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Author: Amber Zhang

Course Reflection Amber Zhang

 Learning about the concept of presence
After I made the demonstration via the timeline function of Unity, I tried to set the cameras’ animation on the timeline firstly to guide the players’ experiences with fixed view angles and specified time triggers. Then, I summarised the three modes and realised the learning from the three different modes:
The three modes of participation:
1.1 setting the fixed cameras to offer fixed perspectives for players
1.2 first-person perspective, but the triggers were made by the fixed animations and visual effects and guiding the players’ attention by music. However, the players could not control the view angle and these triggers; they could participate via the fixed settings and triggers.
1.3 Virtual reality. The scripts should be considered the ideal idea to recall the triggers via player scripts. Players are the main characters and participate in their visual experiences. They could create their participation path to identify the animations and interactions in Unity. The VR’s remote buttons could evoke all the interactions, and the decisions are made by players rather than solid settings.
The thinking and learning from the three interactive ways
I reviewed the project’s goal, which I learned at the beginning of the semester(dmsppresence23,2023), which is to build the embodiment of the concept of presence by digital media, and I re-evaluated how the presence could be. After I completed the demonstration of the enhancement of the project, I realised the three modes of participation might lead to different impacts on players to explore the entire project. Virtual reality could offer more visual effects to players for the visual sense perspective. Also, virtual reality and remote controllers and work with the scripts might contain an obviously positive way to assist in achieving the goal of presence for the interactions and individual experiences because players could decide what they would encounter in the virtual forest and how their experiences would be.
Sense of vision
I think virtual reality (VR) could be a positive way to enhance virtual world participation, which could assist with interactions, explorations, and a sense of vision. Paes et al. (2021) discussed immersive environments with non-immersive environments, which mentioned VR experience. They discussed the hypothesis of IVR (immersive virtual reality) with users’ perception of the concept of presence. And the results expressed that the exam results are the IVR presents the better realistic perception experiences. Meanwhile, the IVR could offer better outcomes for users to sense the virtual space more accurately(Paes et al. 2021). And after participants wore the VR devices to join the project on the presentation day, I noticed that VR technology could offer more cognition and interactions for players to explore even if the same digital environments.
Technology learning
Oculus rift
The difference between these two VR device versions might lead to different user experiences for the project due to the multiple rendering way and sensor adjustment. Even if this project might consider mainly using the Oculus Rift as the primary VR device, and the sensors were required to adjust and reinstall the package in Unity if a switch laptop was necessary.
Future Improvements
The interactions in Unity
I think it might be considered to improve this project to add more interactions in the future. Based on the concept of presence, what I learned from this course: how to improve interactions and engagement might be necessary for presence. It would be better if I could guide and lead participators to engage and involve more.
The personal virtual exploration in Unity
I think the current version might not offer options for the participants’ own explorations. The two versions, the one before the presentation and the improvement one after the feedback, might not achieve the individual exploration goal. The players’ virtual role might be thought of as one primary reason that the perspective might be solid from a tree view. However, just like the feedback, the tree branch might also move back. Being a virtual tree to explore a tree view might be explicit, and there are also various possibilities to explore.
The virtual reality(VR)
I think it is potential that adding more advantages to virtual reality’s functions might bring immersive environments experiences. Virtual reality is an advanced technology that brings people to join the virtual world with more visual sense. Meanwhile, it could get remote to guide players to choose and interact inside the virtual world with more immersion. This project now uses a VR device that could indicate players to better immerse in the forest and storyline. However, I think it might be better if this project used more virtual reality advantages than now; there are no interactive functions from the remote. It might be potential to add more remote options to let players select a tree or interact with animals.
References:

Paes, D., Irizarry, J. and Pujoni, D. (2021) “An evidence of cognitive benefits from immersive design review: Comparing three-dimensional perception and presence between immersive and non-immersive virtual environments,” Automation in Construction, 130, p. 103849. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2021.103849.

Background (2023) dmsppresence23. Available at: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/dmsp-presence23/ (Accessed: April 26, 2023).

 

Various of Seasons

Based on the feedback from the presentation, I improved several suggestions for this project. Firstly, I tried to revise the multiple seasons display issue due to some feedback expressing the storyline was slightly confusing. As the first view of the tree, some feedback suggested building the precise details to guide players to understand from the tree perspective. Therefore, I modelled flowers and plants in Blender and created animations by shape keys. The primary goal of these plants I made was for the spring and summer, which I might think to insert more vivid growing plants into the virtual space to guide more immersions. I modelled these plants, added multiple shape keys to each leaf and petal, and then added the action editor to modify the bloom and growing timeline for each leaf and petal. As a result, the individual plant had a separate animation. I exported the fbx models with animation from Blender to Unity and then used the Unity animator controller to trigger the plants’ animations.

