BAVR Blog2

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Character Animation

Character Idea and Research

Portuguese Holiday – 25 de Abril

The holiday I chose to represent is 25 de Abril or Dia da Liberdade (25th April or Liberty Day). It commemorates the peaceful revolution that took place all over Portugal and marked the end of the nationalist dictatorship and colonial wars. It is infamous for its peaceful approach, where soldiers placed carnations inside the muzzles of their rifles. As a result, this movement is often called “A Revolução dos Cravos” (Carnation Revolution).

I chose this holiday because it is one of the few revolutions that happened in the history of humanity that did not use force against their opponents. This shows that strength is in numbers and unity, not violence. For this reason, I want to use this historic day as inspiration for my character.

25th April 1974 – Soldiers during the Revolution

Character Inspiration

I have been thinking and I wanted my character to be an animal. I think it would be a more friendly, cartoonish approach that could help younger audiences feel more drawn toward this emblematic day. However, I want an animal that inhabits Portuguese territory to make it coherent with the theme.

After some research, I decided to use the Iberian wolf as a reference for my character. This species lives in the northern regions of Portugal and northwestern Spain. At first, I wanted to do the “Andorinha” (swallow bird), which is probably the most emblematic animal in Portugal, but I thought it wouldn’t have the same impact and it would be harder to anthropomorphize. Therefore, I’d rather stick with the wolf.

Iberian Wolf

I have also gathered a few images as inspiration for the design. I want the wolf to be a Disney style character, because it makes it more readable and expressive, in my opinion. Zootopia was very useful for this! The wolf characters are very funny and expressive while maintaining anatomically correct proportions that keep them true to the species they belong to. I especially like the way they modeled their noses. That slight arch that wolves have and that Disney artists used to create different proportions for distinct characters is so satisfying!

Character Design

I have been doing some sketches and to be honest, I am not fully convinced about these designs yet. There is something about this drawing that makes the wolf feel like a Furry XD. I want him to be a bit more expressive and less flirtatious… The body is ok, but the whole face just looks off. I don’t know… I will probably redo the whole thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

UPDATE

This took way longer than it should have but I finally have a design I want to work with! The proportions look way more expressive and unique than in the first drawings. Also, this design’s expression conveys more personality.

I did not mention this earlier but, my intention is to make this wolf look peaceful, reliable and relaxed, at the same time strong and decisive. It all has to do with the core of this peaceful revolution. I do not want it to look violent, but it cannot look weak. The relaxed state is also not to say that this character is lazy but instead that it is sure of its morals and confident that peace is a better path than violence. This wolf also has to look like a friendly, reliable character, since I want to express that strength is also in unity, looking out for each other and trusting one another.

I think this design conveys all of that and I am finally ready to move to the next step and start thinking about colors and modeling. Finally… I am so tired! (It is literally 5 am).

COLOR UPDATE

I have decided to make a major change and switch the military hat to a helmet. These were also used during the revolution and I think it makes the character look more like a soldier rather than a common individual with a gun.

For the colors and patterns, I want to keep them fairly true to the actual species but still have them pop out. Therefore the palette is mostly composed of very saturated brown tones. As for the hat and carnation, I made them opposite colors on the color wheel to create more contrast. The weapon is a blueish-grey that also helps create contrast, while not deviating the attention from the character too much.

Categories
Essay

Essay Blog

Intro

The theme I chose for my essay is “Discuss an Immersive Technology as an Assistive/ Educational Technology”. Initially, I really wanted to talk about something to do with morality and human behavioural changes in VR. But after coming across this topic, I felt drawn to its possibilities and the responsibilities of implementing VR in an educational curriculum.

There is so much to analyse: Curriculum integration, worldwide distribution, tackling poor communities’ access to VR, establishing limits, etc. And the list only gets more significant when considering various types of education and how they would be affected. For example, University education, school education, driving education, etc.

Since there are almost infinite things I could tackle in this essay, I will keep it as generalised as possible, meaning education, rather than grappling with various sub-themes.

Update – 22nd of February – Theory class

Today we talk about so many things, it was hard to keep up with everything. Amongst those, I resonated a bit with the fashion section. Despoina briefly mentioned the road to sustainability, as well as the digitalisation of fashion.

