated a child crying.

This is a first gameplay captures with the incorporated animation as well

I have also created a fly animation for the seagulls which might be needed for transitions in between scenes.

Unfortunately we had some issues with the mesh of seagull A in unity, even though we tried different techniques but none of them gave the desired result. It could be a problem of computing power or a defect of the program, because for the other seagull everything worked as it was supposed to using the same techniques (Convert a smooth mesh preview to polygons).

Animation

This week I started the animation and since we are going to be using the animation layers I have done some research to understand better how do they work. I have found this video which O have found very explicative:

Following what I had just learned on the video I have started the idle animation for seagull B, assigning to each part that needed animation an animation layer:

I also imported the sound of the game inspired from spongebob theme song to sync the idle of the character to the music. On each animation layer I assigned a different key colour to differentiate them and also attached each control (wings, neck, body) to the correct layer.

I then started animating the seagull according to the inspiration I used as a reference which is the “Finding nemo” seagulls from the film (As I showed in the previous weeks). This is the final video:

Speech Bubbles

This week I also created the speech bubbles for the dialogues for the game according to the design made by Esme: for the black outlines I have used a cylinder extruded the top and bottom faces and edited the vertices to create a wavy frame for the speed bubbles; For the white background I have flattened a smoothed cube polygon and finally created a 3d text (ink free) which resembles the texts used in comics. I after animated the different components so that they would float around at different rates.

Player wing update

I also rearranged the player wing model according to the outliner hierarchy which works in the fox export for unity: the geometry, the controls and the joint should be individual parts of the same group.

Eye blink solution

The previous process I had created for the eye to blink (set driven key) was working fine when the character was in the position I had set the keys into, however when the body of the neck control position changed the eye blink would not work as well. Instead I thought of another way still employing the set driver key tool Which I have used and came up with in another project (the cat project): this time I have created another set of eyelids but closed, I have created two sets of attributes in the eyes controls, one for the open lids and one for the closed ones; I have saved the visibility of the eyelids instead of they rotation, so that when both the attributed are on to 1 the closed eyes would show and when the attributed are set on 0 the open eyelids would show.

Animations

This week I also started animating the interactions occurring in the game where the two seagulls talk to each other and to the player too: I have followed the animation layer video as before to assign to each control of each seagull an animation layer to work on and to keep everything organised. I have imported in one scene, which in this case is the Beach interaction 3 (according to the animation shot list), all the assets: the speech bubbles and the two seagulls an started animating the seagulls according to what they are saying in the scene also using the script as a reference especially since movements are included.

These are all the animation layers I have been working on

these are the animation which I will further clean up:

During this week meeting we talked about the final developments to take care of in order to close-up the project:

The students from BA Sound Design shared some more sounds they have been working on both ambient and action/effect sound.

The VR group members demonstrated the part of the game they have been developing, and they let us play the game in VR as well.

This is the to do list that we came up with for next week meeting:

During this week seminar we split in groups and discussed together the following question according to our project:

If you were to remove one element from each of your projects completely how would this affect the work? 

This was the board we added the different answer for the question for each group:

This is the question diagram for my project: the project would not work if we are to remove the speech bubbles for the dialogue since in VR they are essential for the player comprehension and comedy effect. the project would also work differently if we used Unreal engine instead of unity for developing the VR game.

During this week meeting we discussed the following topics:

• The group members from BA sound design shared their progress made on the background sounds (they recorded field sounds) and created some theme songs to play in the backdrop as the game develops following the style we suggested to use last week (spongebob theme song and Titanic soundtrack).
• We decided which speech bubble design we are going to use:

• We revisioned the final version of the script for the story with the ending and some additional dialogues
• The VR group members showed us the GDD (Game Design Document) a software design document that serves as a blueprint from which your game is to be built.
• we also established a to do list with tasks to be completed for next week’s meeting:

VR Storyboard

This week we created aversion of the “traditional” storyboards I have created on VR. Esme and I never used VR before so it was challenging but a very good experience especially to better get acquainted with the software and how the overall VR experience work.

