VR MASTERS ASSIGNMENT BLOG

Tangmere Museum Project Blog

The goal of this project was to experiment with interactivity in 360 video using the Unity Game Engine. Since starting the first Masters in Virtual Reality, one of my main personal goals was to learn how to add interactivity to the 360 videos I had created, elevating them from purely immersive experiences.

The game engine Unity is a powerful application to create your own games and VR experiences, and I would most definitely recommend using it for VR projects, due to its vast community of users as well as its many learning resources available, both provided by Unity as well as third parties such as YouTube and Lynda. In addition, the asset store provides users with a great amount of items to be used within their projects.

In order to create my first interactive project, I looked to Unity for help in their project creation as well as other learning applications such as Lynda and Udemy. After the primary learning provided by the University, I found it imperative for me to independently apply this learning through project creation, side by side with online learning. The first course I undertook was the Unity Fundamentals Course on Lynda by Alan Thorn, followed by another course on Udemy on how to create my first VR project with Unity. I additionally used the course listed book, Building Virtual Reality with Unity and Steam to further learn about Unity. I also partook in an Interactive VR Film course at UCL, where I implemented my skills in practical tasks using projects provided by the course. 

To demonstrate how interactivity could be used in VR Projects using Unity, I used the Unity Interactive Sample Project provided by Unity, and began to watch the very insightful tutorials provided by Unity, these are listed in the main blog page of the website and provide a very useful view into using Unity for 360 degree video. 

I utilised the steps provided in these videos to create my own project, one which would utilise the Main Menu Gaze option, this is a a gaze based interaction, where the viewer selects a menu using a reticle on the screen. I created my own project, now utilising this starting point to create a menu for an interactive tour of the Tangmere Museum. This also had a play and pause function attached to it, and was a perfect starting point for learning how to create interactive 360 videos. 

The London Detective Menu Blog

I had learned how to create interactive 360 video projects from a variety of learning methods, all commencing from the primary lessons provided by my university. These included the Unity Fundamentals Course on Lynda by Alan Thorn, followed by another course on Udemy on how to create my first VR project with Unity, a course listed book, Building Virtual Reality with Unity and Steam and an Interactive VR Film course at UCL, where I implemented my skills in practical tasks using projects provided by the course. 

To further develop my mastering of creating and designing immersive experiences, I would continue my work within the 360 degree medium with the Unity Interactive Sample project and provided learning resources. 

This project, utilised a VR Interactive Sample Project provided by Unity as a starting point for the project, which I utilised alongside their video tutorials to create my own project. I utilised their Main Menu Controller option to create a project that elevated my first Unit project using a Gaze based Main Menu interaction. This enabled me to further develop my skills as a Unity Editor, now using controllers to select the menu screen. I also changed the images to match the HTC Vive I intend to screen my experience with and experimented with other interactions in the project file such as hotspots, as well as gained a strong understating of materials and textures and how these effect 360 degree video and the skybox panoramic shader and in built video player component in Unity. 

In closing, this project was created to illustrate how basic interactivity can be used in Unity to show branching narrative structures and provide the user with a degree of control in the experience, as well as utilise pre-established forms of entertainment receivership to show how the more the technology of entertainment changes, the fundamentals remain the same. Users in VR will be able to select a film, much like a menu in a DVD and this enables the user to understand and utilise the medium more effectively as well as be more comfortable in their first experiences with it, plus it confines to the notion that the audience is used to a certain way of receiving entertainment, and we as VR developers should be aware of this. In addition, this VR project features critical scenes in The London Detective, the first British Virtual Reality feature film and shows a narrative structure to a VR feature film, in chapter form and an exclusive look at my groundbreaking project in immersive storytelling development. 

Unit One VR Project Blog Article

To create this project, I utilised the learning resource book, Building Virtual Reality with Steam and Unity and created my own scene using the step by step instructions.

I had intended to create a Detective’s Office or a Cemetery experience for the project but decided to follow the project creation instructions as I have found this to be the most useful way to learn how to design immersive experiences using Unity in the early stages of my learning. 

Therefore the scene would envisage the Detective’s House and create a hotspot to introduce 360 video into the experience.

Unit Two Storyboard Blog

To create a storyboard for a Virtual Reality film, I looked to the development of the storyboard in the film industry. I began with collating research from a plethora of resources from the UAL Library, my own personal collection and online resources. My goal was to show different ways to storyboard for VR film projects, utilising my London Detective Chapter project and introduce a new standard workflow for prototyping for VR projects.

In regards to the origins of storyboards, “Historians trace the evolution of storyboard to the Wall Disney Studio. There, in the early 1930s, when Disney was revolutionising cartoon animation, studio artists would use rough sketches pinned onto bulletin boards to structure their  storylines and establish a visual framework for each product prior to the commencement of animation. It was as convenient way to make certain the multitudes of artists working on any given project shared a common vision. For the same reason, storyboards became a vital component of special effects as technology blossomed and became increasingly more complex” (The Making of Jurassic Park)

In regards to the development of the storyboard, I wanted to look at seminal and iconic films to understand and later illustrate a number of different ways in how the storyboard can be used to visualise ideas in development. 

The first resource, The Maltese Falcon provides us with a look at the Storyboarding process in reverse. The book is detailed shot by shot rendition of the entire film. This not only provided inspiration for storyboarding a scene in a film noir, it was also a highly useful starting point in visualising a storyboard using a completed and well known film.

The second resource, Vertigo, shows us an archetype for creating a storyboard sequence, created by the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. This was highly effective in showing how different shots can be visualised in a storyboard as well as how to create a storyabord with the movement of characters, in their relation to the narrative and the closeness to the camera. 

The third resource, Back to the Future, provides a paragon for the visualisation of a location in a storybaord as well as how drawings in the pre production process can not only be used in narrative, but also become icons of cinema, most notably the drawing of the Flux Capacitor.

The fourth resource, Blade Runner, shows how storyboards can be elevated from just being illustrations, to more advanced visual storyboards, combining photos and illustrations to provide a visual image of the screenplay prior to production.

The fifth resource, Jurassic Park, gives a fantastic gliplse into the development of storyboards as well as a look at how VR Headsets could be storyboarded. 

The sixth resource, Space Jammin’, is testament to the innovation of storybaording, showning how virtual and physical worlds were combined in the storybaoridng process to provide a visual framework for animators in the half animation, half real world film, Space Jam.  

In addition, I looked to the online resources to understand the development of the VR Storyboard and research other examples of how developers have standardised new ways to storyboard for VR. I found a number of ways, all listed in the blog,

I created a variety of storyboards for my project, tThe London Detective Menu, to illustrate the user experience, the virtual world the user will inhabit, the primary points of focus in terms of narrative and the interactive action in the film. 

I also would go on to experiment with an alpha programme for VR Storyboarding, aptly named Storyboard VR, this enabled me to prototype my scene in a virtual space, ina  fast and easy manner, and truly sets a new standard to storyboard in VR. 

And a final note! The cat pictured in the article video has been a most helpful little assistant in the VR project creation, often restating the whole process for the sheer fun of it y pulling out power cables! Meet Plumpton, who should most definitely be credited for his helpful little hands or should I say paws in my project!!