PERSONAL PROJECT
DECIDING WHAT I SHOULD DO
Because of the slower pace of the first group, I found myself to be fairly behind with the other aspects of the course that we had to attend to. It took until the second short we had to make a decision into the area that I wanted too go into.
​
In terms of software, and regards to the skills of the rest of the people in the class, I found that there are a lot of people looking to go into concept art and modelling straight. I also know that there are a shortage of compositors in Belfast, mostly because of that reason.
​
Tactics aside, I have been told that second year is something where we need to be trying out a multitude of techniques and approaches within the digital world. I think that learning nuke would both challenge me, and allow me to have a skillset in which not many others would have in the class.
​
However, whenever we were disusing the idea of what to do for the Bravery short, I thought of the concept of taking the theme literally and doing something scary in VR. Literally implying that the audience are the ones that would need to show bravery.
​
After running concepts down with the group, they decided that doing something like that would be way too much work, some members even objecting to the dark themes that I wanted to explore though the narrative I developed.
​
So, I decided to research and find out what I can go about to achieve. Can I combine both skills as a compositor learning a program like Nuke and transpose that knowledge and develop a project in VR?
VR RESEARCH
SOFTWARE
There appears to be a couple of different routs to take when setting out to develop a VR narrative.
1.) UNITY/UNREAL ENGINE. For something to be truly interactive, then in reality you are not looking at designing an animation, but a game. Both unreal and unity seem to be developing tools particularly in that area at the moment. The level of realism in unreal engine is quite impressive. However, this route may be taking too much on my plate. Learning a compositing software along side this escapade is a lot to ask for, let alone keeping up with the other projects that I am being tasked with.
2.) PRODUCING A 360 VIDEO. This seems like it is a more practical idea at the moment. Even youtube has the option to turn any video into a 360 format. This also does not appear to be limited to working in an "alien" software such as a games engine. However, can this route also allow me to implement skills as a compositor? On top of everything, there are show reel needs to consider as well.
​
https://www.foundry.com/products/cara-vr
​
​
So it is possible to use Nuke with VR. However, because I would be using Maya for modelling, it means that render time will now play a factor into making this.
VR IN MAYA
With the Arnold 5 update, Solid angle have added in a VR camera to the mix.
​
​
What was going on with this video was pretty extraordinary, from the VR format itself to using audio to drive shader networks, some pretty intuitive stuff. It leads me to think in a more positive direction, knowing that the vision I can achieve is already at my finger tips.
​
I then found this video which uses the Arnold camera within nuke to set up lighting and a 3D scene. I assume this tutorial is also using the Cara plug in in his workflow.
​
​
There are some great tutorials for in regards for working in VR in maya.
​
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
INITIAL THOUGHTS
The idea to do something VR originally sprung from doing something for the Bravery short project.
I had the idea to integrate VR into a project pretty early on, in doing something with a bit of fear into it.
We were throwing ideas around, but because of the polarisation of two extremes (me wanting to do something much more dark) and the rest of the group, we decided to ditch it and do the WW1 project we are with now.
​
With the bravery aspect, I wanted to do something which hit close to home. Discussing ideas with my flatmate who speaks fluent Irish, I was thinking about doing something around the famine with him as a voice actor. Thinking about it more, I thought that it was a bit over done at the moment and was thinking about something which was a bit more unheard of. I then began to look into stuff like Spanish Influenza, a crippling plague which took the lives of millions around the world just before the end of WW1. I found that there was little reference on this behalf.
​
​
My flatmate began to tell me of how his grandmother was interned in an institution known as a Magdalene Laundry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland
I thought that this was a much more interesting route to go down, as these places where still in operation right up to the 70s. Whenever I started looking into these more, I found out that they were not the only places ran by the Catholic Church which held innocent people captive, sometimes worked to death, in the name of religious doctrine.
This reminded me about a town in country Galway which I had saw on the news a time ago, called Tuam, particularly the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home.
In 2012, a local historian found that there was a mass grave of over 700 children who had been dumped in a septic tank, who all had belonged to the home. Even talking from people from Galway I know through work, they didn't know about any of this.
Some interviews from local historians on the matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMLB1icn0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw4UKfZqTzw&t=1211s
​
Dervla:
HELPING WITH FINAL YEARS
For Dervla's project, she needed some exterior assets to fill up her open plane environment. I did some substance designer work for her, and also some grass and a ground plane.
assets in scene: render thanks to dervla
.png)
Johnny:
For Johnny's project I only ended up doing a sculpt for him. Found this pretty enjoyable. Also working on some textures for it.
ZBRUSH CREATURE SCULPT
Started this at the beginning of term for fun, really loved playing around with it.
ENVIRONMENT/LOOK DEV
First test enviroment for a story based vr game. Next phase for this is to get it into unreal. However, thinking of redoing textures wit something a bit more stylised.