Introduction
This project means a lot to me. I know how important this is, and I want to try my hardest on this project and on my major project. This means many nights trying to perfect this. It is the culmination of all my work and progress throughout the years. Everything I have been taught will be put to the test in this module. I know no matter what I will do it will be the best thing I have produced up until now and I hopefully it only goes up. I’m sure this will be the hardest challenge yet, but I know I can do this and this plan will prove it. I am going to go into detail with everything I’m planning on doing and it will provide as a good base of what will happen throughout the year.
Research Overview
The medium I will be using for my project will be the 360′ YouTube Video. This is due to me being more of a 3D Artist with programs such as Blender, Maya, Substance Painter. I feel like I could make a fantastic product with what I have learnt throughout the years as a student here at University of Hull.
I don’t plan on making a visual spectacle as I know that i have limitations, but that doesn’t mean it will be a bad product. I will try my hardest to make a visual that immerses you into an experience and makes you feel something while watching.
The scope of my project isn’t huge, but i know it will still take some time to get right and hopefully I will have enough time to polish up some of the rough edges that i know have plagued my past work. The short version of the plan for this project is a WW2 Bunker in London that has been taken over by the Germans.
User Experience Plan
I want to make sure I don’t overload the user while they are watching the video, therefore i am making it a plan to keep the visual mainly towards the front of the camera and directing the camera slowly as to make sure the user doesn’t get motion sick or get confused due to a high change in direction. These would be useful if I were to make a horror video as you never want to have the user be fully composed when watching a horror video. Making sure the visual clutter (Dust and effects) never gets to bad is also a way I will make sure the user doesn’t get overloaded.
Making sure the video has an audio source that tells the user where they should be looking will also aid in helping the users not get overwhelmed while watching the video.
Ethical Problems
Since this project is mainly a WW2 era video, i feel like some people may be a bit upset. This being said i will have a warning at the start of the video explaining the nature of the video and it will be in the description. I want to make sure people have the ability to see what it will be about before they watch the video just in case.
Project Plan – Story so far
The current plan is to have a 3 part video that has a wild change in each area. Each area will act as the Beginning, Middle and End. Having a good story structure is important to making the user immersed in the experience.
The Beginning
The story starts with you in a ww2 radio bunker, the aim is to make you feel claustrophobic. You hear the ambience of the world around you, hearing bombing and large machinery going on above you. You are encased in concrete and dirt just surviving having radio contact with the other bunkers to see where they are bombing.
However, unlike the other nights you get radio silence, all that you hear is a blaring noise coming from the radio as you wait and hope someone responds. As you wait you hear thick sounds of machinery above you. As you sit there hopelessly you hear the thuds reverberate around you. Before you can gain your bearings the lights go off and only the radio and a small emergency light highlights the room. You hear rats sneak in through the now broken ventilation and scurrying through your bunker, knocking anything over in their way.
After a small window of time you start to hear cracking and crumbling, you look upwards to see the roof starting to collapse. A large gulp of smoke envelops you as the rumble collapses in front of you. The smoke all around you is highlighted in a thick red light, as you look upwards towards the robotic noises you notice a large robot trying to grab you.
The Middle
Instead of grabbing you, it sucks you into it’s hand. (fade to black to transport to new area) You see the wiring inside of the robot rush past you. (fade to black to transport to new area, blur effect once you get out 2s duration). Once you gain your bearings you notice you are now inside of the robots head inside a cage, only able to look outwards.
The only thing you are able to see is planes flying high above you, you hear the hell fire of the battle of the skies carry’s on. large flashes of light, planes being shot down, you are confused and dazed. You can see the mechanic parts of the head moving, the machinery shouldn’t even be possible but yet you are right there experiencing it.
You hear large explosions appearing to be on the robots body it seems like the robot is going into some kind of lockdown state. After a small while of hearing these noises a large explosion appears and the robot forcefully ejects you back out. (fade to black to transport to new area) You see the wiring inside of the robot rush past you. (fade to black to transport to new area, blur effect once you get out 2s duration).
The End
As you exit the robot you lay there on the floor in a war torn city with the robot falling over in front of you. Fire engulfs all around you with thick smoke clouds the air illuminated by the raging fires. As your looking around you all you can do is start to black out due to the smoke and intense time you had.
As the darkness washes over you all you can hear is being dragged away, hopefully somewhere safe. The end.
Visuals?
For this project I would like to create a stylistic realism comparable to the visuals from Black Ops 3’s Gorod Krovi zombies DLC map. I’m hoping with this style it will hold up for a while, as even know 9 years on Black Ops 3 still looks nice. This style means still using good visuals but mixing in vibrant colours and having good gradients making it look painterly.
I love the style of black ops 3 as I feel it has a great of cartoony and also realism that goes on. The art direction was phenomenal.
Time and Overview
Each area to fully map and layout (4 Total) should hopefully only take 2-3 weeks each. The most complex part will be the robot as i need to rig and animate the inside pieces of the robot. Once this is all done it should leave a few weeks to work on the editing and sound design to make it more immersive.
