Personal Project I
8th April - 14th June 2019 (W2-W11)
Jaslyn Tjhai (0333039)
Personal Project I
RMIT Collaboration
Jaslyn Tjhai (0333039)
Personal Project I
RMIT Collaboration
Ideation and Concept
◔ Week 2
8th of April 2019
Today marks the first day of collaboration. We had a small introductory session where we were briefed by Dr. Li Ping, lecturer from RMIT, on the whole project with the theme being Cities. We were then asked to write our names in the area that we specializes in, our strength that is. I was deciding between animation and interactive but decided to go for animation instead as compared to interactive as I have more experience in animation. We then formed a group, shown below with our choice of expertise.
Today marks the first day of collaboration. We had a small introductory session where we were briefed by Dr. Li Ping, lecturer from RMIT, on the whole project with the theme being Cities. We were then asked to write our names in the area that we specializes in, our strength that is. I was deciding between animation and interactive but decided to go for animation instead as compared to interactive as I have more experience in animation. We then formed a group, shown below with our choice of expertise.
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Fig. 1.a. Mirrorless group picture
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| Fig. 1.b. Brainstorming of ideas |
- Ageing city
- Futuristic or cyber type of city
- Cave turning into a city
- Comparison of two cities (Melbourne and KL)
Upon more discussion, we finally settled with the idea of expectation vs reality where we manage to get our concept of showing the good and the bad side of a city. We wanted the audience to know that things are not always positive and all bubbly but there are always people who are less privileged and things that are hidden due to the negativity that it has.
Our idea was to project it using installations, where users will be standing inside four walls covered with curtains, having the projection come from outside to minimize shadows. The footage that will be shown in front of the user will always be the positive side of the city where as there’s negative thing happening behind, giving the option for user to either look or not to look, by using a handheld mirror. The reason we chose a mirror is because it enables the user to only catch a glimpse and not the whole thing as we wanted to convey the message of how the negative things are not always shown and focused on.
We had a small presentation on our rough idea to the whole class where the feedback we got from the lecturer were pretty good, they’re pretty satisfied with our idea and concept, it’s just that they weren’t really sure about the whole “using a mirror” as it makes everything looks off and weird. So we were asked to think of a solution for that.
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| Fig. 1.c. First presentation on rough ideas |
After an hour or so, we came up with a solution where we will still use the mirror but it will be placed on the side as what we really wanted is for the audience to just catch a glimpse but then again, we were asked to ditch the whole “mirror” idea.
So we were suggested to use sounds as cues for the audience to turn and once they turn, the footage of the negativity will only be shown for a few seconds. So we ended with that for the day as most of us are pretty exhausted. Oh and that’s how actually where we got our group name, Mirrorless.
We started off second day by travelling to Pasar Seni to get some inspirations on what we can film and also to look around.
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| Fig. 2.a Day 2 Trip |
Once we got back, there was a short talk about VR from Studio Behind 90 where they also showed us a small demo on how they did their VR illustrations. Afterwards, we continue to finalize our ideas. After much discussion, for the prototype itself, since we were asked to make everything achievable in two weeks, so we scaled down everything. We were thinking about how the audience can actually interact with our project as we wonder what they have to do after they catch a glimpse of the bad side. So after more thinking here and there, we decided to use sounds to actually be the object of interaction where the sounds act as cues for the user to actually look behind. But then after discussing more, we came to think of changing the whole front and back thing, to a 5 sided wall where 3 side of the walls in front of the user will always be showing the good ones while the other 2 on the side where it’s on the peripherals of the user will be showing the bad ones, so that the user can’t see it clearly but know that it’s there. Once we’re all done discussing on that part, we approached Mr. Razif to get some feedback. He looked through what we had in mind and suggested us to actually just make use of VR because that would be a much more immersive experience and what we’re trying to do is also more suitable for that. Listening to his suggestion and explanation, we agreed to have things switched to VR and from there we start thinking about how it’s going to be like.
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| Fig. 2.b. Demo from Studio Behind 90 |
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| Fig. 2.c. More discussions |
Since we’re all pretty exhausted for the day, we decided to stop it at that and have further discussion the next day while Mr. Razif let us try his Oculus for us to have an idea on how to put things in VR and how everything looks.
