Back In My Day

Description

Back in my day is a virtual reality experience that was developed as part of a team based a specification given by Catherine Allen from Limina Immersive for the Audio Visual Production final-year module for BSc Games Technology. The brief given was to create an experience that is designed to be a piece of gateway content to appeal to users with little to no experience with virtual reality.

Me and my team decided to focus the project on the music scene in Bristol as we thought it would be suitable to appeal to people with an interest in or a connection to Bristol’s music scene. The virtual reality experience which takes a look at Bristol’s underground music scene and details individual’s personal experiences within it.

The experience takes place within a number of real notable venues throughout Bristol which have been prominent within the chosen music genres.

Scene Management

Additive Scenes: The system for the management of the scenes within the project works through the use of Unity's additive scenes to allow for a more seamless transition between scenes. A seamless transition between scenes was essential as any noticeable delay when transitioning between scenes would be quite jarring when viewed in VR.
In order to handle the transition between additive scenes, I developed a system to handle the activation and deactivation of the objects in the scenes.

Main Menu: The functionality for selecting scenes and initiating the scene transition was developed by myself. A main menu scene was created for the selection of scenes in the form of a poster board.
The user is able to pick up the posters from the poster board using their Oculus Quest Touch Controllers - once a poster is held for a few moments the scene is transitioned to the selected scene.

Sound Responsive Particles

Particle Systems

A particle system was created for the purpose of mapping emission to match the beat of music that is assigned to it. This was achieved using a beat detection script sourced online, which was altered to command attached particle systems to emit particles whenever a beat is detected.
This resulted in an audio responsive particle system that emits ring shaped particles in a straight line from its source.
This particle system was attached to speaker models within the scenes to give the visual illusion that the music in the scenes is being emitted from the speakers.

Animated Character Shader

Shaders

I was tasked with the creation of shaders using the Unity Shader Graph for use throughout the scenes.
A shader was created to be placed on the dancing characters throughout the scenes to give them a glowing border which gives the scenes a more lively, colourful look.
The shader makes use of lerp to fade between colours over time for the glowing border, allowing for the characters to change colour in sync with each other.
By applying a vector1 to the alpha node in the shader I was able to alter the opacity of the shader through script at runtime. This allowed for the dancer characters to fade in at the beginning of the scene and fade back out again towards the end of the scene.

Modelling

As the project takes place in a series of music venues based within Bristol, a number of environment models were needed for each of the music venues.
I was tasked with the creation of the Trinity centre and Lakota (2 Bristol music venues) interior building models for use in their scenes.
These models were created within Autodesk Maya based on reference photos that were taken when research was conducted into each of the venues.
Through the process of modelling these venues I learnt a lot about techniques for plotting out the structure of interiors based on reference photos for the creation of relatively accurate recreations of real environments.
To correctly structure elements within the environment, a floor plan was created based on the range of reference photos taken to allow for accurate positioning and scaling of the elements within the environment.
I was also tasked with the creation of some environmental props to be placed in each of the scenes. Specifically, the models for speakers, spotlights and DJ turntables were created.
Speakers models were created for each of the scenes which were combined with audio responsive particle systems to visually display music being played.