"More Than Meets The Eye" Animated VR Experience

 Animated neon signs and the Criterion Theatre! Using a gradient airbrush tool, animated over time and keyframes. Plus import of png files for neon graphics.

 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.

 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....

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....

Working on the opening sequence. Simple pedestal camera move for the opening scene. For audience comfort, particularly users who are not familiar with VR, I am going to use traditional camera moves and utilise the 180 degree rule. Researching cinematography in VR, it's important to retain a point of interest. The audience acts as the camera, in that they are directed to look toward the point of interest and, new points of interest appear in the same vicinity. The enables orientation within the 360 degree world and avoids motion sickness. I created a rough widescreen view finder, with cross-hair and constrained it to the spawn area (viewing point/camera view) so I could see where my spawn area was pointing toward. Screen grabs below, plus a quick video shot of the opening sequence.  Pedestal shot - top lowering down to the station platform. View finder to show point of interest to the tunnel. As Sally's voice-over states "I like it because its a city underground" as ...

I've created the impression of a moving train today, in Quill. A simple backdrop animated alongside the tube car carriage. I've decided to keep the aesthetic very theatrical, with simple visual representations, leaving much to the imagination. I think this works well visually as well as reinforcing what the artists said about their visual perceptions - namely, that in the absence of sight, the brain 'fills in the gaps'.

Loose play in Quill today. Animated tree, exported as an animated .fbx file and imported into Unity. Quill Vertex shader applied and Quill Anim Component added to the mesh. Problems to begin with, as the export layer was within a folder. This corrupted the animation, so I separated the layer and  re-exported it. Added post-processing to the main camera in Unity and added a Post-Processing layer and Post-Processing Volume and added a bloom effect to a point light set in the tree

 Test to combine animations in Unity Quill imported .fbx with two Quill shaders applied, plus a material which catches the light.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R6GrWZ5kEY&list=PLR6NkeqscAx2exR5o6eTUmXmh2FbxxOdO&index=4 Select Assets>Import Package>Custom Package to import animation component Directional light positioned low Mixamo character with imported animations. Make sure that the Quill .fbx is independent in the hierachy, otherwise the animation will not work on the Mixamo character.

 Quill animation played in Unity -  A quick fire animation using the anim brush in Quill