Category: Collaborative Unit

The Lost World | Official Trailer

Logline

An immersive experience that takes you on a journey through the dystopian environments of post climatic apocalyptic Earth inhabited by evolved creatures.

Hero Image

We created one Hero Image for each environment to feature their monument and creatures. In the future, it would be rewarding to see more environments, as our project can be expanded to more countries as climate change is a problem that affects us worldwide and we need to collaborate together to find a solution.

Work in Progress Presentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G-xVkkDitE&ab_channel=DonatellaFlorenciaMikulasch

Final Thoughts

The collaboration unit was a great opportunity to not only get to know people from different fields, but also become familiar with their workflows and software. This has helped me understand how to prepare my animations and assets in order to deliver my work to the VR team. 

Even though we faced some technical issues when it came to exporting the animations from Maya into Unity, we did manage to find a solution by being proactive and consulting different mentors. Learning from our mistakes has also been also essential to be more prepared in the future when we start working in the industry.    

In addition, having regular meetings and sharing our progress was essential in that we could receive feedback and share our opinions in view of enhancing our project.  

Furthermore, I have enjoyed bringing my personal knowledge from my previous job and applying my project management skills into our VR project. Although my background is in Graphic Design, I have felt confident organizing this collaborative project and enthusiastic about developing animation sequences.

Trailer Animation

For our submission, we decided to create a trailer to promote our VR experience. In this sense, at the collaboration fair we will showcase the trailer to engage people to come to our stand and the VR experience itself.

My Responsibilities

As the 3D animator in my team, it was my full responsibility to create the trailer. First, I came up with the script, then I established which camera shots we needed to include and finally I worked on the video editing.

Part 1: Creating the script

Part 2: Setting Up Cameras in Unity

Apart from the recordings we made last week, I decided it was best to include some additional renders to showcase our environments. In this sense, our trailer would consist of both the recordings on the VR headset and some renders from Unity.

Establishing Shots

For our trailer, I wanted to include establishing shots as they are used to introduce the environment and context of an animation. For this reason, I rendered wide shots to showcase the two monuments: Obelisk and Minar-e-Pakistan.

Creature Animations

Since our idea is to focus on the rebirth of Earth and explore how life evolved into different creatures, it was essential to feature some creature animations.

Part 3: Video Editing in Premiere Pro

Part 1: Our Last Meeting

Part 2: VR Headset Recording

In order to create our VR recording, I first developed some camera directions and wrote them into a script. Then, I wore the VR Headsets and started recording the immersive experience. What follows next, are some examples of the shots I took based on my sketches.

Argentine Obelisk

Climate Apocalypse

Minar-E-Pakistan

Part 3: Creating the Hero Image

As regards the Hero Image, I wanted to maintain the centre composition from the concept art to highlight the monuments. We made the shots in Unity and then I edited the pictures in Photoshop to adjust the contrast levels and add a vignette to the lens.

Part 1: Chameleon Animation

For our second environment, the Minar-E-Pakistan, we decided to include a another a creature apart from the snail: a chameleon.

Why a Chameleon?

Chameleons are one of the most versatile animals in nature due to their high ability to adapt their color and movements to their environment. Therefore, they can be perceived as symbols of transformation and change.

Chameleon Reference Videos

In order to create my chameleon animation, the first thing I did was look at reference videos in Youtube. Then, I combined them into one video, making sure I had shots from different perspectives. These reference videos were crucial in order to edit my animation from different viewports in Maya.

Chameleon Animation Planning

After watching reference videos, I started planning my animation by analyzing the different body parts and structuring each movement into a timeline.

Chameleon Animation

I animated the chameleon considering that we would place him on a tree branch. I did not add any textures or lightning into the scene since we would edit that in Unity.

Part 2: Critical Setback

Problem: How to export animation files from Maya into Unity

We faced one major challenge when we tried importing the snail and dolphin animations into Unity. Even though I exported them as an .fbx file, part of the 3D model was not visible in the Unity scene.