This is a time lapse video from the VR storyboards that Esme and I work on with the help of Callum.

This the full VR storyboard video

Animation

Esme created an animation list to help plan better the “shots” for the VR environments and scenarios. Actually we thought that the final rigs should be first imported into unity scaled down according to the environments and after we are going to import everything back to maya so that we have a frame of reference especially for the parts where they have to interact with objects in the scene.

This is and edited version of the idle movements that the seagulls are going to do when not involved in any specific action, I though that the lower part of the body was not involved as much as the first part so I added this to the animation:

seagull 2 idle movement

Following the firsts seagull idle animation I also experimented with the second seagull adding slightly different moves to convey their difference personalities

Speech Bubble Animation Experimentation

I experimented with the design and the animation for the comedy sketches for the VR experience this week I have used simple cubes and spheres polygons to start with and duplicated the and deleted the middle faces to create an outline to create a minimal but clear design

This speech bubble version resembles also one of the most famous shapes used in comics I have also added an animation to make it appeared gradually

Following the comics way of communicating I also thought that to simulate a similar scenario for sounds effects and reactions we could use this type of speech bubbles along with those used for “normal dialogue” and sentences

Player wing/hand

Since the player is going to be a seagull himself or herself I have designed a wing version that would match the controllers in VR using the part of the wing that functions as a hand

Summary of your work (Seagull project)

• What is it? A VR game adaptation of the comic “False Knees” by Joshua Barkman
• What is its purpose? Entertain the players in a VR environment implemented by 3D animation
• What are the key features? VR, 3D Animation, Games, Comedy genre adapted to games
• Role assignments and group responsibilities? We are 7 in total: 3 people from VR, 2 people from 3D computer animation and 2 people from BA Sound design: us from 3D computer animation would take charge of the character design, storyboard (also partially in VR), modeling, rigging and animation. People from VR will write the script for the story and for the VR game story as well as populating the VR environment. And the people from Sound Design will take care of the sound design.

I personally took care of the initial designs for the seagulls, the environments designs, the seagulls models and rigging, the animation of them (with Esme), the storyboards, and the VR storyboards (with Esme and Cal)

What does the work aim to achieve? 

• Concept – what is its novelty? The adaptation of a comic book with original characters and comic sketches where the player is involved being a seagull himself or herself
• What is driving the narrative? Dialogues in the comedy sketches between the seagulls and the players being involved in small games as the narrative develops
• What is the development process? We started with the concepts and the script to then develop the assets comprehending the characters and the rigs to create the animation with and importing them in unity after.
• What is the practical scope of your research? – Think about how your knowledge and skillsets compliment your collaborators’  Being able to collaborate with students from different disciplines simulating a working environments and also learn how the VR pipeline works as well as how can 3D Animation can be adapted to it.

Target users/audience  

• Who is the work aimed at?  The game is aimed at a younger audience: both people who know the artist of the comedy and want to try something involving his world and VR gamers who enjoy playing.
• What aspects of the work have been chosen due to this? Having some dialogues based on existing comic sketches from the book
• Why have you chosen this target user/audience demographic? Create a VR immersive adaptation of a comic book might be challenging

Plans and timelines 

• How will you test aspects of your project as you progress? By importing the various assets in Unity to check their

This week two students from the BA Sound Design course joined our project to help implement the sound for the VR games. The following is a list of sounds we will need:

Regarding the animation, we agreed with them that the music especially the on e to be played in the background as the narrative develops will be on 4/4 ( With four steady beats in each measure, it provides for a very stable rhythm).

We also asked if they could import the seagulls rigs into unity where they would scale and put them into the environment so that we would imported back to maya with the environment so that we would have a clearer idea of the spatial areas of each scenario.

We also created a to do list as we do in every meeting: