Learning goal changes/development during the semester

My learning goals have developed a lot during this semester and that is way I want to talk about that a bit more.

At the beginning I started with the following learning goals:

Make a complete and finished product which uses hand tracking to make the experience feel natural and manipulate objects. Also learn how to make a extensive character creator and use the hand tracking for that.

1. Learn hand tracking and have it recognize different gestures. Use it to manipulate objects in the environment. Make it feel natural.
2. Make a character creator like The Sims but more extensive, dress up but also molding the model in the game. Merging clothing with the avatar. Have the animation still look good with different accessories.
3. This is a bit vague, but I want to learn what makes a VR/game world alive. I mean this in the way of things like particle systems (e.g. for leaves twirling in the wind), lighting (e.g. make it look like a real sun is shining its rays) and environment sound (for immersion and hearing the world live around you, for example: hearing the wind and the leaves rustling).
4. 3D-modelling, working with textures. Making animations. Making textures that make a low poly character look high detail. (low priority)

During the semester we removed hand tracking from the product which made me move that learning goal to an overarching programming goal en I abandoned the fourth and third goal in exchange for a concepting and design learning goal. I also added the dress-up goal to the programming goal and have the blendshapes be their own goal.

At the end of the semester these are my learning goals:

Make a complete and finished product which uses hand tracking to make the experience feel natural and manipulate objects. Also learn how to make a extensive character creator and use the hand tracking for that.

1. Become a better programmer:
   1. Make a dress-up system in the game and have it work efficiently (for example the throwable/environment versions of clothing).
   2. Learn about hand tracking and have it recognize different gestures.
   3. Hold myself to higher standards in terms of naming files/variables.
   4. Hold my code to higher standards (see throwable/environment link above).
2. Learn about making blend shapes in blender and using them in Unity.
3. Learn about concepting and designing a product from beginning to end.

Reflection

I learned a lot about what I want to learn and I also learned that it is okay to change your goals during the semester. For example there was not time for me to also start modelling and there were already two other people doing that, so it was not feasible to have that as a goal any more.