Wanqi Fu-Critical Practice


WEEK 1-13/1

Group setting

And the platform determined

The platform we need to choose:

‘computer-generated VR, 360 degree film, mixed/augmented reality’

We want to create something vibe and emotionally, and pure narrative(basiclly), and also

Built our own Miro Board only for this project:#

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLrZ1Cts=/

We got three Idea at the mean time.

Mine idea is about the detective fictions-A Criminal cases and how to solve it. The user gonna be the experiencer OR the detective, they are setting to find the clues in details and find out the truth.

My references is “And Then There were No One”-Agatha Christie, a perfect case for platform transfer and how to connect the narrative with MR reality space.

The interactive method of this idea was put some doll or items in the middle of the room, and let the user touch them, and transfer in to the narrative scene. BUT I feel like I want something has more related to the real world- The MR interavtive method, like a portal, a mirror, the light of a flashlight, to see something under the surface.

screenshot from”the ghost mom”

WEEK 2-20/1

This week we receive a new mission for 360 film- I think this is a good opportunity for us to learn how to mission our new tasks on the transfer platform critical mission. That’s for the user research.

The new workshop

360 film shooting and editing

We think about some interesting narrative but that seems to not be the first goal for the mission-what we really need to do is to make a complete 360 film for LCC campus.

–Which Im not like the most, I always don’t know how to deal with this campus. Which got so many interesting and boring things but we need to pretend that everything is interesting. Hard and hard.

We –lexi, deva and me, think about make a film about some students break the rules and be chasing by the teachers. in those chasing process we(the user)can explore the campus a little and maybe take a look at how other people break the rules(play with the fire or eat fired chicken besides the computer, etc.)

But this idea seems not so fun to Klaus,,, Anyway they don’t mark us by this workshop. That’s make sense, like we don’t need to try to make a complete narrative or stories but to try to figure out how to make a 360 film and combine this with the campus-a real place. Regardless we need to shot the 360 film for our critical works. That’s what really matter.

The idea of the critical

Still thinking in progress

My reference of the detective fiction turns to be a specialized novel:

“The Cabin Factory”, “And Then There were No One”,”桶川跟踪狂杀人事件”, “Murder in the Crooked House””Cult and the Interior Room”

  1. The Cabin Factory: In a lonely cabin in the forest, parents gave birth to a pair of siblings and imprisoned and abused them. In the end, the child set fire to the house and burned their parents to death inside. Using the fire as the clues.
  2. And then There were No One: Ten guilty people are trapped on an isolated island, dying one by one according to the nursery rhyme of ‘Ten Little Soldiers’. Unpredictable death and truth.
  3. The stalker in TongChuan: Even the most ordinary girls may be harassed by stalkers. Using photos as clues.
  4. Cult and the Interior Room: Cultists transform their houses into the image of cult goddesses, which can lead to useless rooms/corridors in their own houses and cause strange events to occur. Using interior room as the clues.

WEEK 3-27/1

Zhans workshop

the shaders

Shader Graph 插件

Play with shader kinda help with the model and how the model do in the unity to make animations

Shader Forge网站: explain the functions and the multiply things: basically tutorials and introductions

The narrative Theme Final Determined

We finally made the narrative framely works

There are four initial sotries to tell according to the last week:

“The Cabin Factory”, “And Then There were No One”,”The stalker in TongChuan”, “Cult and the Interior Room”

We discuss about this four topics again, and decided to refer the two with the clearest clue:“The Cabin Factory” and “And Then There were No One”.

They using the super clear clue and the understandable storyline: like a beautiful map, through a same scene.

A simple schematic diagram of the relationship between two platforms

Narrative development

Base on the keywords

We come up with some keywords that related to the basic emotional narrative-

Love, Greece, Delusions, Guilt, and a closed loop of Causality

And reference to “And then there were no One”, we come up with some ideas about ” the MR making the clues, and the VR telling the story”.

The story happens in fictional time and space.

