Month: March 2023

Our initial idea for the collaborative project was to create a number of virtual installation spaces with 2D animations as our exhibits. My role was to design these spaces and composite the animations onto them to create the final product.

Midway through the project, the group members responsible for creating the animations decided that the time was not enough to create multiple different animations for different rooms and therefore the decision was made to limit our work to a single space. My intention with the creation of the space was to ‘follow’ the animations instead of designing them independently. However, due to the aforementioned time constraints the animations were sent to me very late into the process which left us with no choice but to choose one of the preliminary designs that I had created. Furthermore, I encountered some technical difficulties with rendering the final product as a result of using still images for all our drafts having no access to the animations. With not enough time to solve those problems I had to strip down several details and compromise quality in order to deliver a presentable final product.
Another difficulty we experienced was choosing the format for the final project. In order to create the most immersive experience possible it was my opinion that VR would be the preferable medium. However, since no member of our team had significant experience with VR I was aware of the possibility that we would not be able to reliably deliver that which indeed was the case. Instead we chose to use our project as a model/blueprint for similar undertakings whether in VR or real life.

I chose to work in this project due to my interest in the VFX of the lived environment – architecture, interior design,etc. It gave me the opportunity to work with a specific brief instead of experimenting in my personal time or gathering encyclopaedic knowledge. I believe that I conducted adequate research in the fields of installation art and interior design to form a solid base for the design process. Although I do not consider original design to be a strength of mine, I believe I made positive developments during the project, especially in producing quick drafts that were necessary due to the difficulties I explained above that caused the majority of the work to take place quite close to the deadline. Regarding my technical work I was satisfied with my ability to model and texture the environments, however I discovered that I had a lot of work to do in my ability to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I was not able to fix certain issues in a small amount of time or to incorporate new techniques and software, resulting in a final product of diminished quality.

Lastly, despite me and my teammates enjoying a smooth and productive working relationship, it is very apparent that we should have done a significantly better job at creating and enforcing schedules and milestones in order to avoid the problems that we encountered. In my opinion, the final product reflects the above, as it is an encouraging piece of work by developing artists but does not meet the standards of professional work.

*The quality of the final project had to be significantly downgraded as the final draft for the animations were completed very close to the deadline. Projecting the animations as image sequence textures in Maya resulted in unpredictable renders and, sadly, there was not enough time to comprehensively solve all the issues that arose or try different techniques.

https://fab-13.jimdosite.com/

This is the final concept that we have decided to use. Again, due to time constraints, the decision has been made to only proceed with the ‘nature’ room.
We have also decided that the animations will be shown as projections for the reasons I have mentioned in my previous post but also to create the ‘counterpoint’ of the animations ‘softening’ the harsh concrete walls that are visible here.

As the deadline draws closer and the animators have not yet been able to complete the animations, we have decided to fully commit to the idea that we are creating a model for real life spaces rather than a ‘product in itself’ that would be the VR video, as it would be very hard to set everything up in a format that is foreign to all of us with the time remaining.

Below our two preliminary versions of the final video for our rooms. Due to time constrictions I have not yet received the animations and I have used images as placeholders.

We are currently deciding on how the animations will be portrayed in the space. We have already decided that we want the spaces to achieve a degree of realism in our attempt to position our project as a model for real life installations. Therefore we cannot simply paste the animations onto the walls but we have to convey the medium through which the are being shown. In the first example the animations are made to look as a projection whereas in the second as screens. The projections method has the disadvantage of distorting the original animation but adds another layer of realism as in the real world in would be less likely to construct a rooms with giant led screens for walls.

Bellow are a few concepts for the interiors created in Maya. The core design principle in all of these is creating a uniform, encircling and monochromatic seating area that aims at comfort and relaxation and an open ceiling that muddies the boundaries of the outside world and the world of the animations. The apertures are just big enough to not reveal too much of the outside world to render it as a completely separate space in the mind of the observer but instead suggest that they are an extension of the animations. The same principle is behind the tree in image 5 and the moon-shaped lamp in image 6.

These are some initial mockups of the space that I have created as a starting point for us to start discussing more about design ideas.

Creating separate ‘screens’ (1st image) for the animations has the advantage of allowing us to create a more fleshed out space but at the same time a fractured space does not lend itself to great immersion. On the other hand enveloping the whole space in the animations (2nd image) while immersive does not allow us to exhibit the interior and therefore would make it hard to communicate the purpose of our project.

We decided that the next iterations of the interior designs would confine the animations only to the walls and will be broken up by physical object in order to simultaneously maintain a sense of immersion and make the function of the rooms clearer.