Our Idea:
We want to combine our work and learning from previous projects with the unique ability of Adobe Aero to create a fun, somewhat surreal piece showing off the different skills we’ve expanded upon and programs we’ve worked with through our time in 3D Design.
Our idea involved multiple different ‘sets’ or ‘locations’ with us first starting in a room heavily based on the Iovine and Young Hall Student Lounge. From here, depending on the choices made, the character will either stay in the lounge or end up in 1 of 2 new places. First, a low-poly natural environment originating from our final piece in Project 2 (also used in our final piece for Project 3). Second, a simplistic room created with Polycam (tying back to our earliest ideation phase of project 2), with the room shown being a study room in the Business Library.
Our Process:
The IYH Lounge:
This room was the first idea we came up with for this project, in fact, we thought it would be cool to replicate the lounge while we were starting work on this project in said lounge! We chose this path as we wanted to see the degree to which AR could be utilized plus we wanted to play around with 3d space by creating false windows as well as how to take a space we know and make it interesting, all for this project (this being our move to surrealism).
When it came to replicating the room we used a multitude of means to do this, the walls and buttons were created and colored in Illustrator, the doors and windows were photos we took then edited in Photoshop to leave only the frame of the door/window, the outsides were a mix of photos taken and photos from the internet to help create a forced 3-dimensional perspective, the mannequin movements all come from Mixamo, while lastly the chairs, tables, plants and more decorative assets came from Adobe Aero’s asset list as well as from CGTrader.
We did have some issues though with this room having to be scaled down and some of its mannequins having to be removed so that it would work on Mac as the size of the file exceeded around 600 MB which made it difficult to work on. Even though there were problems we were able to get through everything and ended up creating what we believe to be a cohesive and interesting version of the IYH Student Lounge.
Lastly going back to the buttons and motions we ended up going with three possible events, one of which is the mannequin doing the macarena to harken back to our final piece for project 3. The second one has our character fall through the floor into a room based on a study room in the Business Library to show off new ways to utilize Polycam. The third has our character fall asleep with them getting transported to a colorful and lush natural environment causing them to dance with happiness!
Images Of The Room Being Developed –
The Library:
While a smaller room than the main two found in our piece I thought it important to mention where the mannequin ends up falling and the reason it was added. We created this room by using Polycam’s new Room scanner which looks for walls to create a space. I believe it came out looking quite realistic to the space, and due to the fact that it came out in mainly greys, we feel like it really fit this kind of surreal and varied idea we were going for overall. Furthermore, by having the mannequin fall into the room, we were able to play around with height in a unique way for AR, as such we are quite happy with how it came out overall.
Image of Final Room –
The Dream Land:
When it came to the colorful dream world, we took a different approach as we wanted to create something that popped in comparison to the surroundings found in the IYH Student Lounge room. To achieve this we first used Blender to make some low-poly plants with other assets utilized being imported from SketchFab and TurboSquid. For our background, we used the assistance of mid-journey in creating a low-poly cloud-filled sky. The purpose of this was to help create a dream-esque background that feels both realistic and noticeably fake, here that contrast being lighting and depth against the low-poly clouds in the sky. After this, we imported the design into Aero and crafted the space, assembling and arranging the assets and background into a cohesive whole. This piece harkens back to the land piece we used in both Project 2 and 3 but took to a new level with the use of color, integration of different programs and now adding ar into the mix. It is important to recognize this is a separate file due to the fact that the original would barely run and thus we needed them not connected in order for everything to be able to be seen in full. Lastly we made sure to use the same mannequin that’s found in the first room giving it a dance sequence with happy somewhat surreal music to fit the idea that they fell asleep and ended up waking up in this new place.
Images of Room Development –
Aero QR Codes:
Room 1 [IYH Lounge] –
Room 2 [Dream World] –
Our Videos:
Room 1 [IYH Lounge] –
[Choices 1 to 3 in Order]
Room 2 [Dream World] –
Reflection:
Max – This project was really fun as it allowed me to take my short time using Aero previously for the Cohort 10 Mural and expand on it dramatically. I learned way more about the different base features of the program and how many things you can actually do with Aero, especially when it came to what you could do with mannequins. This project, though was more difficult than I had previously expected, with two significant issues occurring, the first being mannequins not following animations if they had more than one animation assigned to them across an event and the second being my Mac shutting down aero any time I tried to open up the project. With some troubleshooting, though I was able to create a cohesive piece. Overall I felt like I learned quite a few things from asset utilization to time management to the value of tutorials to the importance of teamwork all in creating a united and well-developed project.
Yvette – I encountered several technical issues during the project, including poor asset management with confusing folder naming conventions, which sometimes made it difficult to locate items. Additionally, my laptop ran out of storage due to the abundance of large 3D files from various projects. One key lesson learned is the importance of maintaining better organization when it comes to file and asset management, ensuring clear and straightforward naming and organization to facilitate easy retrieval.