STORY version 1

STORY version 2

STORY version 3

1. Irene places surveillance cameras

2. Kevin’s paranoia attacks and he starts locking the door

3. Sophie places heart-shaped candles and turns off the fire alarm

4. Irene makes an escape route through the secret door on the ground

5. Mark sneaks out of the room and starts checking the wires

6. Kevin finds the underground secret door opened and blocked while locking the door

7. Mark cuts the wires, exposing sparks and causing a power outage

8. Sophie is frightened by the power outage and knocks over the candle

9. Mark sees fire and noises in the darkness and tries to chop the iron door with the big scissors in his hand, but the rusty metal emits more sparks

10. The fire breaks out and everyone is unable to escape

What we gonna do next

about the story and the “technical” part

Next steps include two directions:

1.Story

We know that the story can be hard to understand for our players, so it’s not the best way for us to leave it there and made it without test. Its hard to say that we can express this story(especially the background and the character part) clear to our player-I mean they can’t get the information right-they can’t get their mission right.

2.Low Tech test

The test Eric mentions before: Our user testing part. We need to link our project with our user to see if they can know the mission or the order of this story. Which we set like two different way to achieve this-The Paper Storyboard/The questionnaire.

MR basic Design

Create by DEVA

In the MR reality passthourgh, you can see the starting button under the dolls, and you randomly pick them up and press the start button, get in to the VR experience.

The MR space means like the similar things happens in the real life. It’s happens in front of your eyes, and also happens in your life.

WEEK 4-03/02

The weakest part of the story/project

tutorial with Eric

How the player gonna know about their character and their motivation about the mission they gonna do? What gonna happened if you don’t do your mission or you doing it wrong? What elements or monologue or dialogue gonna say about these four character’s identify? Why use MR/What does the MR environment do in your test?

It’s the Very important information that we need from this tutorial- We need players to closely unite with each of their selected characters. So how does the player know about their characters?

The method we came up with now is when the player selects a doll that represents one of the characters, the player gonna see an illusion of another character who telling something with the character that player chose, telling their story and some dialogue that explains the basic background and infromation. E.g. If you chose Irene, Mark’s illusion gonna comes out and says to you “Don’t you dare think about take the money away by your self!”

We will continually discuss this.

Today we talk about the very background of our story- which happens before all the story happened in the house/villa. The background of why these four character stay in this house and how they founds out their “gold”

“The four people were friends who went out camping together. They encountered a storm on the way, but they were far from their destination and home. At this time, Sophie suggested that she saw a cabin on the road, which seemed to be a good place to stay for a night, so everyone came to the cabin.
The weather was very cold, and Mark wanted to make a fire in the fireplace to keep warm, so he came to the fireplace to light a fire, there was too much wood in the fireplace, so he decided to take some away, but he found a box of gold hidden in the wood pile. He exclaimed, “What the hell?” It attracted everyone’s attention.
Irene’s face sank. This box of gold was actually the dirty money she hid here. She thought she would not be discovered, but the others discovered her as soon as she came in.
Everyone had a dispute about how to deal with the box of gold. Mark thought that everyone should divide it on the spot, and Kevin insisted on waiting until dawn to hand it over to the police. When the dispute was unresolved, Irene suggested that it was already late now, and the box of gold should be placed here first and dealt with the next day. So everyone dispersed with different purposes.
On this stormy night, four people with their own ulterior motives acted quietly.”

This maybe not gonna tell the player directly, but it’s gonna make the story more believable.

the MOTIVATION:

1.Irene: She own the dirty money, so she wants to take them out secretly

2.Mark: He want all of these money

3.Sophie: She wants Kevin’s love

4.Kevin: He wants to protect himself

There are some simple way like an UI to achieve the goal of “let them know what to do”

  1. why not tell the player? like in the game “Cabin Factory”, In one of the cabins, the family’s death and fire were announced on the radio. Can we refer from this element? Like use some other elements telling the story at the MR space?
Cabin factory-the radio

But its cant be at the beginning,,, we dont want our player know the truth at the very beginning, we want it to be at the end? or at the middle?