I had an emergency meeting with our animation mentor George, who advised me to bake the animation. This solved the problem of importing the rig, however, the animation was still not visible in Unity. Even though the keyframes were visible in Unity, the animation did not work.

Solution: Export the animation as an alembic file

After several attemps of fixing this problem, Shizra came up with a solution as she faced a similar error in her previous job. Instead of exporting the animation as an .fbx file, she advised me to export it as an alembic file. Fortunately, this fixed our issue, and both the rig and animation were visible in Unity.

Part 3: Frameless Immersive Art Experience

Part 1: What is World-Building?

Part 2: Creature Animation

When it comes to the world we created for our immersive experience, we designed a semi-realistic environment that portrays the ruins of some emblematic monuments. We will show that life has evolved, and for this purpose, we will include some creatures in the form of spirits: snails and dolphins.

Why a Snail?

Despite the slow-paced nature of snails, they are always determined to reach their destination, and therefore, are seen as a symbol of persistence, patience and progress in life. 

Reference Videos

In order to create my snail animation, I searched for reference videos on Youtube and then, I combined them into one video, making sure I had shots from different perspectives. These reference videos were crucial in order to edit my animation from different viewports in Maya.

Snail Animation Planning

Snail Animation

Why a Dolphin?

Dolphins are known to be highly sensitive creatures and have emotional similarities with humans. Since they have a spiritual connection to the idea of not only life but death, they are perceived as symbols of spiritual renewal and rebirth.

Reference Videos

To start working on my dolphin animation, once again I combined some videos that included shots from different perspectives.

Dolphin Animation Planning

Dolphin Animation

Part 3: Photogrammetry

Furthermore, Serra introduced us to the art of photogrammetry as a useful tool to create 3D models within a short time frame. We used the software Reality Capture to transform the videos we took at Tate Modern into 3D models.

Part 1: Work in Progress Presentation

Sharing our work with our classmates was essential, since it was the first time we learned about everyone elses projects. It also enabled us to learn from other workflows and methodologies. 

Part 2: Work in Progress Meeting

Part 3: Visiting Tate Modern

Scanning Artworks

We visited the permanent exhibition of the Tate Modern in order to scan some sculptures and artworks and I am looking forward to using those videos for our photogrammetry lesson next week. In addition, I genuinely enjoyed visiting Tate Modern as a group since everyone shared some insights they knew. 

Part 4: Getting Started with Unity

Herman Ho Session

In this lesson, we learned how to create looping animations in Unity, which will come in handy for our creature animations. Moreover, we also got an overview on the animation interface, equivalent to the graph editor in Maya.

Part 1: Challenges of our Collaboration Work

We had to share in class some of the challenges we are facing in our group work. It was useful to upload our ideas on Padlet as it turned out that many groups were struggling with the same issue.

Part 2: The Importance of Avatars

Furthermore, this week, we had a guest lecturer who gave us a presentation on avatars.

Creating our own 3D Avatar

In order to create our 3D avatar, we had to use as a reference the characters we created during our exquisite corpse game. To create our new avatar, we combined different 3D presets (head, body, legs).

• My presets were downloaded from the website Sketchfab.
  
• Reference List
• Animated3d.us (2022). Chicken- Free. Available at: https://skfb.ly/ox8WK (Accessed 2 February 2023).
• LordSamueliSolo (2021). Lady Sammy FREE. Available at: https://skfb.ly/onKEW (Accessed 2 February 2023).
• LasquetiSpice (2023). Animated 3D Tyrannosaurus Rex Dinosaur Loop. Available at: https://skfb.ly/o9oJ8 (Accessed 2 February 2023).

Part 3: Getting Started with Unity

Herman Ho

Furthermore, we had our first lesson with Herman Ho, who gave us an overview on the video game industry and also Unity’s interface. This session was particularly useful as it helped us understand how 3D modelers and animators develop their assets and deliver them to the game developers.

