"More Than Meets The Eye" Animated VR Experience

 

Getting to grips with animating spawn areas, using stepped interpolation. Meaning, camera angles that jump abruptly from one view to another. Sally's world is becoming defined and I've animated a tube train, using transform keys, to arrive on the platform. Screen shots below showing the spawn area (camera view) indicated by a view finder and cross hair. Although the viewer will be able to look in a 360 degree direction, by targeting the camera view in the direction of the action, the viewer will be lead through the narrative.

 I created simple commuter shapes in Quill today. What would have taken weeks in Maya has taken a few hours. Using the wire frame, I created figures and placed them in a group. The group then has opacity keyframes to fade the group in and out, whilst Sally talks about them being anonymous and she drew their feet, so as not to be intrusive....

 Straight ahead animation in Quill - commuter's feet on the underground.

 Straight ahead animation - more trials and tests today. Longer strokes with holds on the keyframes seems to work best. I blocked out the commuters in solid geometry and then drew over the top, to get the poses in good positions. This gave me an idea for blocking out commuters when Sally talks about the London Underground being anonymous. Not yet uploaded onto the Oculus Media Store website, but I can see that where I have turned the opacity down on the geometry it is showing as a noisy material. This could be quite a good effect, if it translates on the upload to the media store. Happy accidents. fOAaizZqaVY/YFI3OU77J2I/AAAAAAAAfvo/nrOdt3bkG3cfsp88y73rzhleRlgvx5xQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/capture00237.png"/>

 Using straight ahead animation (meaning literally drawing continuously and sequentially ahead from the first frame, without setting key poses) to represent Sally talking about drawing people's feet.

 Walk cycle tests, using a model created in Quill. Although Sally talks only of drawing legs, I wanted to create a model that I could then draw legs over. Drawing the whole figure enables me to create a rise and fall with the walk cycle, so that the legs will also give the impression of being connected to an entire body

 Practicing with the VR interface, keyframes and walk cycles. Created a rough stick man to get the timings and will trace over in orange, to create Sally's sketches. Stick man, without arms, positioned in the tube station to get an idea of commuters walking. Using keyframe, pose to pose animation for this walk cycle.

 Today's challenge, to create a rough walk cycle in Quill. Getting familiar with the timeline controls and inserting and duplicating frames. I used a reference image to draw key poses and in-betweens.  This is currently on single frames, tomorrow I will duplicate each frame, to create the animation on 'twos' meaning the image holds for two frames rather than one. The playback frame rate is 24 frames per second - but on the rift it's about 70 and the quest it's 90! This is the rough looping walk cycle, currently on ones and way too fast. Also the animation needs refining. But good to get to grips with how to create a simple figure and to make it walk (or appear to hurry for a train!).

 This week's task - animating a walk cycle in Quill... First step (!) tutorials...

 Well, I figured out why the loop glitched. Nothing to do with the loop, it was the alignment of the position of the first tread and then it's next position. Quill doesn't have an object snap function, so it was a case of zooming in very close and placing some markers. No noticeable glitch at the end. It's taken most of this week to get to grips with the animation timeline, controls, loops and sequences for this one section....however, it's striking when hearing Sally talk about the escalators and I believe this element adds to the feeling of descending into the abyss....

 Re-draw today of the escalator tread. It wasn't exactly horizontal to the grid and there is no snap function in Quill. Re-drew so that the lines were horizontally aligned to the grid - the point being that when these treads are duplicated they all line through. Otherwise the offset becomes incrementally exaggerated with each copy. Can see my speed progressing with drawing and also noted that, as I'd animated the group, the new drawing simply became a new 'child' of that group and inherited all of the animation. Glad about that! Using the rotation and duplicate tool to create the handrails.... The escalators will be duplicated and positioned at various angles moving down into the abyss. I am thinking of creating a couple of camera angles, which represent the point of view of  a person on the escalator and another reverse looking up at the platform.

Creating escalator treads disappearing into the abyss today....quite a complicated mechanism and many trial animations and deletions. I realised that the process of the first tread lowering, is based on the treads being connected to large cogs and a conveyor belt. Art direction on the textures of the treads to make them look aged and worn and grooved. With minimal elements I want each one to be well observed, so they are convincing. Interesting to 'stand' at the top of the escalator whilst animating. There is an intuitive sense of timing with each key frame, as it is instinctively obvious if the speed is too fast to walk on. Animated a pivot, and then animated the tread to follow the line of the pivot, to replicate the treads being attached to a large cog. Will aim to duplicate the group that the tread is in and hopefully create multiple steps....

 Success today with 'cutting' in-between shots. In VR the audience can look in any direction  - full 360 vision. However, for storytelling, viewer comfort and to prevent nausea I am going to apply tradition 180 degree field of view and deliberately point the audience in the direction I would like them to look. I thought this might be with the use of multiple cameras, each on an individual layer. This didn't work. What needs to happen is that a spawn area is placed within a group. The gimbal pivot point reset and then the transformation (directional) animation is applied to that camera. To give the impression of a 'cut' the camera can be moved to a new position e.g a close up and the transform key interpolation, set to 'stepped'. This provides an abrupt jump and the illusion of a cut. Animated dots in the city underground today and beginning to create the escalator that Sally mentions. I played around with creating an escalator to match the one in Sally's...