But we can use the O.S. to tell the background message to the player like WHO are they WHAT does they want

2. UI reminder and mission board

Poppy playtime Chapter 4# game stream-Hanzhe Wang

UI added: some game gonna give the player some “UI reminder” to tell them what is the mission and what to do. In our case, it gonna be when you landing in the VR game, there gonna be a UI reminder telling you “Lock the Door” or “surveillance the Gold“

MR testing-05/02/2025

Meta all in one SDK test in MR

Some point that have to set up before the MR:

1.meta quest link: Settings-Beta-Developer runtime features-pass-through over Meta Quest Link+Spatial data over meta quest link

Meta quest link setting

2.VR headset: setting-Environment-spacial set up-setup: scanning the space

3.Unity: download Meta all in one SDK-Drag in Camera tig+ passthrough+ MR effect mesh, and turn the effect mesh-Labels: mixed(everything without global mesh)

Unity MR set up

BUT failed in the mean time: it doesn’t shows like the tutorial said: transparency

Research Question & User Research

05/02/2025

Start from the specific and go general, discover and learn from your users, and understand the role of XR experiences in society: what impact does XR have in society. etc.?

When setting the research questions: set it up with the specific topic critical thoughts- it can not always related to people, it can be related to technical, to equipment, to any other things that happened in the experience. Clear, Concise formulation of an inquiry that can be answered through your data collection and analysis

made assumptions when you ask questions: why? because you gonna have that preparing of different level of answers. You using the compare and contrast to prove it. Don’t use “How” but try to use “the methods”. Try to asks some question that cannot be searched by the google scholar.

How to come up with a research question: The RELEVENT of your topic: looking at if other people have answered your question, is it interested by others, does anyone benefit with that? So come up with a research question, Its all about :

How RELEVANT you are and how ORIGINAL you are

Need QUANTITATIVE or QUALITATIVE answers

The methods and suggestions when I’m trying to setup the research questions

Iteration on the Interior part 06/02

Base on my Interior design background….

So in this case we maybe gonna try to start our interior plan of the house? I mean the BASIC plan of our scene. Its gonna be very simple and clear, just to make sure that our idea about the flow of these four character not gonna crash together and make the chaos.

The first idea of the scene house is a two-story villa/house. Because we dont want the action flow of these four crash together. Well Irene need to walk and active alone, Sophie as well, Kevin need to live in the same story with Irene, and Mark as well. But we dont want our player walk up and down stairs in the VR experience, so I drew soem sketches to test the idea of “They live in same floor”

The first one. Advantages: their room all separate and independence. Disadvantages: I dont think its understandable for our player to walk in the same floor but didn’t saw others.
The Second Test. Adv: Theey have the room in four corner of the house, and a secret exit at the backyard. Disadv: everybody need to get through the living room so …
The Third test. Adv: They have clear advanced rooms. Disadv: Sophie dont have the space for place her loving candles, and Kevin need to walking around the house to lock the windows and doors, so its also easy for them to see others.

After testing the “SAME floor” idea, I tried to seek for some possibilities on they live in separate floors. We discuss about this together.

In this one we saw that only Sophie can be not interact with someone else, so she can be the very isolated one. Sophie can live in the second floor like a attic, and the others live on the ground floor.

The final outcome of the day.

/

Tutorial with Ana and Klaus 07/02

The narrative… up side down

We realize there are some serious conflict happens in our story- It is the point-there are way too many characters. It’s didnt make sense to our audience. The story in not powerful enough to shape all these four characters in the VR experience… Anyway, we need either more powerful/logically story or less characters.

I totoally agree with this opinion. There are some logic bug in the story chain. Like from the beginning to the part of open the secret door escaping, the motivation and behavior logic doesn’t really make sense or match to each characters.

Our solution: 1. Try to fix all these logic bug as much as possible, and make the user test next week or weekend.

2. Do the storyboard of each VR experience and give the four storyboard to to our friends randomly and ask them if they can find out the story and the truth. Collect the feedback from the users.

3. After the user research and testing, we come up with the next version of the story, maybe more powerful, maybe less character.

WEEK 5-10/02

PIOTOR Face capture class 11/02

How to create an avatar and how to run the face-capture in unity

Setup your questionnaire 12/02

Says, Think, Does, Feels

e.g. How did you experience this VR piece?

Use Open-ended questions: express what they feel in the experience in their own words

To understand what they do: you record the screen or observe what they doing, and take notes

Feels: decided how you want your players to get engaged with your experiences, let them use emotional words to describe their experience

5-7 open question questionnaire

Ask them “the first word that comes to your mind when you think about “something”(we drop the word cloud)

Set up some differents storyboard versions:

Changing

Four people///

(example. Can find the complete one here: Miro board)

Three People///

WEEK6-17/02

This week we restructured the story board, combined it to two versions : 3 people and 4 people.