This could be such an interesting topic! What if, with AR/VR we could give a virtual way for people to express themselves? This means fewer resources would be used to create virtual accessories, for example. Or we could even create things that defy the laws of physics or creatures that don’t exist, used as virtual pets. This could be done by using AR glasses/lenses to simulate this phenomenon in real life. Also, it could be done in VR, by simulating everything, including the person.

Update – Mom – 29th March

I have been talking about this with my mom, and since her original field of study is Education, the conversation naturally flowed towards that theme. I quickly brainstormed some ideas I found important, in Portuguese. I will live a rough translation (probably from google translate) for analysis purposes.

But to summarise, we mainly discussed the implementation of VR as an educational tool and how it could benefit the education of young children. We also briefly mentioned some challenges that could come from this implementation, as well as ways to limit its use for children.

It was a good starting point and gave me some ideas to include in my essay.

mom-2Download

Update – 30th April – Papers and Studies

Today I focused on finding relevant papers and articles that I could use for my essay. So basically, it was a research day.

The first article I found was written by Nich Babich and published by Adobe XD Ideas. It was very enticing! It acknowledged many benefits of implementing VR in education and gave me a few ideas on how I could approach similar topics in my work. Also, the author is very thorough when developing each topic and how it could become relevant.

Link: https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/principles/emerging-technology/virtual-reality-will-change-learn-teach/

The second paper I found mentioned VR applications in modern education scenarios and proposed several types of software that could be developed to achieve relevant results that can be used in real life. I found the examples and benefits that they listed very helpful, and the practical application made me think about how my ideas could be developed into real-life projects.

Link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8190660/authors#authors

Another study I found tackled poverty in poor communities and the use of technology to help close the current disparity gap. To summarise, this paper demonstrates how relevant IT is nowadays since it gives people in poor communities the chance to connect with the world and get the same platforms to learn and help them change their unfair realities.

This paper is crucial for my “remote learning” point since I intend to this kind of situation to exemplify where VR could be used as a remote learning tool that can even benefit and help impoverished communities. This could be a great tool to give students with fewer opportunities, a chance to learn with great educators, while still having an interactive experience.

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/0735-2166.00089?saml_referrer

Structure Update – 1st May

Today I wrote a rough draft of the structure my essay will follow. I have four main ideas I would like to focus on: 1 – VR as an expansive tool in the classroom, 2 – VR in overcoming the physical world educational obstacles, 3 – Using VR to replace physical tools, and 4 – VR in group work, and VR in remote learning.

I have found a few studies that grapple with some of these issues and how they should be approached. There was one in particular that I found pretty interesting. It was an experience conducted at a university that compared the academic results from students who used VR to study, vs. their colleagues that used written PowerPoints. The results were surprisingly mixed, and it got me thinking about the improvements that have to be made for VR to become something worth implementing in real life. But I do believe this will inevitably happen in the future.

Also, my structure word document is kind of a mess but it was useful for organising my ideas, so it does its job.

Link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8446486

structureDownload

Update – 2nd May

I have finished my first draft and I’m quite happy with it. I used Grammarly to correct a few mistakes but other than that, I’d say it’s looking good.

Update – 5th May – Academic Support

Today I had an online academic support session and oh boy was I disappointed I had so much stuff to amend! XD Anyway… I basically did not make enough counterarguments and it felt as if I was selling an idea, without taking into consideration the downsides or challenges that come with it. Also, I had used a study from back in 2002 and the tutor pointed out that this was 20 years ago (damn I felt old :’) ). And this could be viewed as a non-relevant source of information since many years had passed since it was written. I agreed and will start changing some ideas. I appreciate the help and the useful critiques but I felt like the tutor was also reflecting many of his ideas on my essay. Also, he told me to generalise some of my ideas while explaining to me why he disagreed with those points by giving examples that were mostly base on UK events and educational approaches XD (kind of ironic). I found that quite funny and did not think what he said would be worth changing in my essay because otherwise, what is the point of reflecting on this stuff and writing about it? Oh well… Even so, it was pretty helpful, and I do agree that this essay could use some opposing ideas.

Update – 7th May – Counterarguments word

arguments-againstDownload

Update – 8th May

I have finished my second draft and I feel way happier with it. It’s so much more balanced and made me reconsider my ideas and do more research on possible issues and solutions. The next step is to review it with another academic support tutor.