Hopefully if everything is to schedule i should have a week or so to polish up the rougher details and potentially add in some easter eggs in the background, where it doesn’t distract the user but is an enjoy thing to spot and see. One such easter egg is the Endo-01 i made referencing FNaF in the bunker area.
If everything doesn’t go to plan there is always a backup, I don’t technically need a final area as it can all be done using the audio, this would allow me a lot more time to work on the other aspects while only slightly harming the storytelling and visual aspect.
This approach is typically called the waterfall approach, doing things sequentially one thing after another. I am doing this as it suits my progress style the best.
Milestones?
Each area I have is classed as a milestone, this is because each area represents the stage I am at. This gives me a good idea as to how far along i am with the project and will give me enough time to rethink if something goes wrong.
The main milestones are the first and second areas as they are the most needed visually and with the story. The transportation area (inside robot wires) is also not needed but helps the user know what is happening and helps lessen the confusion as to what’s happening. Inspiration from the Origins map from COD Black ops 2.
Each milestone will be done in order of importance, therefore it will start with area 1 (WW2 Bunker), then area 2 (Robot head), and then the area 4 (Transportation wiring) and then finally the final area where you are out of the robot in a war torn city.
Challenges?
The hardest part of this project will be animating the inside of the robots head correctly, making sure it feels heavy is a big part of making it feel more real than it is. Taking notes from Pacific Rim, I plan on making sure everything feels more grounded. This means adding slight camera shake to each step and movement the robot does and having it not feel floaty as gravity smashes it back to the ground each step. The pistons inside the head need to smash into each other as gravity is forcing them together when they no longer have power to supply them. Also taking notes from the transformers movies I want to make sure each component has an area it can physically go as to not confuse anyone who watches.
The next biggest challenge will be the city on fire, building a fake city burning with smoke can be time consuming and hard to get right, this is why most of the view will be taken up by the fallen robot and smoke. The other problem here is that it will most likely be the longest to render out due to the high amounts of smoke taking up computing power.
Following up from the last point, render time will most likely be a big problem, due to the nature of each scene and using volumes. Each area will take a massive amount of time to just render, meaning I have to plan appropriately to give me enough time to render each scene. Also if I make a mistake in the render I will have to re render the whole scene.
Programs?
For this project I have dedicated certain things to different programs. These programs are Blender and Maya, using substance painter for the texturing. I am using Blender as the main program of the project and using it to render out the sequences. This is because in my cases Blender is less prone to crash and ruin a lot of my work and I find the applying of textures easier and better, whilst also having a better UI in my opinion. However, I do realise Maya has a far superior animation system so therefore I will be using Maya to animate most things in my scene which I can then export as FBX and have it play in Blender. Blenders lighting system has also improved a lot and caught up to Maya, as it now provides light linking allowing more precise lighting in scenes.
Trello board
https://trello.com/b/S3DZ0NUa/vr-video
(Needed models, current list)
I plan on using my old models I have created, new models for specialised pieces such as the robot. And using places like Sketchfab and fab.com. I am going to use a lot of models from fab.com due to time restraints and it will make the overall look feel more full. Also they will provide better models than i can provide in such a time scale.
AI tools?
With this type of technology it could be an assumption that using AI would be a great addition. However, for me, I don’t like the style of product AI creates. It all feels the same in some weird way. For this reason, I have decided to not use AI in any way in this project.
Failsafe plan
When going into this plan I knew I needed a backup, as this project is a large size and I cannot be fully confident I can get this all done. The way I designed this plan I made sure that if I can’t be sure to get it done I can change the scope to only include the original bunker that I have already modelled. I can create a claustrophobic atmosphere and use heavy horror elements to create a horror story instead of a horror adjacent story. Using horror VR experiences on YouTube an inspiration will help inspire what I will create if I do go down this route. Using things like dolls and rodents are a common be equally terrifying experience, and it will be rather unique due to being in a WW2 Bunker aesthetic.
Concept Storyboard
This is the current plan, I am currently not going above this due to this being the main goal of the project. I plan on planning at each stage. If I make another storyboard when I get onto the next area it means I have only one piece I have to focus on. It also means I don’t waste time planning the exact story of the next area with how I want everything to look and I can focus on this as the main priority.
This storyboard is what happens in the first area, this can change slightly but the main structure beats will remain the same.
Overall
Going into this project I knew I would have a large project I would make at hand, I made sure to pre plan before the term starts, collect models I would need. I’m making sure to stick to my plan as if I change it like i have done in previous years I will make a product that isn’t great and I want to make sure I have made the best overall product.
This plan seems strong, I know what software I am going to use. I have pre mapped the entire story and I even have backups in case something goes wrong. I have planned the time frames and I even planned out the kind of models I want to have. I have even planned down to the kind of transitions I want to make sure it is User friendly.
The main goal here is to make a good story that someone can watch, and i want to make sure the video is user friendly for beginners.
References
Games shown:
Activision / Tryarch (2015) Black ops 3 [Video Game] https://store.steampowered.com/app/311210/Call_of_Duty_Black_Ops_III/ [Accessed 02 November 2024].
Activision / Tryarch (2012) Black ops 2 [Video Game] https://store.steampowered.com/app/202970/Call_of_Duty_Black_Ops_II/ [Accessed 02 November 2024].