And we also designed the experiment as user test- in order to test if we could make our audience understand the whole story, and which part of the stroy seems not too elegant or doesn’t make any sense.

To design the questions for our ausdience, we start from developing interview Guidelines, which can design a clear structure and set of questions for your user interviews to ensure they are conducted effectively and that valuable data is collected.

Base on the speech given by Ana(thank you so much ana), The role of the interview guide would be:
· Ensure that the interview has a clear goal and focuses on the research question.
· Provide consistency to prevent the interview from being too casual or off-topic.
· Facilitate subsequent analysis and comparison of responses from different interviewees.

These goals are embodied in our interview. The purpose of the interview is:
We are developing an interactive narrative experience that combines VR and MR. We hope to understand players’ understanding of story structure and interaction methods through this interview. We will ask you to watch the storyboard and then answer some related questions.

(1. Can players understand the multi-threaded narrative we designed and combine it into a linear story; 2. Can the designed interactive behavior be understood and run by players?)

The final version of the questions were here, included the changing and updates after discuss this with Ana.

Deleted some questions which was too difficult for the audience to answer or to understand. And we also highlight the most important question for our test: Which version of the storyboard you likes better? Why?

We try to ask for the best experience to the player, which one or which part of the storyboard they likes the most, and which character seems not to be that elegant.

Some recording of the last testing in shcool.

We have made four tests in person. They all give us lots of feedback and suggestions. Especially two of them are totally VR newer, their opinion is worth a lot,

We record all of the testing process.

In conclusion, The best of the version was Three people’s version. And worest part of the story was the logic of the Casper- They doesn’t make sense to our players, and the timline also have some problem within the testing.

We get a super important suggestion: some of the player need to re-read some of the storyboard to connect the timeline and arrange the order in which events occur.

This weekend, we will construct the story in 3 people version, and make the logic elegant.

WEEK7-24/02

Story Logic Analysis

How to re-contribuilt the logic of the whole story?

I think we kind of stuck in some “Logic trap”, some part of the story doesn’t make sense to our audience, and some of the question they asked us we couldn’t explain. Like “Why they didn’t take the gold and just run away?” “Why the fire alarm keep BIBIBI but no one coming out to check out if there really some fire?”

We got to reconstruct the whole story. Start from the background and the way they died.

WEEK8-03/03

The Story reconstruct

We have gathered and reorganized the story along with all the feedback from the interviewer, listing out all the issues we are currently facing. I believe this approach might help us find better solutions.

Then we put all of this in to the conclusion part and make it even more clear to organized. Base on the suggestions, we come up with some new ideas trying to slove the problems we faced in the process of testing the story.

Such as give an indentity to the player, and rationalization the mission and motivation of the player. On the other hand, make the player the fourth hiker?(my crazy imagination) So that we can make it the really causality of the whole story.

After this we write three version of the script of this story. We used the three perspective of our characters.

My part of the script: Casper.

The tutorial on 05/03

If I gonna say what is the part of the real big change, this is the real big change !!!

We talk about our problems and the interview result with Ana, and she helped us reconstruct the whole story!! Or we dont take it as “reconstruct“, we make it as the “organize” of the story. Some key problem sloved: Dont need to give the player a mission or a identity, just make them a experiencer of this work.

We now have the sketch of the timeline and clearly know what happened in the story!!

This is the digital version of the time line. We gonna base on this time line write another version of script.

WEEK9-10/03

The Next Tutorial

on 10/03 we have the next tutorial of this story, which is also the last tutorial of this project before the easter vacation. We have the final story processing timeline and never gonna make change on it anymore!!!

SO the basic logic turns back to the very beginning:

No one is innocent from this fire accident.

We finally have the scripts of the last version!!!

Next step:

Organized the story happening order and suttle the event list! Maybe stroryboarding the story as well.