Update – 9th May

Today I watched a video lecture from the University of Chicago, given by its director Larry Enerney on how to write effectively. It was so entertaining! To be honest, I expected it to be quite boring, but to my surprise, it was kind of eye-opening. Amongst many points that he makes, there was one that stood out for me, and that was the relevance of who I’m writing for and how important it is to know the reader in a professional environment nowadays. How by knowing the reader, we can learn to change their minds with our writing. And how academic writing is mostly based on rules, as well as the knowledge we create, that is mostly irrelevant to the actual world. That our writing becomes too focused on following rules instead of appealing to the reader, in a professional context, obviously. This brought me back to my academic support session and how the tutor reflected so much of himself and his ideas on what I had written. And it is true. Why should he agree with me? He doesn’t have to agree with me or my ideas. But in this context, they are quite applicable and worth discussing when it comes to this proposal because it is literally the task I am required to do.

Dang it! This sounds like I was pissed off at the tutor, but I am not. I am quite grateful that he resonated so much with him that he had to confront me with his ideas. It means he found it relevant and was taking it seriously. I just think that advice didn’t help me, but I would love to discuss it further, nonetheless.

Update – 10th May – Theory class

Today we tackled game theory in VR and its various applications. For me what stood out more was the use of VR gaming software and principles to create advanced medical training platforms. This connected two ideas I discuss in my essay, replacing physical objects with virtual ones, and finding ways to demonstrate complicated concepts to learners. Neat stuff!

Update – Academic support – 11th May

I went to LCC today to review my essay again and this time it was so much better! The tutor was nice, and we got to meet face-to-face which, in my opinion, makes a huge difference. She focused a lot on my structure as well as my ability to connect opposing ideas, while still conveying my original points. The only things she said I could improve were the conclusion (summarising the ideas before making any final judgements) and the intro (pointing out that I used relevant studies as sources of information for this essay). But I was very content overall and felt a little less of a judgemental look towards this theme.

Final update – 13th May

I am done writing and reviewing the essay and I am very pleased to announce that it’s finally over! I am so tired… the only thing left to do is update the blog and make sure everything is neat and ready for evaluation.

Categories
MV Project

Unity

Phase 1 – Textures

As I mentioned on the previous page, I exported my entire model as an obj. file and imported it in Unity, in order to assign the materials to each element. It was then that I found out I couldn’t export all the layers of textures and light that I had assigned to planet earth. As a result, I had to create a more simplified version in Unity, which proved to be beneficial since it didn’t require as much PC power to render.

Textures – Unity File

Phase 2 – Mixamo Animation

Easily one of the most stressful phases of this project. I thought that importing all the animation with my model from Mixamo would be one of the easiest steps. I was very wrong. As soon as I imported the first animation, there were a ton of errors that ranged from the character moving to a totally different spot as I hit play, to the animation looking shaky. The thing is, I couldn’t really figure out what was happening and decided to import the same animations to a new project in unity. They all looked fine there. So, after searching for solutions in Google, I tried to export everything to a new project in an older version of Unity (which I would have to do later on anyway when I found out about the VR toolkit, but at this point, I didn’t know). Finally, I had to reassign all the textures again and position all separate objects. And it worked! The errors were all fixed, but I couldn’t set the model to humanoid for some reason… What matters is it was done.

Phase 3 – Mirrors

The mirrors were another interesting challenge. I had to resort to YouTube once again to find a way to do it, and after watching a few videos, the solution was very easy to follow. Just create a few cameras, connected to the Panels that are meant to be the mirrors and it’s done. It is necessary to do a bit of retouching and reflecting the coordinates, but after that, I got myself a few working mirrors.

Mirrors – Unity

Phase 4 – Lights

The lighting process was a lot of fun to do. An essential part that set the mood throughout the video. I chose to use solely white lights, to invoke feelings of loneliness and discomfort, giving off that hospital-like atmosphere. At the same time, the contrast between the dim lighting and the pitch-dark space creates a more heavily accentuated feeling of isolation and smallness.

Lights – Unity

Phase 5 – Viewer’s Camera

Apparently, an easy process that I found quite hard at first. In my mind, I thought I would have to create a first-person controller. I watched tutorials and became frightened at the thought of having to write code and was about to save this for my teachers to solve. And I did get a tutorial from Annie, but at that point, I had already found the same video on YouTube and was able to solve this with a simple camera rig that I then animated to follow the movement of the platform. At this point, the project is almost finished.

