This project is the culmination of a semester’s worth of work. I do not mean that I worked on it all semester. What I mean is, after six weeks of 360 shoots, VR demos, and messing around on the bleeding edge of the field with both software and hardware, I knew what I could do with the resources available to me. More importantly, I knew what I wanted to do with those limitations in mind. First, a little background to help you understand how this project was conceptualized: I am...
I have an interest in animated graphics and graphical enhancements to video files, so I used Lynda.com to take a basic “animated graphics in Adobe AfterEffects” course to create a title sequence for my final project. The video tutorial explained how the interface works (a combination of premiere and photoshop), how layering and formatting works, and then how to animate the images one places in the composition space. Afterwards, it teaches the user how to animate with a specific template, although I skipped that part and went straight to animating...
As someone who has always been fascinated and moved by space exploration, the advent of VR is incredibly exciting. While I may never be able to leave the Earth physically, the growing library of space-themed VR experiences means I can have the next best thing - a simulated space adventure. Titans of Space, a VR app developed by DrashVR LLC, is an educational VR experience that takes the user through the solar system and gives them a chance to look at the planets and their moons up close. While the...
So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upload assignments 6 & 7 in the same post. I'm still having trouble with Unity. It's not the easiest system to use, but at least I'm not making the same mistakes - I'm making new ones! So, I was tasked with making an interactive environment in assignment 6 and making a character that moves because I've interacted with the environment in assignment 7. I've decided to submit a video that shows both things happening at the same time. I...
Assignment 5 – Let’s play with Unity
by Ben Mitchell
- February 24
- in
After working with my preferred medium (video), we've stepped into a world that is much more complicated and frustrating - building environments in Unity. Having played video games since I was small, the concept of building a 3D world isn't entirely foreign to me. I've messed around with The Sims and Halo's Forge mode, however I would always get frustrated when things wouldn't work exactly as I wanted. My experience with Unity was no exception. Trying to figure out why my colliders wouldn't work gave me headaches. Finding the right...
Initial Experiences with VR
- January 25
- in
Last week's class reminded me how far VR has come since Oculus first sent out their developer kits in 2012 (which I was fortunate to demo way back when). To see my peers put on consumer-ready VR hardware (like the GearVR) was surreal. I thoroughly enjoyed watching my classmates' jaws drop and hearing their exclamations.. As someone who considers himself an evangelist for VR, it never ceases to excite me when people have their "aha!" moment with VR and realize that this technology is more than just a cool or...