Experimenting with Lights & Effects

After creating our environment, we had some time to experiment with the different types of visual effects and lighting. In view of getting familiar with the new tools, I edited the setting having in mind the look and feel of a psychedelic dream. I added some fog, a chromatic aberration to distort the colors and edited the lights into a pink-purple color palette.

Part 1: 22/23 MA Collaborative Unit: Projects Board

Part 2: Project Management

As the project manager of my team, I also worked this week on organizing our tasks, assigning specific roles and also establishing our own workflow.

Assigning Responsibilities

Understanding the Workflow

Keep the Team on Track

Part 1: Meeting my Team Members

This week, I talked to my classmate Shizra and I was interested in her idea of developing an immersive experience in a post-apocalyptic setting. We went together to our second meet & greet reunion, where we got to meet the rest of our team members. We will be working together with our classmate Caroline and Neeti and Ria from the VR course.

In order to get to know each other and understand how our team is build, I asked some questions:

• What is the workflow of a VR project?
• Which softwares do you usually use?
• Do you have any interests you would like to develop?
• What are your strenghts?
• Which difficulties do you face when working on a project?

Part 2: Project Timeline

Part 3: Gamified Collaboration

This week, we used gamified collaboration as a tool to bring together our classmates and work together as a group to solve different challenges.

1. Exquisite Corpse

The first game we played in class was the “Exquisite Corpse”, which is a surrealist game that engages people to work together on an artwork, such as stories or paintings, and invites them to unleash the power of their subconsciousness.

2. Coming up with Game Rules

The second activity we had to do, is to come up with some game rules for our classmates. This implied to come to an agreement as a team and also think of some rules that would be interesting enough to keep the players engaged.

Part 4: Collaboration as Decentralized Labor

The two activities were useful to portray in a ludic way how collaboration can be seen as a decentralized labor. These games can be perceived as a reflection of how we are supposed to interact with our team members in our collaboration work.

Rather than working on one task by our selves, the labor is decentralized since many people work together to fulfill one brief. This implies that different disciplines, skill-sets and artistic techniques come together to work together on one assignment. In addition, we should try to determine what our strengths are in order to get the most of our work.

Introduction

This week we got an overview on the collaborative unit, the assignment brief and the goals we need to accomplish as a group. We also had an event where we got to meet the course leaders and students from the different courses we are going to collaborate with. Furthermore, we were also asked to start thinking of potential ideas for our projects and choose one topic of interest from the meet and greet padlet board.  

Part 1: Sharing our Ideas

During class we were asked to share our ideas on a Miro Board as regards our views on working in a team and collaborating with people from different courses.

1. Why do we collaborate?
   We collaborate to bring together different skill sets, share our professional expertise and learn from our colleagues. In addition, if we determine our strengths within the team and create an organized workflow, the tasks are carried out more efficiently.
   
2. How to approach to collaboration in a group?
   Transparency and communication are of utmost importance when it comes to collaborating in a group as we need to share our strengths with our colleagues and give critical feedback on our work. We also need to develop organizational skills as the work needs to be delivered on time.
   
3. How can we create a piece of work by collaborating with different disciplines?
   First, we need to understand the workflows of the different artistic disciplines. Then, we need to create a project timeline, where we split project milestones and establish primary and secondary objectives. Finally, we have to assign responsibilities to each one of the team members and also monitor if everyone fulfills their tasks on time.

Part 2: Social Meet Up – Event

After our class on Wednesday, we went to the Lecture Theatre B to meet with the leaders and students from the other courses we need to collaborate with. Some of them are:

• MA VFX 
• MA VR  
• MA Animation 
• MA Games Design  

Part 3: Meet & Greet – Padlet Board

Next week, we are going to meet again with the students from the other courses, so our course leaders asked us to choose a topic on the Padlet Board to team up with people that share the same interest.   

I chose the subject Utopia and Dystopia, since I am specifically interested in dystopian fiction as it is a way to criticize a negative aspect of our society. I would be interested in collaborating on a project that creates social awareness of a conflict or problem that needs to be addressed immediately.