Prototyping Immersive Experiences

Creating an Immersive VR Experience

The creation of virtual reality (VR) has provided the opportunity for users to experience a fully immersive, 360-degree canvas. VR headsets create a user experience that allows them to interact with 3D environments and narratives.

Week 1 – Workshop Exercise 1 – Maya

Maya can be used to create environments that can be experienced using a VR headset. The scene below is an example of how a room in Maya can be created to make a 360 immersive experience. The user can explore the environment and navigate around the objects. This scene uses a blue skylight to give a cold hue to the environment.

Figure 1; Creating a basic 3D room environment in Maya.

Figure 2; The perspective of the 360-degree camera, this image shows the point of view of the camera in the room.

Figure 3; A render of the 360 room, showing a blue skydome light against the room.

Figure 4; A 360-degree render of the scene created in Maya.

In the animated scene above, a 360-degree room can be explored and the user will experience the room and walls moving, however, the sky dome light intensity is too intense, so further experimentation with the Maya settings and editing in Premier Pro will be conducted to extend the length of the video and adjust the lighting settings.

Figure 5; A 360-degree render of the scene created in Maya

The scene shows another example of lighting, where the intensity is too bright again and takes the focus away from the scene, in the final render the lighting will be adjusted to minimize this bright flare.

The second example is “Cereal World” which allows the user to move around floating and moving pieces of cereal. This is an example of how the use of lighting, color, texture, and objects can create a simple but effective immersive 360 and 3D scene.

Figure 6; A screenshot of the scene showing the placement of the VR camera in the scene.

Figure 7; A screenshot showing the perspective view of the VR camera in the scene.

Figure 8; An example of Web VR and how these virtual rooms could be potentially used and customised.

The 360-degree video above “Cereal World” allows the user to explore the environment of being submerged in milk and surrounded by cereal. The video of this however is split down the middle which affects the 360-degree video, this is an issue to address further and resolve.

Maya Workshop 2 – MASH Networks

In this session, Maya MASH Dynamics capabilities and settings were explored.

Figure 9; A screenshot of using Maya’s MASH network to multiply a poly model and arrange them in a random node.

Figure 10; A screenshot in Maya showing how the multiple models can be coloured as one collective MASH network.

Figure 11; Using a random colour node in MASH, the cereal is now multicolored, a Falloff MASH node is created which will collide with the coloured cereal.

Figure 12; The MASH Falloff node travels through the cluster of coloured cereal and reacts to this as seen above.

Figure 13; The MASH Falloff node passes through again and creates a wave through the mass of cereal.

Week 2 – Workshop Exercise 1 – Web VR

Web VR allows users to experience virtual environments and experiences without the use of a VR headset, therefore is more accessible to users via web browsers. Frame is a Web VR experience that allows users to visit and create scenes with other users, in the example below a meeting room is explored, with experimentation of adding different 3D models and navigating the scene.

Figure 14; A screen capture exploring a scene in Frame, and using their asset library to customise the scene.

3D Immersive Experience Examples

Figure 15; A VR Spacewalk Experience in 360 degree exploring a journey in space.

The Spacewalk above lets the user experience and explore a VR Spacewalk experience, this could be created in Maya using ploy models and animation to take the user through a linear journey with the capability to view the scene in a 360-degree view.

Figure 16; A 360-degree experience of “Dreams of Dali”

The “Dreams of Dali” above showcases how a 2D painting can be re-envisioned in a modern 3D environment and bring the portrait into a 3D scene.

References

(Online) Peacock – Dreams of Dali: 360º Video – The Dali Museum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1eLeIocAcU) (Published 25 Feb 2017) (Accessed 20/11/23)