1. Introduction
This week we discussed the challenges we are facing during collaboration. We then had a guest lecture by Jenn Leung on Digital Identities and Avatars Workflow.
2. Collaborative Project: Finalizing Concept Art
This week I made the concept art of both environments. I presented it to my tea and we finalized all the color themes.
Idea behind Concept
The main idea of this project is to show a fictional aftermath of the planet earth in 3023 AD. The art style was a mixture of abstract and realistic.
1.Environment: The monument in the scene takes most attention because it connects us with the culture of the place. The other assets like cars, rocks, trees signifies the remains of pre climatic apocalypse.
2. Moon: The moon shining behind symbolizes the hope. The hope that everything will become better for the planet again.
3. Creatures: I am planning to add glowing creature animations in the scene. Glowing creature signifies that evolved species have inhabited on the planet Earth. Glow and translucency shows the evolution, transition and hope.
4. Lighting: I have kept the lighting dull and monochromatic because the only source of light on the planet at the night is moonlight or the light coming from the glowing creatures.
3. Challenges faced in the Collaborative Project
Later in the session we discussed the challenges we are facing in the collaborative project. The main issue my team and I am facing is finding a common time suitable for all the team-members to meet and discuss the project. I also gave an idea to book an independent study class for all the students of collaborative unit where they can come and do their work without worrying about finding a common time of meeting.
4. Digital Identities and Avatars Workflow
In this session we discussed the concept of avatars and what are their roles in the games and their history. We also analyzed their implications in 3d. As this was an interactive session we engaged with the lecturer through Miro board.
Digital Identities
A digital identity is a collection of information about a person that exists online. When this information is grouped together, it can provide a digital representation of an individual.
What are avatars?
An avatar is a personalized graphical illustration or image that represents an individual, or a character or alter ego. An avatar can be represented either in three-dimensional form (for example, in games or virtual worlds) or in two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and virtual worlds.
What is the role of avatars in digital spaces?
An avatar plays a significant role in digital space as it shows your personality and several times it communicates your identity with other people.
History of Avatars
The early appearance of avatars dated back to the 80’s in computing, where internet users and gamers had on-screen representations. Avatars were seen as important, particularly in gaming to make the experience more immersive. If a person playing the game had an avatar that they felt reflected them, it would facilitate a first-person view.
Since then, avatars have popularized gaming experiences with the likes of Fortnite and The Sims generating revenue through an expansion of avatar/character customization. It was clear that gamers had the desire to personalize their on-screen avatars to better represent who they wanted to be in a game.
Pipeline of making an Avatar
In the session we studied how to make an avatar from a concept to 3d and add animations on it. We discussed different pipelines to make the final avatar. The one we used in class for practice is shown below.
Creating 3D Avatars
We also created the 3d avatars from the drawings we made during the exquisite corpse games. We made 3d avatars by making 3d models and using some pre made assets.
4. Getting Started with Unity
Unity: Session 1
This week we had our introductory session of Unity with Herman Ho. We explored the interface of unity and got to know how we can use unity as an artist in the games industry. As unity is one of the primary gaming engine so this session was extremely helpful for us to make us understand the working pipeline of this software. We got the idea about making and exporting game ready assets for Unity or Unreal Engine.
Setting up the scene
After basic introduction about the interface and the software itself we moved to setting up the scene. Herman guided us how to import assets in unity and how can we build an environment using these props or assets. Then, we received ready made assets from Herman which we imported in unity to create an environment.
After importing the assets, we put some ambient occlusion, chromatic aberration and grains in the scene.
Then, we changed the color temperature of the scene to the cooler tones. We also added the fog in the scene.
I adjusted the color tones further and that is how the environment looked at the end.