WEEK10-17/03

The final week of the collaborative Unit—Sorry didn’t make any change on this project

WEEK11-24/03

Vacation~~~~

Just in case if you are interested in our vacation lol

WEEK13-07/04

We are trying to write the EventList from now. And we plan to make the very final version of the script this week as well, to make it as the basic of the storyboard.

When we follow the editing suggests from Ana we got the final part of the scripts: Character perspective version.

Then base on that we have the MR scene and editing the building of the realistic logic in the real world.

The basic logic chain:

MR Real Space(Background story)—-MR Real Space(select the puppet)—-Character Story(VR Experience)—-MR Real Space(select the puppet)—-Character Story(VR Experience)—-MR Real Space(select the puppet)—-Character Story(VR Experience)—-MR Real Space(Final Ending)

The reference of the background story express in the MR space:

To make the MR space:

Event List

Basically, we made the eventlist of the story, include the experience from the beginning MR space to the selecting process in the middle, and the final experience of the Fired house.

For the next step, we gonna focus on the storyboard and the setting of the Specific details

WEEK14-14/04

When we take the event list of the Story, the Development Context of our project were so clear. Then we could make lots of development base on this context-The interactive point, the model making and building, the special assets for each one, the MR space design, the transition between this two experience space…

We think about do we need to make any change on the script, but the answer was No. As the story line could be simple and easy to understand, we just need it to be as rich as possible according to the basic story line we just made. With the basic storyline, our next plan is to put the project production on the stage and conduct some field tests, such as project process interaction tests, audience scene atmosphere perception tests, etc. This will be our second project iteration.

Second Iteration

The design of the scene and hand interaction

1.Scene Design

I am basically responsible for this part. Because we are working on the same project on three computers, and if we separate the project’s github and hand it over to different people for improvement each time, the efficiency will become low. The solution we finally decided on is to complete the configuration of the model and other basic project requirements on my computer, and hand the MR space to Lexi, Irene’s person in charge, and hand support to Deva, Mark’s person in charge. Since the model project is with me, they will package the project link or blueprint and send it to me after completing their respective interactive parts, and I will add it to my model, and finally present the complete project on my computer. This is our second update iteration plan.

Sorry for the quality of the image, I didnt make a screen shot when this happend,,,,hahah

So this basically our floor plan of the VR safe House. We made this base on the rough floor plan we drew before. I tried to recover the Kitchen room, but then realize that A KITCHEN is totoally useless in our safehouse, so Byebye.

From the From top left to bottom left, its Casper’s room, Irene’s Room, Mark’s room, Public space, Main door.

This is the rough sketch I done before, we delete the kitchen.

WEEK14-14/04

Second Iteration

The design of the scene and hand interaction

When I continue doing the thing on the model design, I start to find the scene demo or assets for our safehouse. The reference I found all took to the Miro page of our team. I find them on Taobao 3d model website of China, they certainly are some availiable assets that can be use as a Commercial Projects。

But these models can’t be used directly in our project. I need to reorganize them and redistribute them according to our house style and type. Through the initial use of the Unreal Engine simulator, I tried the model performance of these scenes in the Unreal Engine (VR version), as well as the limitations of use, such as rendering budget, texture operation CPU limit, etc. I tried to reduce the computing pressure of this model.

I reference to those safehouse space and start to make my own space. I tried to lead the audience a immersive environment feeling with the Rusty iron frames, peeling paint on the walls and dim lights. According to this, I make the list of the assets that I need for the environment building:

Dirty painted walls, concrete floors, windows, old iron racks (rust), wooden boxes, oil drums covered with cloth or plastic, gravel piles, wooden racks, paint cans, prohibition seals, eye-catching fire and explosion prevention signs, various signs representing danger, ventilation ducts, exposed brick walls, cloth-covered boxes such as weapon boxes, messy storage piles, overturned chairs and tables, dismantled wooden boards, and dust simulated by particle systems.

After defining all these assets I start with my building. I tried lost of versions in the public, and then the people’s room.

These is the very first sight in the modelling phase. I made a rough public space organization and took the assets on their position. No light rendering at this place now.

Second Iteration

Hand Interaction

While Im ding the public space and modeling orgnizaion, we are also considering on how to make the interaction for audience better, like how to define the way on interacting with our symbolic environment. We used to think on make a hand tracking for the audience, so they can have better immersive experience and get better embodiment feeling, and they could interact with the real puppet on the table in the reality as well. But then we realize that its so much complicated then controller building cause there are a so important thing that we cant ignore: Moving.

