"More Than Meets The Eye" Animated VR Experience

The majority of Sally's world in the VR experience is, other than a few glitches and some animation for walking legs, complete. The ideas for David's world leading straight from Sally's world didn't seem to flow, or be as dramatic as I hoped. My training insists on leaving ideas alone if they're not working and to turn my attention to something else. In this case I've started working on Piccadilly Circus and I'm considering an escalator rising up from Sally's world and arriving near the statue of Eros. Roughed out the world layout, cheating and 'dressing to camera' - meaning, much like a real live action set, the buildings are simply facades and placed in position to work best with the camera view. I wanted a sky rather than a background and found a tutorial on how to paint an equirectangular image in photoshop. First time using 3D layers in photoshop and painting a skybox. Screen grabs below of progress...

Today I created the underground city that Sally mentions in her interview. She likens the tube system in London, to a city underground. I wanted to capture the essence of this and to be able to get a sense of it, whilst 'on the tube'. I've created the tube train as a skeletal frame, which enables complete views through the sides, below the floor and through the roof. I created a very high poly background (approx 250k) using the ribbon and cube brush, to create a myriad of weaving and sweeping tube lines. Abstract in appearance, all of them are hints of blue, fading into the abyss. Highlights of city buildings in electric satsuma orange, with a lighting glow here and there. I tried Goro Fujita's method of creating a background, exporting as a spherical equirectangular image and reimporting as a 360 image. Huge saving in triangles - and I think the final layer size for the 360 image was around 3k. Screen shots using the ribbon and cube brush to create a web of tube lines...

 For the beginning of Aaron's world "Piccadilly is dazzling" I am planning a contrast transition. Going from the stark black and white world of negative space, in David's world, with the 'spike' shining gold ribbons out of the darkness, to overload of the visual and auditory senses of Piccadilly Circus. Test shots today using a 360 Equirectangular image, wrapped around a sphere, to create an instant skybox (spherical 360 background). I thought photorealism would work well, but I'm not convinced that the visual transition will be smooth. I think going from line, to negative space, to stylised buildings using a mixture of line and texture will work. Tests below: