Exploring VR + Final Project Concept
Critical Making Blog Post #3
This week, I dove into Unity and my journey learning VR/AR. This is what I learned:
- VR is hard.
- There are so many assets available for free, just never the ones you need.
- If I won the lottery, my first purchase would be a better computer.
This good news, is I think I have landed on a final project concept.
I decided to do a project for Sugarfina, a luxury candy-store with adorable branding. Originally my concept was to do a virtual candy land full of all of the adorable treats, but when I landed on their website I cam across this.
They currently have a collection with Barbie, which is extremely adorable and well thought out. I love the cause behind this collection, 100% percent of net proceeds benefit StepUp, a mentorship program for girls.
There are 6 candies in the collection, each paired with a classic barbie throughout the decades: Original 1959 Barbie-Birthday Cake Caramels, 1965 Astronaut Barbie-Cosmic Sours, 1975 Athlete Barbie-Gummy Kicks, 1995 Firefighter Barbie-Candy Pearls, 2011 News Anchor Barbie-Strawberry Sparkle Pops, and 2019 Pilot Barbie-Candy Clouds.
Immediately my concept became to have different “rooms” or areas for each barbie. After some further development, I decided to make an in-store pop-up tasting experience that worked with VR to deliver an immersive branded experience.
As I mentioned earlier, I was having a hard time finding the assets I wanted for a perfume or beauty experience, but I did have slightly better luck with candy. I couldn’t find anything on the Unity Asset store, but I found this great article with 50 places to download 3D objects and was able to find some there.
In addition, most of the shapes in the Sugarfina Barbie Collection will be easy to 3-D model myself. I think I will be creating my own 3D assets for several parts of this project. The things I cannot find (for free or minimal cost) and am worried about making are the barbies and a base environment.
I started exploring in Maya to create a 3d model of a barbie. I found this female form for free on Turbosquid, and might use it as a base, adding my own textures, clothing and hair. I did try this out, but I failed and need to find a tutorial.
I also found this awesome unity extension which allows you to create faces from pictures. I have only played with the demo, but did download the extension. I am currently unclear on how to install it. Here, I uploaded this image of Pilot Barbie on the web demo.
Another option I am exploring is downloading the trial of Character Creator 3 by Reallusion, which looks awesome, and has built in animation features. The problem is I don’t have a Windows machine, so I would need to work that out.
As far as the environment, I have no idea where to start. Do I build a room in Maya? Do I need to pay for a starter environment? I am totally unsure which option to chose.
So, how is this project going to play out?
In my next post, I plan to do some sketching for each barbie, then pick one to focus on. I will design her room in VR and then go from there based on time. I will either mock up the other five or continue to design them. I also plan to do some UX work to determine how this would actually live in a store.