I tried to figure out how to make a “hand-position” command moving in Unreal Engine. I made the movement on a navmesh and use the camera of “VR pawn”, then setting a brand new camera as “meta Pawn” follow a video. But They all doesn’t work. I also tried a lighter way in “gesture interaction demo” but it clearly doesn’t solve the problem on moving–I still can’t move in the demo with gesture setting complete. Whats more, the Gesture interact were also not that convience in the unreal system itself as it were still lots of technical issues when Im trying to make a simple “pick-up” command. But maybe this the problem with my blueprint skills.

Anyway, We still working on this two sides this week, and hoping we can get some new resolve next week.

WEEK15-21/04

Second Iteration

Hand Interaction

Still Working on deciding with the hand/controller interaction.

In this project, I chose controller-based interaction over hand tracking primarily due to its compatibility with NavMesh-based locomotion. While hand tracking offers a more natural and intuitive input method, it lacks native support for precise navigation on NavMesh surfaces, which is essential for the spatial movement mechanics in my experience. Controllers allow for reliable positional inputs such as joystick-based navigation, teleportation, or smooth locomotion, enabling the player to move freely and accurately within the defined level structure.

Furthermore, controller input ensures a more consistent interaction paradigm across various gameplay mechanics, such as UI selection, object manipulation, and scene transitions. Hand tracking, while expressive, is still limited by factors such as occlusion, gesture recognition stability, and hardware-specific support—especially in seated or low-light environments.

In summary, the use of controllers provides better navigational precision, broader compatibility, and a more stable user experience, making it the preferred choice for the narrative and spatial needs of this project.

We start to setting up the VR camera in Unreal.

I followed this video to set a hand tracking meta pawn but failed.

The reason why I want to set this metapawn is because I heard that after setting this, we can use it to directly perform MRVR space transformation without setting a new camera, but when we put the new metapawn into the scene, it always prompts me that it failed.

We have these puppet from Meshy AI web! they look completely perfect for our project. Maybe not that perfect but truly works. The characteristics and the clothes were all good enough, so thats it.

BTW, Lexi is doing the MRspace!

Perfect! Love it so much… This is doing the pointing stuff, and the basement of each character will light up when the player ‘s hand getting close to it. The basement is ongoing.

WEEK16-28/04

Second Iteration

The modeling processing

Found a particularly suitable room plan for Irene, so I am planning to decorate Irene’s room. I tried to organize Irene’s room into a cross between coldness and justice, and the atmosphere makes Irene’s inner fairness and precise diagnosis more prominent. I also plan to integrate a strong atmosphere of life into the entire safehouse.

I use this video as a guidence and reference of the Model in the scene.

The GoldChest in the middle of the house.

The detail in the public space(with light effect and rendering)

but I still got a feeling like the light was to dark? Or the detail is not so rich. I will continue ON build the light and Atmosphere. I put a window on the right top to fills the room with blue green moonlight…As there were heavily storm ooutside the window, I suppose the sound design( background music) should be work on.

Next step for me will be the interior model building for each rooms. I will start with Irene.

WEEK17-05/05

Second Iteration

The modeling processing

I struggled on doing this celling design for our public room. Whether it’s the rationality of the ventilation ducts, the arrangement of cement pipes and circuit pipes, or the wrong connection at the corners, I tried my best to design it. Although it seems that there is almost no change in the interior, I still tried my best to do what should be done. I look forward to the effect in the headset.

the effect inside of the house

The design of irene’s room is easy and beautiful, but the light effect does bothered me. I wondering how can a room light express both the bright justince part and the deep dark part in Irene’s personality at the same time. We talk about this in meetings alot, and then come up with some idea and reference:

We set the link with the two extremely different lights. We set them as a contrast between these two and shows the inner struggle of the character. She is a character who cares about her image, upholds the justice in her heart, and has a very clear plan. She can distinguish responsibilities, but she can’t escape her inner greed.

This is her room details without any lighting. we got the lighting screen, the cold light shelf and the other science equipment all showing the rational part of Irene. The tangled wires and tilted bookshelves show her inner restlessness and disorderly greed. In addition, the many computer screens in her room also show this: her desire for control is obvious.