Camera Rig – Unity

Phase 6 – Problem with Unity App and Oculus Compatibility

This phase was mentally destroying. I had never been more clueless throughout this project.

First of all, I could not connect my VR headset to Unity when I hit play. And it was all set up, the XR management, developer mode, USB debug, etc. Still would not connect. The solution: I had to export it as a project to my VR headset. Seemed easy enough, until I realised that my Unity version wasn’t recognising the SDK & NDK & JDK and Gradle from the android plugin, so I could not export my build. I tried exporting a different project in the most recent version but, since I could not download the XR toolkit there, I would have no camera rig. At this point, I was struggling a lot and since I thought the teachers would not be able to find a solution, I figured I would have to do it then and there by myself. I tried everything, downloading other versions, making sure the XR toolkit was not available in the 2021 version, looking up personal blogs, unity forums, etc. And finally, after literally hours of trying to solve this, in the confines of YouTube, I found a video that I religiously followed step-by-step, that solved all my problems as if I had been presented with a miracle (I will link it below). I cannot express the sheer amount of relief I felt at that moment. It had finally worked, and my project was saved in the VR headset. Even writing about this, I still feel the anxiety I felt then. But it worked, so I used this opportunity to make any remaining changes and exported my project’s final version to the Oculus 2 headset.

https://youtu.be/rxdI3yr9cm8

Phase 7 – Project completion and Final Thoughts

This project was very challenging due to the amount of time we had to process/create it. However, it certainly taught me a lot about Maya and Unity, in all aspects. From 3D sculpting to animation and even how to fix faulty software. As for the end result, I am very happy with the video. I would say it really captures the message and desperation of the song through a minimalist sequence of repetitive actions. I feel like the viewer is able to experience the solitude and sadness in the first person while reflecting upon their own life.

However, there is a lot of room for improvement in character animation and 3D sculpting especially. I think that the character in this project could look a bit more polished and his animations could be a little less stiff and more realistic. But these things will come naturally as we cover them in class, and hopefully, I will be able to get even better results in the near future.

Categories
MV Project

Modeling and Animation in Maya

Phase 1 – MakeHuman Character

The first thing to do was to think about the character design since it is the main mean used to convey the sadness expressed by the song. Therefore, I used the app MakeHuman to create the man that I had mentioned on my idea page. I decided that a suit would fit him best since he is supposed to resemble an office worker. He is also more on the old side which shows how long he has been living his depressing, repetitive life.

Character – MakeHuman

Phase 2 – Maya Model

This was probably the most important step since I had to model the whole set while keeping the timing with the song synchronized with the animation passing by each room. I also want to mention the fact that I did not model everything. The armchair, the office chair and the tap were all from Sketchfab. And as I mentioned on the idea page, the earth model that I created, helped me learn some things, such as sticking images to skydomes. This was how I created the sky, which I later found I would have to redo in unity with a skybox.

The process was fairly smooth with only a few challenges, such as the bathtub. But after a few YouTube tutorials, I was able to achieve the results I needed.

Set models – Maya

Phase 3 – Maya Animation

This phase was crucial to get smooth transitions between each room while following the lyrics and sticking to a linear animation. I only had to animate the platform moving up, and the door opening at the right time. The platform proved to be a challenge at first since it was going very slow and then gaining speed even though I had set the correct time it had to move until the end of the song. But I soon realised that I had to set it to a linear animation so that the speed would remain constant. After this, the first animation phase is complete and ready to move to the next step.

Phase 4 – Textures Problem

At first, I thought I would add the textures in Maya, so I started downloading them from textures.com (and a few other websites), only to realise that it would be much harder to export and that the work I was doing to get each texture as detailed as possible would become obsolete. The solution to this problem was actually much easier than trying to do it using Maya. I simply exported everything to Unity and created all the materials there. The interface for each material’s traits was much more intuitive than Maya. It only required me to drag and drop images in the required spaces, and voilà, new material. And this marks the end of my using Maya for this project, at least for now I think. Under this text, I will post an image of the model that was exported to Unity.

