Pressure Points in Hands and Feet. VR Design Research Lab
Timetable and Progress Notes
TimeTable
21.03.2022-27.03.2022
This week I am aiming at a couple of things:
-Complete google sheet for concept and start
-Talk with Alejandro about the concept
-Set up transportation in Unity scene
-Explore shaders further (fresnel)
-Build the anatomy (all of the organs)
28.03.2022-03.04.2022
-This week I am aiming at a couple of things:
-Finalize mechanics
-Start looking at code
-Retopologize and finish the look dev of the player area hand (start looking for feet)
-Find the way of approaching building the hand in Maya an area and apply the same techniques to make a mirror version of the hand as well ad the foot
04.04.2022-10.04.2022
This week I am aiming at a couple of things:
-Finish Linkedin tasks
-Look at the video by VR by Andrew about the Xr toolkit 2.0 and set up the scene.
-Write down the new gameplan
11.04.2022-18.04.2022
This is the last week of Easter break so I am aiming at a lot of things:
-Fully experiment with the scene i.e. walk around as many hand models as I possibly can with anchor teleportation and not only
-Update all the possible gifs videos I can find
-Look over the manual in Unity and play around with the material look on the hand
-Make the finished model for the hand with updated pressure point areas
-Work out the color scheme for that
-Contact Alejandro about the shader and texture how would he approach something this stylized
-Play around with quiet animations and make at least two
-Cut the number of organs yet keep the shape of areas
-Redraw the areas in Procreate
01.05.2022-08.05.2022
This week will be extra stressful since now the task lies to make two VR experiences but these are the goals for me:
-Put the second hand into the unity scene
-Get rid of the anchor mesh colliders
-Make the feet
-Start coding the experience
-Make animations for the anatomical dummy
08.05.2022-15.05.2022
-Finish the feet
-Do the animations for the person
-Write the code for the movement collider for the anatomical dummy and player position
-Finish the user’s hand texture
-Put anchors to everything
-Perfect the skybox
22.05.2022-29.05.2022
-Finish anchors on the second hand
-Make UI menu with info
-Finish the animation of the particle system
-Make ANIMATIONS!!!
30.05.2022-6.06.2022
-Have made some progress on UI
-Ideally made all of the UI
-Target Images for points on hand
-Start menu/info panel about the experience
-Make the audio for the text. (For each point draw the organ and correlate a bit of audio cue so that there is not a lot of text, rather you get told by Kai what is what).
plan for 01.06.2022
-Finish the UI (Start Button, Start Text< Draw all the organs)
-Make a better teleportation ray tracer (add a sprite on the end and all that, add audio to the hovering, and enter exit action of teleportation ) in the XR Ray Interactor
06.06.2022-10.06.2022
The final week of work.
It doesn’t even feel real yet, but soon enough it will sink in.
Now all I have to do is as follows:
-Today (06.06.2022) start chronologically transferring things from Padlet to the Blog and work on the showreel for Wednesday 08.06.2022
09.06.2022
-Finish up the presentation by adding to the objective and take a look through some photos pick them apart a bit
-Finish continue with the blog entry
-Have to finish the blog about the project by the end of today
Notes
Potentually what Vr could bring to the practise of surgical skills
These skills include:altered tactile feedback, different eye-hand co-ordination, trans-lation of two dimensional video image to a three dimensionalworking area, and the fulcrum effect
Current idea: You are walking around the palms of your hands and exploring the area while matching the points of pressure on it with the organs in an inventory.
As you are walking areas on your hand are lit and you can see where you are standing on your hand.
For the past week (the easter break) or should I dare admit two weeks I have not been working on my VR experience. It devistates me but I have done a bit of work in terms of idea development and concept creation which makes me just a tiny bit less stressed. Nevertheless I need to dramatically pick up the pace in order to actually conplete the experience how I envision it. Something that has helped me was Hermans XR pre-set up scene since starting from tomorrow I will actually get down to testing out how the environment should look. My goal essentially is to test out different hands in the scene and finalize the size and style. In term of animations I will need to look into timing animations and comparing tags. Another thing I am looking forward to setting up is to point teleportation in order to do that I am pretty sure Herman and I talked about a teleportation ancher which will do exactly what I have imagined. Also tomorrow (11.04.2022) I will perhaps decide on cutting some things out and maybe combining the areas on the palm to groupd like digestive tract etc.
Today is Monday 11.04.2022 and I am starting this week with a quite ambitious mindset. I have to complete a lot of set goals by the end of this week and my aim is to fully merge myself with the work since there is barely any time left for the project and I want to execute it to a certain level
Sitting and trying to open my Maya is very difficult to do since I guess the mesh is very dense. But I have figured out the best way to capture the pressure point feeling of the whole thing.
What is my progress in three days I ask myself?
Well, it has been quite tremendous. I have finally figured out the full formula for the experimental look dev of the hand model. In that, I have been exploring the use of booleans in Maya. And curve projection onto the mesh.
Last I wrote I gave a detailed rundown of the process for creating specific shapes, however, I soon ran into the problem of broken mesh to make it workable and continue creating on the already existing canvas hand model I developed two options of avoiding projecting curves yet still get a good result.
The first option is to make the mesh live by selecting the mesh then going into modify tab -> make live then start drawing the EP curve onto it and it should be all good.
Another option is to use polygon primitives and shape them as you would like then use either difference or union boolean.
