VR Experience: Prism
Video Demo
Introduction
The project is called Prism, created by me and Jamie. It is a VR project developed on unity, providing an immersive experience about a dream. Prism is now available on Oculus Quest2. The contents are as follows:
Nowadays, with the development of technology, human civilization is going through a great decline. You, as a nobody living in a cramped room, want to escape from this tech hell and turn back time to the good old days with nature. Suddenly, a beaming prism comes to your eyes. Out of curiosity, you throw the ball at hand at the prism.
After a while, a bunch of particles lead you to a surreal world. By grabbing the bubble, you find yourself slowly rising, which is like taking the sightseeing elevator. There is a huge human-like robot projection, promoting this sin city. Around her are rotating buildings and still ruins. You keep rising until reaching the prism and then go to the next world.
Now it is what you are dreaming for a long time—nature. There are so many fish in red and green. Surprisingly, when you approach the green fish, it can be lightened up. A few moments later, here comes the whale sound. You look around and see the 2 whales swimming towards you. Look down and there will be a prism taking you to go home. And it is time to go back to reality, even if it is not perfect.
Inspiration
Since the general topic is DREAM. According to some researches, I found that dream is kind of like the reflection and extension of our subconsciousness. If you keep on thinking about something, it will be more likely to appear in your dream. The reason why we chose prism is that it could reflect the world in different perspectives, and this characteristic corresponds to the understanding of the dream. Also, even though the whole scenes are surreal, if you are careful enough, you will find the four projections on the table of the bedroom are the same as the projection in the second scene(the robotic). This detail also shows the interweaving of dream and reality. The second scene works as a transition that still includes some characteristic of the real world, and the last scene of the sea is the further level of the dream and it goes far beyond the reality, reflecting the inner thought of "you".
Process
Mood board
Storyboard
Modeling
In this project, I am responsible for the modeling part and shading part. Since our team has already got the specific aesthetic ideas of this project, it would be better to build the models by myself. I did make most of them in Blender.
Rendering
Issues & Further Development
Instruction
Because there are still some people who are not familiar with VR equipment, including me before taking this course, it is difficult to design the instruction for people who play VR Game for the first time. Even though we have put an illustrated controller to tell the players which trigger to use, they still seemed confused. Thus, Jamie and I had to tell them how to use the controller to fully experience it. Also, the instruction we have now about the rule and content of the interaction in each scene is still too vague for the players to fully understand. If I just stand aside and mute myself, they would be so confused and not know what to do. Here are some video records of the user testing in IMA show:
