Immersive Design 3: Planning and Asset Gathering
Idea Adjustments
Before starting to develop my final project, I decided to reorganise my story structure to make it a bit more cohesive and to allow for the most complex part to conclude the project. Originally, the idea was for the giant part to be the middle section and for the dark void area to end the piece. I decided to move the dark void area to the middle as it will end with the mysterious entity sending the player to the environment in which the giant resides. I also developed the giant part further. While searching for assets to use, I was inspired to change the setting from a fantasy village to an alien-like world. I personally thought this environment would be more unique and potentially more interesting to the player.
Environments
My approach to environment design was to make use of existing maps from asset packs and edit them to suit the needs of my animation or create them in Unreal.
Elevator
The basis of the elevator was a simple elevator asset from SketchFab but I recreated parts of the model using Unreal Engine’s unbuilt modelling tools as certain parts of the model had to be changed for what I wanted. This was because I wanted to change the material of the walls of the elevator to make them transparent but with how the original model was set up this changed too much of the elevator.
Office
The office utilised the “Loft Office (Modular)” asset pack. This perfectly captured the type of office I was looking for as it’s a nice looking environment that wasn’t overly complicated. I edited parts of the environment to better suit my project which wasn’t too hard due to the modular nature of the pack. I wanted to have a poster behind the player and the wall that was originally there didn’t work too well for that so I replaced it with another wall from the pack. I adjusted the lighting of the environment as I wanted the narrative to be that the player was leaving work late but the map was in the daytime. To match the later time setting, I closed the windows and replaced the open blinds as well as removing a clock with the wrong time. The original map had a meeting room which I removed as I instead placed the elevator where the doorway was. The poster which I added is a reference to the Alice in Wonderland brief as it is a picture of a white rabbit.
Dark Void
The void environment didn’t involve any asset packs as it was mainly just the elevator in a pitch black environment. To create it I duplicated the office map and removed the office assets leaving the elevator in darkness. However, as I wished to use light to direct the player for part of the void section I created a floor for the void using the Unreal tools.
Otherworld
For the otherworld I decided to look through an asset pack known as “Elite Landscapes: Bundle Pack” to see if there was a landscape that I would like to use. I decided to change my idea because of this pack as I was drawn to the alien landscapes included in the pack. The landscapes were quite big and intensive though so I had to delete parts of the landscape that weren’t going to be visible in my final render to make it easier to render. Due to the scale of the landscape, I had to adjust the size of my other models to better fit in with the landscape.
Characters
Player
As I wanted to show the player’s hands as a representation of VR controllers, I needed an asset for this. I decided to use the Remy character model from Mixamo which I imported into Maya to separate one of the hands. I also used the Mixamo skeleton to pose both a pointed hand and open hand to be used in the animations.
Void Spirit
The void spirit was intended to be spooky and mysterious so I decided on using the Paragon: Sevarog character asset pack which perfectly met these attributes. I did have to adjust the model slightly in Unreal as the character had a hammer which I didn’t want to use. To get rid of it, I used a material with 0% opacity as it was an easier solution than editing the model. This asset pack came ready with animations that would be suitable for my idea also so I didn’t need to find or create any animations for this character.
Citizens of the Otherworld
As I developed the otherworld section of the project, I decided that I wanted more characters than just the giant to add more narrative to this strange world. To meet the new aesthetic I decided on the Alien Soldier model from Mixamo. When testing this model in the world, it didn’t stand out in the environment as much as I wanted. To achieve this effect, I adjusted the material of the model to have a higher emissive value on it’s emissive texture which added a considerable glow to the characters removing any visibility issues.
Otherworld Giant
The final character of my piece was the giant. I wanted to get a menacing character model that would also fit in with the set aesthetic of the otherworld. I found this with the Paragon: Grux asset pack as it included a character model of an imposing figure wearing advanced technology. I chose a version of this model that had a magma effect on it’s materials to really make this character stand out when he arrives in the animation. This character pack did come with animations but they weren’t applicable for what I wanted so I brought the model into Maya to remove the weaponry as I wanted the giant to favour physical brute strength rather than weaponry. I also removed some accessories that I didn’t really like from the bottom half of the model.
References
Epic Games (2018) Paragon: Grux [Asset Pack]. Available online: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/paragon-grux [Accessed 18/5/2023].
Epic Games (2018) Paragon: Sevarog [Asset Pack]. Available online: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/paragon-sevarog [Accessed 18/5/2023].
H. Omar (2019) white bunny close-up photography [Image]. Available online: https://unsplash.com/photos/QUsiAcC90ZI [Accessed 9/5/2023].
Ihaegy.fu (2023) Simple Elevator with Animation [3D Model]. Available online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/simple-elevator-with-animation-770488a2f94a453fb90a7445bda63cd0 [Accessed 9/5/2023].
mixamo (N/A) Characters and Rigging [Asset Resource]. Available online: https://www.mixamo.com/#/ [Accessed 9/5/2023].
Characters:
Remy (Player Hands)
Alien Soldier (Otherworld Citizens)
Next Level 3D (2021) Loft Office (Modular) [Asset Pack]. Available online: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/loft-office-modular [Accessed 9/5/2023].
Velarion (2019) Elite Landscapes: Bundle Pack [Asset Pack]. Available online: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/elite-landscapes-bundle-pack [Accessed 11/5/2023].