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OVERVIEW
Yin Yang: Five Elements is an immersive experience project using Unity and projection technique, theming five elements with peace and disaster scenes to indicate the balance of five elements as China's traditional concept.
Domain
Immersive experience
3D Projection
Video arts
GOAL
Yin Yang: Five Elements is a project for class VR AR Fundamentals, aiming to experience creating 3D projection arts and immersive experience using unity.
TOOL
ROLE (Team Size 3)
Unity
3D projector
Adobe PR
Ideation
Asset Modeling
Video Editing
Background and Inspiration
Thinking of 3d immersive experience, we were inspired by the Disney Project Soaring Over the Horizon where customers wearing special glasses and siting on the flying chairs, watch a giant screen playing 3d sceneries, as they are flying over the scenes and enjoying a 3d immersive experience. We want to create such a project that we can mimic the experience of flying over 3d scenes. We theme at the the balance of Yin Yang (阴阳) and the Five Elements in China's traditional concept. Our goal is to build peaceful and disaster scenes for each elements with Unity, showing the Yin Yang (阴阳) balance of Five Elements.
Process
01
Brainstorm the experiment and story structure, sketching each scene transition.
In order to create an immersive and impressive visual and audio experience, we took the 3d visual effects of characteristics of Unity. The overview of different distinctive 3d scenes is the main idea. We thought of using the first view, and the five element diagram working as the portals to enter scenes, where the the balance of five elements can be indicated with peaceful and disaster scenes.
02
Unity production: 3D modeling the diagram; Design and build peaceful and disaster scenes of the Five Elements, namely Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth.
03
Animation Record, sound design, video editing and 3D Projection tests
Design, build and record the "eye" movement routine in Unity for each scene. We would like to maximize the completeness and enjoyment of the first view experience over the scenes we've built.
In order to mimic the immersive effects using projection and 3D glasses, we overlap the original video clip with another layer of itself with a certain distance deviation, which is a set of parameters we tested for times for the best 3D effect and minimized dizziness.
The normal eye distance can be 6cm, so we measured the distance between the two canvas on the wall and also the viewpoint adjustments on the computer. After multiple trials we found that the viewpoint = 0.5 works the best. Also, the quality of the game view can be cut if using unity recording. Thus instead of using the recommended 1080P, we decided to record 4K. (It really takes time and computer to record with 4K)
04
2021 Future Lab exhibition
Thoughts
Creating immersive experience need to concern the five senses at the same time. This project took a lot more work than I expected. For example, only the camera movement record and projection testing took countless trials for the best effect. The 3D immersive experience is an attractive field for me. I would be very happy if I could explore more in this field.