This is the first version of Irene’s room, I strictly followed the lighting atmosphere of the reference material to create an indoor lighting with a strong “gaze” and weird feeling. I used the contrast between green-blue ambient light and red warning light to strengthen the inner conflict and struggle of the character Irene. Unfortunately, Lexi, the person in charge of Irene, did not seem to like such lighting; there are two reasons for this. First, the ambient light is too dim, which makes it difficult to see the details of the room. Second, she likes more realistic lighting (the appearance that can appear in reality) rather than exaggerated lighting effects for the sake of effect. I agree, but it is difficult for me to make changes. I will try.

This is the second version of the lighting effect of the room. We made this together, I tried my Best. But as I prefer dramatic lighting conflicts. I preffer the fist version of the light. AAA I really need to rebuilt the light, but it does make sense so far: the color tendencies of the lights on both sides are conflicting.

WEEK18-12/05

Second Iteration

The modeling processing

This week is the time for Casper room and Marks’ room ready. I really need to get this two done…

CASPER

The setting was easy: in this room, he got lots of assets(boxes, oil barrels, weapons) covered by fabrics, and high little window like a cell in a prison.
On the table there are some bottles of medicine, and a notebook full of scribbles

LIGHT: Cold lighting in his room, points out his cold innerworld and scared of everything.
For the viewer/player, they might feel uncomfortable when they standing in the room at the first place, they see the cold light, hear the blurred storm sound and the water dropping, all the barrels and boxes covered in cloth give off a mysterious, oppressive feel

What kind of feel does it gives to the audience and the way I want them to feel with him:

Worried for Casper( because of his metal disease and all of the auditory hallucinations);
Maybe a little scared of him?(the capricious behaviour)
Use the elements they gonna obvious in the scene of the room. E.g. medicine bottles, the sound of the storm outside the window, the scratching wall and the notebook, the dim light, etc)

Monologue at the first place of the experience, the way he talk and the breathing sound.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_EbEzXKfsEL0gzbpRZhMVQp-mJlFv25_qZeoiNfXFVY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.rk3xhzrnltww

Character design & character refinement sheet_ Workshop on character design)

This is the sour Green I finally give Casper. The light drying and dying.

MARK

Mark’s room’s detail and assets is the rishest one in these three room, cause This is a tool house, and the variety of tools demonstrates the “multi-use nature” of the owner of the house, making the audience think that he is a person who is very good at using the surrounding environment. He himself carries a backpack with many different tools in order to create an easy and well-prepared route for his “escape”.

Warm light filter, highlighting Mark’s eagerness and excitement for gold, it makes players be cautious about the content related to this character. A room for storing various tools (Decorating tools, ladders, workbenches, n etc.)A part of the script (Mark need to return to the room for some tools, unlock main door )

The golden light made the room look very luxurious, but the surrounding environment was very dim, like an underground dwarven gold mine.

This is the final version of the tool room Mark room. I kinda like the effects and the atmosphere. I love them!

At the same time, I helped Lexi complete the MR space’s “collision” initeract effect.

WEEK19-19/05

Second Iteration

The modeling processing

Good luck with the capping

Second Iteration

The Motic background story and pages design.

This part is basically done by Deva. Thank you Deva!

I will only put several of the pages here cause there are a lot.

My favorite page!!!!

I truly love this final page. It rally showing out the three character’s inside mind and the their ambitions and the desire, which is actually the goal for the player in the game. This does make sense and will make the player understanding our project better during the playing process.

And after that, its the time for us to complete all of the interactive in the project!!

WE have this list for the interactive object that doesn’t include among the existing models, we have to check with all of them and getting into the scene.

I take charge of the Casper part and find out all of them

And the hospital band was the most interesting one that we use an original model in meshy ai and generated a similar hospital band model, then make it green, combine it together with the band itself, then make it unity in blender.

We made lots of stuff in blender cause the Unreal Engine can only apply interactable stuff when it exist as a unity stuff. Like the grabbable function can only be apply for one model at the same blueprint.