Models

 

Spring

I made the change based on Xiyue Huang’s original skybox controller function and adjusted the timespan, which displays 60 now. And I created one new skybox to replace the skybox3. I changed the skybox1 and skybox2 previous skybox settings. Xinyue Lin created several different skyboxes, and I still used the two from her creation and used the new I built because I considered the sky colour tone might be different for the three seasons.I added the grass growing fbx and animation and most of the flowers fbx and animations in spring for this project. The grass would start to grow after the rain, and I revised the skybox change duration, which would change every 60 seconds.

Summer

In the summer, I planned to improve by using particles here and the original animal animations were made by Jiayao Wang. But I could not trigger the animals’ animation and did not figure out why. Therefore I mainly added the original animals’ fbx and used mostly VFX Graph to create the summer’s vivid atmosphere.

Winter

In the winter, I improved the snow effects and enlarged the fire area and time duration to create visual effects for participators to understand earlier from “the tree’s perspective. Meanwhile, I added smaller trees with leaves growing animations to guide participators to comprehend the nutrition transited to the smaller trees, which led, the more leaves growing. ¬Besides, I added the snow leaf shader graph and snow shader graph. The snow leaf shader graph is built on Xiyue Lin’s leaf shader graph. I created the top snow and ice effects to add to the tree’s leaves to make the scene to be recognized easier. And the snow shader graph is used to cover the other components in the scene to look at the snow particles.

Snow leaf shader graph

references:

learn how to make a snow shader from:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV12S4y1X7ux/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=ca058f8010cad699640c32ba92c0f911

Smaller tree growing animation inspiration coming from:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1mu411X78g/?spm_id_from=333.788.recommend_more_video.2&vd_source=ca058f8010cad699640c32ba92c0f911

Learn how to make the plants growing effects in Blender by shape key from:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1aY411G7bk/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=ca058f8010cad699640c32ba92c0f911

 

Particle Systems

I created three particles for the group project: fire, snow and rain. I used two primary software for the creation process: Unity and adobe illustrator. The fire was made from a drawing from adobe illustrator. I drew the 2D flame material with colour gradients for the fire particles and then added it to the renderer function in particle inspector in Unity to make the real fire effects. Then, I adjusted the other multiple conditions, such as 3D start size, emissions, shape, and velocity over a lifetime.

Fire

Snow

For snow particle creation, I made the different start lifetime and speed. I also changed the emission to a large amount and different shape conditions and colours over a lifetime to make the snow shape. Meanwhile, I modified the velocity over life and the collision; these two are the most critical factor for snow creation.

Rain

And rain effects, I constructed different start colours and revised the emission, shape, and velocity over lifetime and collision conditions. Besides, I learned and implemented that 3D start rotation is one of the essential factors for building the different shapes of particles.

visual effects made via VFX Graph and Shader Graph

I created more visual effects using VFX graphs and shader graphs in Unity and Adobe Illustrator to complete more gorgeous effects for this project. According to the storyline of this project, the various seasons might contain various creatures and visual influences, and I considered the VFX Graph could achieve more high optical achievements to guide the players to be immersed with better visual quality. Therefore, I created different VFX shaders for this project: dandelions and glow-worms for the spring season and magic fire and magic fire around for the summer season. Besides, to achieve the invented unique effects, such as the dandelions pattern, I added a blank shader graph to assist in making the 2D material that I designed and created in Adobe Illustrator transparent for the visual effects. For each VFX Graph creation, I adjusted the spawn, initialize particle, update particle, and output particle quad with the factor such as vector, float, colour, and texture that I created for these changes.

references:

Learn fire effects from:

Learn how to make rain in Unity:

Learn how to make particle system for snow effects in Unity:

The dandelions drawing inspiration came from:
Photo by Johannes Plenio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-dandelion-1133498/

Learn how to make magic fire, magic fire around, dandelions, glow worms in Unity by graph VFX:

Work progress of the visual part and the uncompleted work

Work progress of the visual part:

Have achieved:

  1. Scene models and texture(including all plants and other objects), lighting of scenes- Xinyue Lin
  2. The seed grows from soil to a large tree(animation)-Xiyue Huang
  3. Animals with animations: 5 animals with animation ( including work progress from modelling, skeleton, and animation)-Jiayao Wang
  4. Special effects: Rain, fire, snow, glow-worms, dandelions, magic fire-Amber Zhang
  5. day and night transition(skybox)- Xiyue Huang
  6. Nutrition transition animation(roots extending animation and nutrition transition with blooming effects)-Qiandai Sun

Have not been fully achieved:

Unity:

1.Unity file combination: Combine the sound and all the above visual parts, and test all the parts work successfully.