Maya Model Update
Maya Model Update (with illumination)
Categories
MV Project

MV – Idea and Research

Idea

For this project, I initially wanted to interpret a classical piece by Chopin, but quickly realised that I had a better idea for another song. It is called “No surprises” by Radiohead. It briefly tells us about a monotonous life that reflects most of society nowadays. A life of compliancy, where we wake up every day to do the same things and despite our unhappiness, we don’t want to disturb the “the peace”.

I want to interpret this through a music video that takes place in space. There will be an enormous moving sidewalk that is meant to take the viewer through a journey of reflection of their own or someone else’s life. Therefore, we are able to experience this project in the 1st person and/or in the 3rd person. This moving sidewalk will take the viewer upwards, from the earth to a “final door”. During this trip, the viewer will come upon various rooms that all contain the same character doing repetitive actions of everyday life, only in a much darker and depressing way, to emphasize the song’s message. These actions could include eating, working, taking a shower, just seating while staring into space, trying to sleep, watching tv alone, etc.

At the end of this sad path, the viewer will encounter a “final door” that could be seen as a metaphor for the end of life (either their own, society’s or the character). It could also be the door for a second chance or even a door that lets us go back to the actual reality (outside VR) that puts things in perspective and appeals for a change. But it could also just be the end of the song… I think this interpretation should be left to the viewer to decide according to their own feelings and experience.

Idea sketch – Made with Procreate

The Scenery

This video will take place in space since it evokes a more peaceful and quiet scenario, perfect for introspection. It also represents the path to death (earth to the sky).

In it, the viewer will be placed on the moving sidewalk, where they can look around them and witness the beauty, and at the same time, emptiness of space. Again, the moving sidewalk will take us through the aforementioned path of reflection, finally leading us to the door where the video/song ends.

I wanted to explore the process for creating planet earth on Maya as well as incorporating the sky with it, so I followed a Youtube tutorial and was able to get very interesting results.

Earth Model – Created using Maya

The Character

I want the character to embody these societal problems, therefore I want to make him look like an old male office worker that looks tired and apathetic. For this, I will use MakeHuman to create a plausible character that I can later animate without spending too much time modelling him.

deutschland,business,office,work,mann
Sad Man at Home Desk

Storyboard

I have been working on the storyboard and how the viewer will perceive the Video. The idea is to have the viewer static at all times, while still being able to look around and experience the various rooms.

Padlet

I created a padlet page for my project presentation. I think it was quite useful to get a visual summary of everything I had been doing up until now. Also, I added new elements such as my character’s design and the song’s sections divided by each room in the scene. I will post the link below.

https://padlet.com/mliragomesdealmeidabelo04202011/by3ywmcvna2402nu

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Uncategorised

BAVR Blog – Margarida Belo

Maya

Unity

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Uncategorised

3D Theory and Principles

15th October 2021

Today we looked into types of 3D models and their various attributes when applied to different media, such as games, CGI in movies and animation.

Examples:

This model would be good for gaming thanks to its minimalist design and low polygon count.

On the other hand, this model has a bigger amount of polygons and a lot more details and rendering time. This makes it ideal for CGI in movies since it requires extremely high resolution and realism.

Why is modularity important in games?

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Uncategorised

Unity

Inspector Game

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Maya

Treasure Chest

3D Theory and Principles

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Uncategorised

Treasure Chest

8th October 2021 – Week 2

During the first 3D sculpting class, we were given the task to create a flower pot, giving us the opportunity to start interacting with Maya and getting a chance to know the interface and tools. My pot turned out ok. I don’t have a lot of knowledge yet, but it was a good starting point.

The second task was to build a crest/chest. Getting some ideas from other artists was really helpful design-wise.

At first, it all seemed too complicated but slowly I began to feel more comfortable with the software after the tutor introduced us to edge loops. This was the core method I used to build my treasure chest, as well as extrusions, unions and differences. The result was interesting and it taught me a lot about the tools in Maya and ways to work with more symmetric objects. At home, I decided to carry on working and refining my model and even ended up adding some free 3D models that I found in Sketchfab, to add a bit of fun to it.

15th October 2021 – Week 3

Today, we also used this class to polish our chest models, by learning what mistakes we should look out for when modelling. I found quite a few problems with my model that were solved by working with only half of it and then mirroring it. There are still some things to correct but the model I have now is much more solid. The final goal is to get two rendered images of this chest. One with the wireframe and another one shaded.