New Term, Old Fears.
On Tuesday 14th of February, my university classes resumed. I have not felt great after the tooth root canal treatment, so I attended both classes online. We started with a new unit called Virtual Network in the morning and then we had our usual Virtual World Building session in the afternoon.
I talked about my project’s progress and Abel and David listened to me, commented on what I said and gave me some advice in response to my talking about being stuck and therefore not knowing what to do next.
In terms of showing the animated door, I heard that it is not really an essential element of my story, and I should instead of trying to fix it, create one keyframed animation of that door instead of having 4 separate states (closed, opening, opened, and closing) and transitions between them. The advice was greatly received.
I also heard that even though we are now halfway through the academic year, I should not be thinking about things I have not done and the time that passed without me working on the project but rather make a plan for the next weeks. David and Abel both stressed the importance of the storyboard and the actions between the player and the virtual world in my experience. They recommended using a pen and paper or digital tools to create the story step by step, including the key moments and VR principles to help me see and understand my application and the story. This highly relates to my not knowing it yet but at the same time, I realized that I need to change my approach and stop pushing it away from me. It was good to hear all the good advice. One of them was to start every week with a fresh head and goals to achieve with a focus on what can be done.
I need to sit down and with a clear head work on the storyboard for the Time Train. It sounds easy but it will not be as I still do not know all the things about my story that I wish I knew by now.
And for next Tuesday’s session, I need to prepare a presentation to give everyone an insight into where I am currently in my project. That should be a 15-minute talk including pre-production and production materials, such as mood boards, storyboards, concept designs, digital assets etc. We should also state where we are, and what still needs working on, and present how the finished project will look like. I am panicking again!
On Friday during the Virtual World Building class with Eric, I again talked to him about the state of my project, and my mind during the last few weeks.
We talked about the story again but also about the animation and sound in the Time Train.
Eric advised creating one timeline for animating the train movement and doors opening and closing included in that timeline. He also asked me if I need to have a trigger for opening my door in the story. Initially, I wanted to create a collider that would be a trigger for opening and closing the doors whenever the character/object enters and leaves the collider. After talking to Eric, I decided not to do it this way as my story will be happening to the player from the inside of the train – they will not be engaging with the doors of the train, they will be seated on that train.
I also talked to Eric about having a general train sound and the doors opening and closing noise attached to the animated train. I wanted to record my own tube sounds when I commute to work/university, but another option is to search for the right sound online, as there are good free sound libraries available on the internet. Apart from the advice, I received from Eric a link to a tutorial that might be helpful with implementing sound in VR. He also placed on the Moodle platform video materials on spatial audio in Unity.
We also agreed on the next steps for me to work on the train and door animation in a new way and to create the storyboard and more details of the experience I am building. I felt much better after slightly moving forward this week, but the feeling of not knowing is still here, plus the anxiety about putting up that presentation for Tuesday. At least I know what exactly I need to focus on first.