WEEK20-26/05

MR Part

This week we got an obvious improvement in MR part, Lexi done the passthrough and the house plan in it, she actually done it few days ago but this week we finally see it works in UE. Its beautiful.

And after that she is doing the MR/VR transition and I continue on doing the scene iteration and interaction inside.

VR Interaction_Irene

So for the second user test and iteration, I works on Irene for example. We plan for only doing Irene as a test in our second one, and ask user for suggestions and feelings in guiding our next step of work. I take the charge of making the progression of all visible interaction inside, and Lexi is working on the comic video we can see in the MR space, and Deva is working on the hand interactions.

I Start with a simple logic on “the door open”, and “showing the foorprint” for guiding the player to go to the place we want. It works perfect but I have to say a word that after start with this logic, I have been stuck with this one. “Set visibility” come to the most common interaction I have used in the UE. I m driven crazy,,,,

But anyway it works so now I use this logic on the rest of place that need to ” showing footprint”.

For Irene, its the way that she needs to go and connect the wire on the camera, and go back to the room and enjoy the cigi and music, then come out of the room again for the transition. The place I put the collision is the place that the footprint trail starts and ends, they are the place where the player could be pause for a second, then start thinking about what they can do in the next step.

Same logic on showing the footprint.

But after that it comes to be a super annoying part: how to make the lots of screen in the room come “lost connection” and “build connection” when the interaction is taking place. I place all of the screen computer in the blueprint and made them the same place where I placed them before. The lost is “set material”, for example, when the player’s hand(pawn) is getting in to the actor of the surveillance camera, the screen gonna change the material to the surveillance screen and showing the video in the public space.

This is the basic logic of setting the material.

And after this I start to make the ” camera working” stuff when the player is connecting the wire on. Deva is making the wire movable and the connection part , and Im working on the “launching” logic: actually I used the reflection material ono the camera glass, and set a red point light on it, when the player connect the wire, the light gonna shows in front of the camera, making the reflection like a red point on the camera glass. The logic base on the collision set visibility, but doesn’t cast to ” VR pawn”, but casts to the small grabbable cube on the connection end of the wire.

Lost connection: go to the public space for the connection

Then it becomes to the logic on “the screen turns back to lost connection” after a while. I put it tohether with the lightactor logic, place another collision near the table. When the player followed the introduction and reminding and go to the table for playable stuff, the player definitly will step in to the collision.

So I taking the collision beside the table and make it the logic set on: after play about 30 seconds+, the screen gonna set the material again, set it back to the lost connnection

These are all playable stuff, its worth to mention that the lighter can be launch on when the player’s hand touch it, and the cigi gonna start the smoke

WEEK21-02/06

I sick for this week……………………………

I feel guilty for not keeping up with the group’s work. I heard that in wednesday my groupmate go to the critical and get the feedback from ana, that doing the second iteration’s questionaire.

I made the interaction logic sequence for the project.

This is the questionnaire we gonna use in the second user test.

Second User Test

The interaction flow and the feeling of the game.

This is the second interview recording.

We have some special suggestion that can be improved in the next step interaction making.

The improving interaction and elements that can be using in the Irene scene
The improving interaction and elements that can be using in the Mark scene
The improving interaction and elements that can be using in the Casper scene

So this week and next week we work so hard on these part.

WEEK22-09/06

The hardest week–We need to complete the rest of the interactions!!

Mark

The phone is grabbable and interactable

The table’s collision is too complex and maybe bouncing the phone, so I attached and create a new collision to it, make it simple box collider, make it interactable with the phone’s gravity.

The door is a important part, need to make a time part from the audio and waiting for the right time for getting out and “take a look”, all of the sound effect getting through is the sound happends in Irene and Casper’s flow.

This is the part of Mark pull-off the wire, I set the effect on when the end of the wire getting out from the room.

Then the player will collect the gold chest.

After the player getting close to the lock, they hear the monolougue about “I need something to smash that doorlock”. So they can go back to the room and take the hammer.

Casper

Redesign the light effect!! make it flickering all the way on.

The information of Casper

The important part of the interaction: Casper will listen to the whisper and lock the door( take the key away).

After he take the key, will trigger the fire alarm, the light will flick in the scene, and the alarm will also sound.

Hard to take the screen shot, but they does flicking.

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