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Tutorial Feedback - Daryl and Aidan


During two of the weeks of tutorials classes, our team met with two past animation course students who also focused and found themselves involved in the world of VR and immersive technologies.  Daryl Randall and Aidan Scott both previously worked on a project focusing on the topic of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of soldiers after returning home from the frontline of war.  'Zemblanity' is also a passive user experience to play with the mind and emotions of the user and give them certain emotions and feelings of discomfort.  It was beyond helpful to hear from both of them and to receive advice on the best route and steps to enhance our project and keep it on track to succeed and be a hit.  Below are some screenshots from their VR project from 2017.

old_side_benches

trench_previs

placement-and-lights-old

You can see their final video release here - 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=287&v=SpXthAHG-eY

Daryl


Although Daryl was amazingly helpful to us as a team, most of his advice and guidance came from the perspective of unity and the software behind the actual VR creation.  This is essential knowledge for us but was more taken on board by Cassie as she has taken a huge step into controlling a lot of our effects and unity system.  She is the life blood to our team with this and so she was able to take pointers from Daryl and use these to better and enhance our team's project from the software side so that our eventual output is the best it can possibly be.

Aidan

Aidan gave us some animation and environmental feedback which was very helpful.  The following are the three top notes we took throughout this feedback session.

"Research into start up imagery and assets"

Aidan advised us not to get sucked into all of the details and animation frames but to turn our attention to the other components of our project.  We have been neglecting the 2D sections of our project.  Mainly our posters, the start up screen images and the credits.  Without these, our project might end up great, but if we dont give attention to and plan these things now, our project might end up sandwiched between two pieces of work that have been stressfully through together.

"Umbrella academy – AI character"

Aidan recommended we check out the AI character from the Umbrella Academy series on Netflix.  After researching this character, we seen why this was recommended to us by Aidan.  The characters robotic yet compassionate character.  Her desire to help but also her almost sinister and uncomfortable stares.  This character would have been good for us to discover in our early design stages.  Her actions and style can be used as we figure out further movements and interactions between our AI and our male and girl characters.

Image result for umbrella academy ai character

"Simplogon"

One of the last things Aidan suggested to us as we continue optimising the scene, is a programme called Simplygon.  Simplygon is 3D computer graphics software for automatic 3D optimisation, based on proprietary methods for creating level of detail through Polygon mesh reduction and other optimisation techniques.  Aidan suggested we could use this software within Unity, to help reduce our poly-count further and enhance our projects render time.
Image result for simplygon what is it
Image result for simplygon what is it

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