I got the feedback from teachers that they wanted to be able to view my progress per learning goal. I am doing this in this article. You can read the previous article about my learning goals here.
Chapters
Hand Tracking
Learn hand tracking and have it recognize different gestures. Use it to manipulate objects in the environment. Make it feel natural.
My first goal was about hand tracking. This one has since been finished, because we do not use hand tracking in our project anymore. My progress on hand tracking can be read here (in order of date):
- Individual Coaching 21/09/2021
- This is where I defined my learning goal about hand tracking.
- Hand Tracking
- Hand Tracking Gestures
- First Testing Friday
- This is where we tested the hand tracking for the first time.
- Individual Coaching 13/10/2021
- This is where I discussed my learning goal again.
- Hand Tracking Grabbing objects
- Second Testing Friday
- This is where we got feedback about the hand tracking which we used in the next sprint.
- The removal of hand tracking
- Learning Progress Showcase
- This is where I showed my new knowledge about hand tracking to students and teachers.
- Third Testing Friday
- This is where we tested with test participants whether they liked hand tracking or controllers better.
- Removing hand tracking 2
Reflection (06/12/2021)
Yes, I am of course sad that we will not use hand tracking anymore, but it is better for the project and I can always learn this in a future project and then I will have an advantage because I have experience from this project.
Character Creator
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.
My second goal is about making a character creator. This can be divided into two goals. One: making a system to dress up a character and the second being blend shapes to model the character in game.
- Individual Coaching 21/09/2021
- This is where I defined my goal for the first time.
- Learning Progress Showcase
- Blend Shapes on clothing pieces idea
- This is my idea to make clothing able to fit on every blend shaped model in the game.
Dress-up system:
- Blend shapes
- Second Testing Friday
- This is where the player could grab clothing but the dress-up system did not work yet.
- Clothing rack idea
- Making the character wear clothing
- Importing blender clothing into Unity
- This is where I made clothing ready for use for in Unity.
- Third Testing Friday
- This is where we tested my dress-up system with test participants. Spoiler-alert: everyone liked it!
- Sprint Review Third Sprint
- This is where we showed the teachers and the company what we made and the teachers really liked the dress-up part.
Blend shapes:
- Blend Shapes
- This is about my first adventure with blend shapes.
- Sprint Review Second Sprint
- This is where I convinced everyone to not use standard sizing so that I would not lose my learning goal.
- Retrospective 3
- This is where I told the group my worries about not having enough time for this goal.
- Making blend shapes in blender
Reflection (06/12/2021)
I am now starting on the blend shapes during this sprint and I have made the dress-up system during the previous sprint. I am having a lot of fun with these two things and I cannot wait to see how much I have learned at the end of this sprint. I am also going to make the dress-up system easier to use during this sprint.
Concepting and Design
I want to learn more about designing how our game will work, things like smart solutions to make the game easier and thinking of improvements. I also want to make it easier for the company and the teachers (and ourselves!) to understand the game flow, for example by making storyboards.
This is a learning goal which I haven’t previously described while I have been working on it. This goal is about designing how things work in the game and working on the concept. For example: making storyboards and designing the bees presence in the game.
Before the Shoeby project:
- Ideation and Brainstorming
- Ideation and Brainstorming 2
- Brown Boxing
- White Boxing
- Testing white boxing prototype
- Story Telling
- Pressure Cooker: Candy Sorter
During the Shoeby project:
- Concepts for companies
- First Storyboard
- Storyboard
- Designing the Shoe-bee
- Drawing the Shoe-bee, I still need to explain it’s behaviour and function in a new article in the future.
- Development of the Shoeby concept
- The removal of hand tracking
- Learning Progress Showcase
- This is where I showed my progress on the concepting and design topic to Emma and she gave me the feedback to write my learning goal down, because I had not done that prior to this meeting.
- Blend Shapes on clothing pieces idea
- Clothing rack idea
- Third Testing Friday
- This is where we tested with thought out testing methods for the first time, like A/B-testing.
- Removing hand tracking 2
- Redesign to make removing teleportation possible
- I had a design session with Ebru to reimagine the environment object placement so that the user won’t need to teleport.
Reflection (06/12/2021)
It is really easy to keep up to date with this learning goal, because during our project we have always been thinking of new things and having to redesign things. For example redesigning the environment to make removing teleportation possible. This was something that we still had to do and we did it in between our normal tasks. Improving the concept is a thing that is always on your mind. I also like working together with Ebru and Frederique for this, because they have a good/different feeling for this because of their different education.
Trying out modelling and other designing things
Trying out 3D-modelling and trying out animations. I want to learn the modelling via the Medium app from Adobe in VR and using blender for blend shapes.
I want to do some designing things to get better at them, but it is not my main focus. I really like doing this, but I want to do it in small steps so I do not get sucked in too much and I stop focusing on my other goals. This is why I have thought of things I want to do beforehand and focus on those things. These things are modelling in VR with Medium, making blend shapes in blender, drawing the controllers for the in-game explanation and drawing the Shoe-bee and the last thing is animating the controllers for the in-game explanation.
Modelling:
Before the Shoeby project:
During the Shoeby project:
- Individual Coaching 21/09/2021
- Defining my learning goals.
- Experimenting with modelling in VR
- Blend Shapes
- Importing blender clothing into Unity
- Working in blender to fix some issues with models.
Drawing:
Reflection (06/12/2021)
I am okay with my progress so far, because I know I will learn more during this sprint and next sprint. During this sprint I will model more blend shapes and in the next sprint I will model the Shoe-bee and animate the controller explanation.
Making the environment feel alive
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).
The above quote has a good explanation for the things that I want to learn as this learning goal. My progress:
Particles:
Lighting:
Reflection (06/12/2021)
I have not been able to work on this goal yet, but that will soon change. During this sprint I will work on the lighting and next sprint I will work on the particles.