PG Ruff
Project 4: Adobe Aero 3D Environment
Creating 3D Scene
Inspiration: I was inspired by underwater scenes and especially one of my favorite childhood movies, Nemo. I find underwater scenes to be especially beautiful and wanted to try to create one on my own. Through Aero, the concept of my scene developed to include a reef scene, a sunken boat, and two divers.
I started by finding and creating my background, which I did through Blendr. I created a large cube shape and projected an image onto it. I had to edit the projection of the image by opening the UV editor and changing the option to cube projection, which allowed the full image to be projected on the surface, as shown below.
Next, I created coral formations in Blender by using and editing 3D models I found through turbosquid and sketchfab. I exported it into AERO, and began building my scene around it.
To create more dimensionality, I wanted to create tall rock formations, a boat, and a sandy surface, which I began to do in AERO; however, I hit a wall attempting to change the color of the rocks, so the first iteration ended up looking like this, with gold rocks:
I was unsatisfied with the look, so I moved to Blender to redo the rock formations
Once I was satisfied with the look, I imported those rocks into AERO.
Editing and Animating Figures
I wanted to create figures that look like divers, so I took the mannequin 3D model and added an old diving helmet to it in Blender. Joining the helmet to the mannequin in a way that would not disrupt animation rigging proved difficult. I ended up joining the two by adding a cylindrical appendage through the mannequin’s head that also stuck a little bit out from the helmet, but it is mostly unnoticeable. I then joined the objects and converted them to a mesh, which allowed them to become one object:
After many attempts, the rigging in Mixamo worked! I was finally able to apply motions to the mannequin. I chose to use the swimming and treading water motions as my two animations.
Animating the figures in AERO was not difficult, but I ran into a problem of the imported movements being too short, so for the treading water figure, I added three motions as seen below. I used tap triggers for both!
The final video animation HERE
AR Experience
Transporting the scene into AR was super cool! I ended having to reshape and reposition a lot of the figures, so the scene is a tad different than what was on the computer version, but it ended up looking even more immersive and real!
Reflections:
While the scene is definitely not as pretty or smooth as I hoped it would be, it combined a lot of skills that are very new to me and which I have little experience with. It was satisfying to see the final product and fully conceptualize an underwater 3D environment. If I were to do this again, I would love to change the color of the rocks in Blender and also add more diving equipment to the mannequins so it appears more realistic. I would have also liked to added more dimensionality to the background by including multiple images and making sure the image is more crisp. However, in the end, I was proud of what I produced!