The third day itself was used for preparation for the presentation where we further solidify and finalize all that we have. We we’re still trying to figure out how we should show the entire thing while Umar tried to do a quick mock-up on how the entire thing would look like.
We visualize it as how the user will actually be sitting or standing and through the VR lens, the user will be looking through 5 screens just as we first suggested, where the 3 screens in front of them will always be showing the good side while the 2 screens on the peripherals will always be showing a bad side of the city. Then we were thinking of using sounds as cues. We explained to Ms. Li Ping on our finalized idea which she asked us to try and think about what we can do further because for now the interactive wasn’t there. Some of us thought about how we could perhaps make use of the environment in the VR room itself as what we envisioned was the user will be inside a room where they will be looking through screens. However, remembering what Mr. Razif told us, since in VR all the videos will be stitched together and our videos aren’t exactly connected in a way, he suggested that the visuals will be shown in the form of windows which we all agreed to. Louis then suggested about making the whole visual in the form of parallax so if the user were to view from different angles, everything will look more believable.
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| Fig. 3.a. A mock-up Umar did for presentation |
For the interaction itself, we were thinking of having the room to be deteriorated and crumbled down in the end to get the user into the mood. However, upon presentation and feedback, we were asked to actually let the user interact with whatever’s in the room. A way to get the user to actually have some sort of control instead of just watching, so that everything is not so linear. We should also think about what’s happening in the ceiling instead of having it just a dark room.
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| Fig. 3.b. Presentation on final concept |
A few things that some of us came to think of after the feedback was to actually, again, interact with the things in the room where user could pick up the things in the room and actually cause something to happen. Another thing is instead of having the room all crumbled down every time, create 2 different endings for the user based on how they interacted with the things around the room. So with that we ended our discussion for the day.
11th of April 2019 - A Trip to Ipoh
All of us were arranged on a trip to Ipoh for Thursday. Started by going to the Tin Mining Museum and getting a tour from the worker there as well as short history of the whole tin mining industry.
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| Fig. 4.a. Tin mining tour |
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| Fig. 4.b. A picture of everyone |
After a tour, we went to the famous Tin Dredge Ship for another tour where all of us had to wear safety helmets.
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| Fig. 4.c. Everyone wearing safety helmets |
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| Fig. 4.d. Tin Dredge Ship Tour |
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| Fig. 4.e. A few interesting things |
Moving on to the next stop, we went to Sekeping for lunch and a few hours of free time for us to walk around.
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| Fig. 4.f. Famous Concubine Lane |
After lunch, we went to Perak Cave Temple where all of us climbed all the way to the highest peak of the temple. It was an experience.
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| Fig. 4.g. Cave Temple |
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| Fig. 4.h. Peak 1 |
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| Fig. 4.i. Peak 2 |
The trip ended with a dinner at Taman Jubilee.
On the Friday itself, all of us got together to kind of discuss what we’ve researched and also what we plan to do for the weekends followed by Monday. We further finalized our ideas and did some research on the places in Malaysia that we can film as well as some issues that’s present. Footages and some sounds will be taken on Monday while some of us tried working on other stuff. I was in charge of figuring out how to project the entire thing in Oculus Go while waiting to get out hardware which is the HTC Vive.
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| Fig. 5.a. Testing the Oculus Go |
Throughout the weekend, I was trying to set up the Oculus in Unity however, due to the fact that it’s not exactly my account, as Mr. Razif forgot to unlink it, I wasn’t successful in setting up and therefore had to wait till Monday.
Prototyping
◔ Week 3
15th of April 2019
Our group met up at 10 AM and set out to Central Market (Pasar Seni) as well as KLCC and Pavilion to film footages and record sounds. I stayed back in campus to continue setting up on Oculus Go after Mr. Razif unlinked his account from the Oculus. It was pretty tedious as there were a lot of steps to follow through as well as some commands here and there. I did successful set it up which felt satisfying. But later in the day, HTC Vive was finally here for us to use. We stayed until it was pretty late to set up the hardware and try to project whatever’s on our Unity in the Vive before finally calling it a day.
