VR Film — The Hunt
My name is Michael Albert and I am a graduate from TCNJ 2016 IMM. I transferred to TCNJ from a community college where I majored in animation and modeling. I wanted to expand my knowledge of interactive software. I did not want to specialize in just one area, I wanted to become a jack of all trades and the IMM department could do just that.
My Thesis was about exploring new technology and figuring out new ways to create experiences. My project used a VR headset called the Oculus Rift to view a short 30 second animated film through. This made a unique experience because instead of being locked into a point of view from the director, you become the director and can look anywhere at anytime within the film.
At the end of the year, the department holds a Senior Showcase to display all the work the senior students have made throughout the year. The showcase is free to everyone and is a great opportunity for employers to find prospective talent. The showcase takes up the entire AIMM building and allows everyone to see amazing projects no matter where they are.
During the early phase of my project, I had some serious planning to do to avoid huge issues in the later months. I first had to figure out a real time rendering engine to use because even though I was animating in Maya, I had export everything and import them into the 3D Engine. I decided early on to go with Unity as my rendering engine as it has a lot of support for VR.
I had to cut down on the amount of time it would take me to model/texture/rig/animate everything so I was able to use a quick character building software called Fuse. It allowed me to mold and shape my characters relatively quickly. although it cut down on modeling time. I ended up paying for it in the later months when i began animating. Fuse has a autorig script that will automatically map and rig your characters for you. This rig was a lot more complex than I needed it to be and thus caused computing errors when I would need to animate.
I got around this by baking the animations into the model when it came time to export into Unity. I exported everything within the scene individually and imported them into Unity. I placed them all at the 0,0,0 mark within the engine to make sure they would all line up.
Since I couldn’t export a camera from Maya and use it in Unity, I had to manually script a camera within Unity that would work with VR. Once I had everything functional, I added some weather and particle effects to have a bit more realism.
If I had to give advice to future IMM students, I would have to say a couple of key things are crucial to a good project. First you shouldn’t procrastinate too much. This is a tricky thing to manage because most seniors have other classes that they are taking when they are working on their thesis. Secondly, if you are working on a project that utilizes a new technology, you need to experiment with it a lot and find out what works and what doesn’t work. this can be done in a lot of different ways such as iterative designing or just flat out trying other tech demos and seeing what that demo excels at. Lastly you should go for a huge production value when it comes time to present your project. Many people that attend the Senior Showcase do not know what they are looking at if you have a complicated or intricate project. Try and figure out a way that wow’s and dazzles people to get them to look at your project and want to learn more.
Overall, just try and create the best project you can. Work on something that you can be proud of when you present your own project.
