Wow – I can’t believe I haven’t posted here since December! It’s not that things haven’t been happening – in fact, I am very excited that I am enjoying a period of extreme creative and collaborative satisfaction – I just find it hard to keep up with all the social media and posting everywhere all at once, so while I have been sharing things here and there, I just haven’t been managing my website so well. Anyway, this post is dedicated to the progress (since December) on the underwater VR experience “Found in the Fjords”. The original intent was to build something to submit to the UN’s “Metaverse for the SDGs” competition, but we’ve extended our ambition and hope to turn it into much more. While I was on my expedition to Norway, I met many wonderful people, and I managed to convince a couple of them to join me on this project. Aya Walraven and Tiff Duong are incredible humans and they are elevating the project immensely through their technical and creative skills.
Thanks to my laziness, this will just be a compilation of the posts I’ve made elsewhere over the last three months. (Scroll to the bottom if you just want to see the recent stuff!)
December 10 2022:
Today I have been revisiting my orca model, to try to get the locomotion animation looking a little bit more realistic. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find much information about orca biomechanics, so I’ve had to rely on watching videos and trying to figure out the flow of the movement. I think it’s definitely an improvement from the first attempt, but if there are any experts out there on orca locomotion, I’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations on how to improve it.
December 18 2022:
After a lot of learning and a fair share of re-doing, a functional demonstration animation of an orca carousel feeding (complete with tail swipe) is ready. One of the best things about being involved in the worlds of 3D modelling and XR is how willing people are to share their expertise and welcome new people into the fold. Without the many low-cost or freely-available tutorials on all aspects of these skills, I can’t imagine being in the place where I find myself today (right now I am particularly grateful for the YouTube tutorials by Yojigraphics). As I continue to learn and grow in this exciting space, I get ever more convinced of the power of immersive technology to enhance people’s sense of awe, wonder, and empathy for this planet and its inhabitants.For those who are interested, a very brief summary of what I did:
Herring: a low poly mesh with an image of a herring used to make the material
Herring animation: a simple rig and movement animation with each “bone” motion slightly offset to make it ripple.
Shoal effect: a particle emission with the herring model as the particle. The rotation is achieved using a vortex “force field”.
Orca animation: translation and additional rotation superimposed onto a basic movement animation inspired by the one I used for the herring
December 23 2022
Fugloya Island was a favourite place of mine during our expedition to Arctic Norway. It is a bird sanctuary for puffins and razorbills, but for me it was the geology that got me excited – the black and white zebra stripes characteristic of migmatites. Migmatites are one of my favourite rock types, formed in high-grade metamorphic terrains when conditions allow partial melting but no melt migration. As such, they form white bands of crystalline minerals like quartz and feldspar trapped between bands of magnesium and iron-rich minerals that aren’t quite ready to melt yet.
It is, therefore, no surprise, that Fugloya and the surrounding area are where I want to situate our VR experience (we also had a lot of luck finding orca and humpbacks around there). Today I have been having lots of fun modelling the terrain and seafloor of this magical locality.
Thanks again to Ian Lochhead, PhD for the workflow for getting the terrain data into Blender.
January 05 2023
Some things have to get worse before they get better…
Finding the right workflow for setting up my humpback model for animation has been… shall we say… a challenge! I have gone back and forth between rigging and blendshapes, and had to start over more times than I can count because I didn’t save my file in quite the right way… But, sometimes you need a lesson in how “failures” can lead to growth and PURE JOY. I would like to introduce you to “Paul the Positive” (name courtesy of Tiffany T.V. Duong), the most spectacular, joy-inducing result of armature weighting gone wrong. (I also included the somewhat less entertaining “final version” – I think I will call him Darren – ready to animate)
#blender3d #FoundInTheFjords #Awe #Wonder #Whales #VirtualReality #animation
Thanks to Aya Walraven and Tiffany T.V. Duong for being a part of this project with me!
January 07 2023
Following the massive boost of motivation from “Paul the Positive” (see earlier post), I finally managed to make a functional prototype animation of a humpback whale taking a big gulp. If there are any whale specialists out there who better understand the mechanics of humpback feeding, I would love any suggestions for improvements.
January 14 2023
Since embarking on this new creative journey into VR, I have been a bit of a one-person show, and have had limited opportunity to (and, to be honest, interest to) collaborate on a project. I am so glad that has changed for “Found in the Fjords”. Working with Aya Walraven and Tiffany T.V. Duong has already been one of the most rewarding creative experiences of my life and I am excited to see what we create over the next few months. Aya Walraven‘s technology and design (not to mention project management) expertise combined with Tiffany T.V. Duong‘s impressive storytelling abilities (she came up with an impressive VR storyboard having only watched a 10 minute video of some VR examples) have elevated anything I could have done on my own exponentially. Working with people who inspire you is the best.
We’re almost done building all the 3D models – including our snorkeler – and I look forward to putting everything together in #unity3d
February 21 2023
It’s been a little while since I posted on the progress of “Found in the Fjords”, but Aya Walraven, Tiffany T.V. Duong and I have been busily working on scripting, sound design, website development and scene development in Unity. A lot of my recent work have included placeholder audio (courtesy of me…) that I have been too embarrassed to share publicly! Anyhow, today I reached a bit of a milestone (and my voice, thankfully, is nowhere in earshot), and got the carousel feeding animation more or less set up in Unity. Carousel feeding is unique to the Type A North Atlantic Orca that we visited in Arctic Norway, so capturing this hunting spectacle – passed down from generation to generation in tight-knit matriarchal family pods – is a critical part of the experience. The motions of the shoaling herring and the orca are procedurally generated, so while you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get, it certainly keeps things interesting! Very grateful for the spectacular online tutorials on Unity Learn (courtesy of Holistic3D). The tail slap and bite animations need some tidying up (they’re in there, I swear), but feeling pretty happy with it.