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| Fig. 6.a. Trying the HTC Vive |
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| Fig. 6.b. Trying out the HTC Vive |
16th of April 2019
The day started with us trying to set up the hardware once again as there were just multiple bugs. I was trying to figure out a few scripts for interaction but was actually kind of confused on which to prioritize. So throughout the day, we were only able to just project it in Unity while reviewing the model here and there with me watching tutorials one after another. By 2.30 PM, we had a small presentation in our own working area to sort of explain our progress so far, what we’ve done, what are the challenges we faced as well as our next action steps. Before presentation, I was able to try out the script for raycast on Oculus Go using SteamVR to ensure that the script won’t be that much different once I move it to HTV Vive. We ended up being able to have the videos appear only after the user gaze at the windows for a few seconds.
After presentation and feedbacks from lecturers, we continued working on our project where some are doing editing on videos, sounds, models, while me and Jesslyn watched tutorials and try it out on the hardware, going through a lot of trials and errors. By night time, I was finally able to find a decent tutorial on picking up and dropping objects. Once I was finally able to apply it to HTC Vive and all of us were so excited about it that we just played around with the interactable cubes.
17th April 2019
Wednesday is the day of even more coding, fixing errors and more trying. For today the focus was to trigger different videos to play. It was pretty tedious trying to get the script to work as there is always an error here and there. Took all of us a while to finally sit down and really focus on the script.
We decided to stay up again to finish the prototype. By the time the trigger works, we kind of thought about the point and message of our whole project, but we don’t really see it because for now, it’s just a matter of triggering the good videos to play first, then it will slowly play bad videos when it is triggered by something else and we were like “then what?” So Joel was thinking of how we can make our project slightly more meaningful with all the interactivity.
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| Fig. 7.a. Getting a script to work |
17th April 2019
Wednesday is the day of even more coding, fixing errors and more trying. For today the focus was to trigger different videos to play. It was pretty tedious trying to get the script to work as there is always an error here and there. Took all of us a while to finally sit down and really focus on the script.
We decided to stay up again to finish the prototype. By the time the trigger works, we kind of thought about the point and message of our whole project, but we don’t really see it because for now, it’s just a matter of triggering the good videos to play first, then it will slowly play bad videos when it is triggered by something else and we were like “then what?” So Joel was thinking of how we can make our project slightly more meaningful with all the interactivity.
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| Fig. 8.a. Working on the programming |
Conclusion of the discussion, we decided to change the flow of the whole project while trying to keep our concept in check. The flow being, user enters the room (start) and triggers the good videos to play, when suddenly a trashcan appear as well, tempting them to interact with it and making it topple down. As the trashcan toppled down, bad videos are triggered, and trashes appear. Users will have to place the trashes inside the trashcan to trigger the good videos to play again. Therefore, message of the story is to be considerate and not ignorant on the surroundings. After confirming on that, we list down a few things needed to be programmed and looked for tutorials for it.
18th April 2019
Thursday was pretty much similar to Wednesday where all of us were focused on doing our own work. We managed to program the trash to appear together with the good video, although we wanted to work on the timing for that, but we didn’t really have the time for now. After that, the next step was to program the trashcan to kind of know when there are trashes inside.
By today, we've tried our best to make sure the scripts that we wanted are working and ready for the presentation to the industry people on the next day.
19th April 2019 - Presentation Day
Today is the day we present our prototype to the industry and get their feedback on our project. We gathered early in the morning to set up the hardware and ensure that everything is working.
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| Fig. 9.a. Setting up and trying out the prototype |
Before presentation, we realized that we didn't really inserted sounds properly so before presentation, we tried to insert the sounds and a few sound effects that we can insert in.
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| Fig. 9.b. Presenting to the industry |
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| Fig. 9.c. A picture with everyone |
◔ Week 4
We were given a week break.
Upscale
◔ Week 5
30th April 2019
On the first class after the break, we were briefed by Mr. Mike on the communication platform that we were to use to communicate with RMIT students for us to work on the upscale version of the prototype.
Our group did a video call to discuss on how we wanted to upscale our prototype but we kind of ran out of ideas so we came up with two rough ones for them to present to Dr. Li Ping the next day.