However, I do feel like the look of the model is not quite right, so I will keep modifying and adding to it to perfect.
Recently I was studying with Billy and Lauren in the LCC Library and Billy gave me a very useful suggestion of maybe making the objects appear within unity as different objects all in all and come up when hovering over for teleportation.
I probably explain the concept still very dry but I am sure the idea will grow on me. I do feel extremely behind and since I am soon leaving London for a couple of days the thought about it does not help. I am glad that I have simplified the concept and gameplay since I do not think I can afford to code too many elaborate mechanics.
My hopeful next steps would be to finish the unperfect hand model which I am stiving on doing today. Put it into Unity and work on the material look. Since I do not have my headset with me today I can not actually look at the scene in VR which is probably the downside to my whole process. I do not test in VR enough, but tomorrow I will finally take my headset from my house and will get to explore the scene.
I need to get in contact with Herman to discuss anchor teleportation in the scene, but that is to come. I can not wait until the start of uni and the library/media block and creative technology lab open back up.
Tremendous progress guys.
I have finally put the model into the unity scene and set up 90% of the teleportation anchors, everything works perfectly however I have stumbled into a couple of challenges: first I seem to be having some issues with exporting the refined final version of the hand model from Maya to Unity, something that has not been of any trouble before. This worries me at the moment since it is not that dramatically changed, hopefully, I will have time to speak to Anna or Alejandro about this problem since it is slightly delaying the progress. The second issue which is no less important is the teleportation anchors on the hand. I have serious doubts at the moment about the look of them.
I am still figuring out a way of developing the look in such a way that I like it.
The thought of going away for 4 days from the 23rd to the 27th has been bothering me lately. I am not sure how productive it would be for me to leave, but I have to at this point. There is no other way. I will bring my computer with me probably but I don’t know how helpful it would be. So I am just hoping for the best out of all the three days I still have left in London.
Tomorrow I have the study room booked out from 9 am and I plan to sit in the library hopefully until the closing time to get as much work done as possible.
For example, the goals for tomorrow are -> complete the Maya model again in a different way and export the model
Sitting with Will, Billy, and Lauren in the Highline building and working on my project, I have made a shader yesterday
-Continue working on the mood board
-Make some simple animations for the hand project
-Continue working on the foot as well
-Check out particle systems and basic shaders in Unity (maybe make some sort of particle effect)
Basically, what do we have for today…
I have made a particle system that correlates with the Body mesh and follows the position of the organ shader.
The shader itself is a basic fresnel shader that allows making the organs transparent
Mental health is not okay at all. I have been struggling to find motivation and keep going since I have quite a lot of work on my hands and want to make everything as polished as possible and keep the responsibility. As well as some personal hurdles which come back haunting me, but I try to keep going. At times it gets very hard and I don’t want to overwork or burn out but still feel like I am not doing enough although I work every day and have tremendous progress. But the mental state is very fragile. Hopefully this is going to be over soon.
Sitting and it is hard to get myself to work recently so many things in my personal life going on, but I will come back on Wednesday and start doing what I have planned out for my project. But I think I can take a bit of a break on this current project and maybe just finish up doing stuff like the anchors for the left hand as well as maybe set up a simple UI with Herman’s help on Wednesday and then just work on the look of users controller hands in Procreate and the feet in Maya.
I am also thinking of contacting Alejandro for a couple of UI tricks and tips.
Forgot my adapter in Nice
RIP
Now don’t want to do anything
Only 3 weeks left so I have to keep going.
My goal for today is to get some functionality and set up a meeting with Alejandro tomorrow in Uni.
So essentially I will come in if I have a charger adapter arrive by tomorrow. Otherwise, I will not be able to work on my computer with Alejandro. Also, I have realized that I will have to really pull strings together and focus on everything for the next two or three weeks.
It is time to get serious and finish what needs to be finished well.
Started on the animations and the sprite sheets containing information
Now I have to familiarize myself with some basic sprites
Today is all about UI for me.
I want to make a circular UI indicator for the pressure points.
Today I brought my IPad with me to make it in Procreate and Bazaart.
So turned out that this day was a little bit about UI, but mostly it was about texture projection and playing around with the target area for the collider stuff.
I did end up making a bit of a point sprite sheet in procreate and Bazzart however I do have to perfect it a bit.
Nevertheless, it is looking very nice.
Tomorrow I am looking to come to University at 9 finally and be here for as long as possible.
I have to get some things done for my other project, but if I manage my time correctly everything should work out well.
9:00-10:00 Lib work on the pressure point indicators.
10 min break
10:10-11:10 Lib position them in the scene with colliders
10 min break
11:20-12:10 Lib work on other projects (figure everything out with the painting situation)
10 min break
12:30-13:30 Lib document all the progress (texture projection, scripts etc etc, put time stamps)
LUNCH BREAK
Sitting and dying.
Man, I have no motivation and I am feeling burnt out.
I did good work today though!
been working for about 7 hours more or less.
I got all of the pressure points done as well as found and added a cool particle effect in my opinion.
Both the sprite sheets for pressure point targets and the particle systems I found on the Unity Asset store, were free, fairly basic, and, in my opinion, fit the project style.
Overall I am happy with the work done today.
I think I will work for another hour on documenting the progress and set up a template on MyBlog.
I think it is about time I start transferring posts from my padlet to my blog.