Semester Updates
Since my first post this semester is about three weeks before the semester ends, I have a bit of catching up to do here!
The majority of these updates will be about the final build for the Ruby Bridges case study and thoughts about relating it to my paper writing. The earlier part of my semester was spent working a bit on the Oculus Quest with a five-week project based on house museums. My team and I made a prototype for a house museum on Jackson Pollock, which was a fun foray into Quest development. I also spent a bit of time playing with Vuforia and AR by making a Lord of the Rings companion app for iOS that provides additional information and context when looking at a map of Middle Earth, such as the paths taken by notable characters throughout The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m updating the MFA section of this site with the details and documentation of those projects.
Planning
From there, Tori and I have been working steadily on what will be our final version of this project. Taking into account all of the things we’ve learned from the last seven versions or so, I compiled a list of key tasks to address in this version:
Main Menu:
Creating a natural introduction to the gaze-based interaction. In previous versions the user was required to look at a specific button to trigger it, but I would like to make this a little more related to the content of the experience itself.
Prologue
Adjusting the position of the images and text in the prologue for a seated static user. The new form of locomotion (discussed below) does not require a user to stand, and so the images in a circular configuration can be difficult to see. Instead I will be re-arranging the images to be on a single plane across from the user, gallery-style.
Scene 01
Locomotion. This has been an issue since the very first prototype, and we’ve gone through several formats as we try to determine the optimal amount of user agency in the scene while keeping user attention on the scene around them. Our last prototype led us to the conclusion that it wasn’t reliable or reasonable to explicitly attempt to direct a user’s gaze to move forward through the space, as it takes attention from the events around them. Talking to Scott, he presented us with a middle-ground: putting the user back on a rail, but allowing them to control the speed by looking around.
Construct a full narrative scene using new mocap characters. Tori has been working hard this summer and semester on cleaning new mocap data for the scene. We’ve run into some software issues so it’s taken much longer than expected, but I will be placing all the new data into this scene. This includes a new interaction between the federal marshals and the state officials once reaching the front of the school.
Audio. Bringing in new variations to the audio so that the mob doesn’t appear to be repeating the same phrases every 10 seconds, as well as arranging dialogue.
Ending Sequence
Previous demos have ended with the walk to the school. Because there are no other scenes currently following this up, I will be book-ending Scene 01 with a sequence leading the user out of the space, with conversation on what happened next or drawing conclusions to today. The scene will have a similar setup to the Prologue, leading the user back out to the Main Menu where it can loop again seamlessly for demo purposes.
Schedule
Initial schedule for Final RB Case Study, created 10/28/19
Week 1 Progress
Just as my schedule shows, this week I started a clean project and began importing all the assets. I made a timeline to plot out specific interactions in the project. It’s helped me visualize a few of the scripting decisions I’ve had to make so far - instead of relying on timing, I will be using global booleans in the scene to determine when specific actions occur. Giving the user the ability to control their speed down the sidewalk makes the timing variable anyways, and this is the best way to ensure all of the interactions occur regardless of the user’s pace.
Timeline for project flow.
From there, I focused my attention on working through the gaze-based rail system. Expecting pitfalls, I gaze myself 2 weeks to figure it out and troubleshoot. It turned out to only take 2 hours, and integrated well with the scaling system I had set up. At this point, if the user has the camera rotation between 50 and 130 degrees (with 90 degrees facing straight down the sidewalk), the speed of the animation down the sidewalk remains at 1. If the user passes either of these thresholds, the speed will decrease based on how far past the threshold the user has turned.
Screencap of locomotion script in-play.
Locomotion script written for rail system.
With this out of the way, I began to work on the next steps on my schedule. I built the prologue into a gallery wall instead of a circular arrangement and added in the timing/narration. This has prompted further conversation from Shadrick and Maria about the sequencing of the images, the narration being used, and how I might incorporate the gaze-based mechanics into this scene. I’m still not convinced on adding any gaze functions to these scenes - I don’t want this to be the space for users to linger, I want it to be an area to gain context for the scene ahead. Now that the functions are the scene are set up, I’ll be looking at the sequencing and narration used to see if I can build a stronger narrative for the user going in.
Initial Prologue setup.
I began bringing in the finished data as Tori uploads them. The federal marshals are in, as well as Lucille. I found a car asset with an interior and doors that open (harder than you would expect), and began to construct the introductory car scene. The clips for the federal marshals were separated out so that they can be timed in the script, and I’m in the process of locating the walk/idle/talking motions for them for the later dialogue sequences.
Goals: Next Week
I have to adjust my schedule a little bit to make up for the fast locomotion work. This is what I plan on having done by the update next week:
Car sequence complete with anims and dialogue attached
User transition from car to rail animation
Additional animation imports for Lucille
Main menu scene addition with stand-in gaze button.
By next week I should have some in-game footage to show with the animations intact and some additional models added to the environment. I will also be introducing some of my thesis writing concepts and how it relates to the decisions I’m making here in the project.