1st May 2019
We did a call with them while they were in class where our final idea for upscaling was a sandbox concept where we can build buildings in the environment and as we build, bad things will be spawned showing the user that there are always consequences to what we do in life. Dr. Li Ping liked the idea and hence we proceed with it. We started listing down the things that we needed for the whole execution however, there were a lot of things that we didn't properly consider as well.
◔ Week 6
5th May 2019
When we finally discussed our ideas to our lecturers, we started to see that this idea would not work really well as there were a lot of things that we didn't consider so we tried to arrange for another video call for discussion.
6th May 2019
We ended our discussion by deciding to do our project in a much smaller scale, like on a table top. However, after discussing with Dr. Li Ping from their side, she was against the idea as it was similar to other group and the user will directly be able to see what's happening which defeated the purpose of what we wanted the user to experience. So in the end, we went with knee-length height for our upscale.
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| Fig. 10.a. A few sketches on what we visualizes |
◔ Week 7
13th May 2019
With all the feedbacks from our lecturer, we were kind of pessimistic regarding this upscale version of the project where everything just went for a different direction so we were trying to see if we can just stick with the upscale version that we planned initially before RMIT went back to Australia. However, due to disagreements, we decided to still proceed with this idea. It was pretty difficult as we weren't able to test it out on the real hardware due to limitations.
Based on the meeting, I tried to create a rough prototype on unity to see what the whole project would look like.
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| Fig. 11.a. A sample building script based on tutorials |
15th May 2019
Umar was done with modelling the houses so I was in charge of placing it in unity. We were also advised to try and insert a plane to show the building area so that user won't be mistaken that they can build the houses as far as they wanted.
21st May 2019
We tried to figure out how we can test out the file to see if it's compatible with the hardware, so we tried to build the file on unity first. However, that method did not work as well.
Umar was done with modelling the houses so I was in charge of placing it in unity. We were also advised to try and insert a plane to show the building area so that user won't be mistaken that they can build the houses as far as they wanted.
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| Fig. 12.a. Progression |
◔ Week 8
20th May 2019
I tried to convert the script for it to be compatible for VR again but apparently, it still doesn't work from their side and I've no idea what the error was. |
| Fig. 13.a. Compilation of errors on Unity |
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| Fig. 13.b. Errors |
We tried to figure out how we can test out the file to see if it's compatible with the hardware, so we tried to build the file on unity first. However, that method did not work as well.
◔ Week 9
24th May 2019
I passed the unconverted Unity file to our RMIT team mates last week so they tried to convert it to VR from their side which they got working. However, the building script was tracking the headset instead of the controller.
◔ Week 10
14th June 2019
Throughout the weeks, I've been trying to see if I could help them figure out how to solve the converting issue but was still unable to solve it so in the end. They decided to use the prototype that was created during the 2 weeks they were here for their exhibition instead.
15th June 2019
Pictures from exhibition.
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| Fig. 14.a. RMIT Exhibition |
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| Fig. 14.b. RMIT Exhibition |
Expansion
I was able to explore more on 3D animation due to the expansion that we were required to do. Below are a few progression regarding my execution on the expansion project. Since I was in charge of animation, that was what I explored.
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| Fig. 15.a. Placing the environment and character together |
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| Fig. 15.b. Close up on the food |
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| Fig. 15.c. Close up on the models |
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| Fig. 15.d. Close up on the flies |
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| Fig. 15.e. Animated bad scene |
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| Fig. 15.f. Close up on the fly animation |
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| Fig. 15.g. Animated good scene |
Design Report
Reflection
This whole collaboration was a new experience for me. Initially it was pretty intimidating as we were expected to be really focused and serious regarding this collaboration where we were expected to really be open and learn from RMIT students. However, after interacting with them, we were able to get along quite well for the project. Throughout the whole 2 weeks of intensive prototyping, I was able to really get my brain to work and solve problem while constantly analysing. I was also able to voice out my opinions more within the group. Not to mention, an exploration on VR is also a plus from this collaboration. Nevertheless, there were ups and downs throughout this whole collaboration where in the end, I was able to gain a lot in terms of experience and lessons.
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