2.Unity interaction: to trigger when the player’s vision moves to the area: including the 2.1animation, 2.2special effects, 2.3 day and night shift, 2.4 fire and transfer the next scene(to trigger the nutrition animation) (-Amber Zhang, glad to if anyone participate as well)

Oculus Rift:

  1. Might expect to test the Oculus with controllers to check if all devices could use the entire scene with the play mode fully successfully.
  2. Might expect to set up and test the controllers’ functions and buttons for the interaction in Unity.

My idea for group project after obtained the feedback from Mr Leo Butt

Amber Zhang:

Keywords: Presence, life cycle, Nature

Concept: user experiences options from different natural creatures.

My idea: the initial scene would start from in the abstract universe but correlate with natural spaces. The start point might launch from the abstract universe scene that a soul shape human would appear. The player would pass the abstract universe scene where consist by abstract trees, grass, mountains etc. There would contain three doors that each door would lead player to the next different scene to nature(Our group discussed the idea to open the door from a dark corridor to enter to the next scene when the first and second meeting. The initial open-door idea to go to next environment for our group project I remember should came from the Xinyue Lin or Qiandai Sun) The first door would be the scene that player would as the flower from a seed to bloom and might until nature decay. The second door the player might as a human that might experience the infant, young, old three age span. The third door the player might be a bee, would fly over the earth’s ground. The person’s life span and flower could still prolong the previous our group project finalised idea, and for the human stage the detailed part, I might prefer my previous suggested idea on discussion board1 from the blog(From Amber Zhang part on discussion board1: “My brainstorming suggestions for the three stages of life span: my brainstorming idea would base on the group discussion result yesterday(Wednesday): the group project would only focus on one of the life span about the young age to explore, and pick up objects only for rest of ages(infant and old) , I think for the young age could represent via one scenario: the main character could display in lecture space: the scene exploration design could be: the sunlight could be warm outside and flash light shining from window, the leaves could drop from the tree, it could be the Autumn season. The main character would start the view from setting on the chair and books and notes on the table (the view angle displays the book pages on table). The main character enables to stand up and walk around the lecture room. There could be notes on whiteboard, but no other people would be in the lectures. The lecture might be a biology class; the whiteboard could display sketches drawing of flowers with key points and learning knowledge, and one reminder on whiteboard could display: a test on Thursday. The main character enables to walk towards whiteboard to check the contents of knowledge on whiteboard and explore the entire lecture room. The lecture room could be big with basic devices: computer, projector, big window, desks and chairs, whiteboard. The background voice: the main character could hear other people’s talking from outside of lecture room, the ring bell sound, the background noise sound.When the time duration approaches to time limits (for instance: 3 mins), the scene transection trigger would display. And the voice might appear as well to tell main character the guidance to move to next scene.”) . The bee’s scene might end from flying motion. After each scene ends, the player would go back to the initial scene: the abstract universe to alter back to the soul to choose again. However, I might suggest each player merely have 15 mins to explore the entire story instead to loop the option to experience tedious.

After the soul transferring the different role from different nature species, the three different life spans could be considered to represent how the presence is performed. Meanwhile, the three format creatures are the three diverse ways to demonstrate the life cycle.

Flower perspective for final group project

Amber Zhang:based on the group individual part, my individual part is to present how the flower bloom demonstration from vision. There are two different camera perspectives: one is from the bird view angle to demonstrate the flower bloom moment. Another is from the flower perspective.

I modelled, animated, lighted, and rendered this simulation animation for the group project stage1 from the flower perspective. This is the final render animation. And made one new flower to import Unity for my group member Qiandai Sun’s group project part for Unity demonstration.

For finalising the group submission1 idea

Amber Zhang:

Hi all, for our final group project submission1, there are two parts we might require to finalise as soon as we could:

  1. The three stages of human perspective: which idea does everyone prefer to design for our group project? There are some written idea on the discussion board. Please vote one you prefer or any new idea you expect to add on.
  2. Modelling idea: there are also some idea on the inspiration board about the part1 scene design inspiration of our group project that the perspective is from a flower or plant, please vote one you prefer or any new idea you expect to add on. It would help our group project modelling stage to start.
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