Ludic Spaces

Playing catchup on fundamental skills in Augmented Reality. This test was done using the vuforia plugin for Unity - to export as an Android App. Using tutorials from here as a starting point - https://developer.vuforia.com/downloads/samples  , it was quick to get up and running..  ( More time was spent trying to get the Nexus 7 to play ball with Windows 10, grrr! ) The tracking target was a postcard, which you need to upload an image of to the Vuforia database to create tracking information. Vuforia is free, if you are happy for watermarking on the app. You also have to create an app license that you copy and paste into the Unity project to register it. Having a dabble also gave an opportunity to utilise Mixamo  to generate a 3D animated character to test with. Mixamo has now been added to the Adobe Cloud services - so there's pre-made animations for Adobe Fuse Characters - that can be exported as .fbx. As a conceptual idea - I added particle trails to the da...

In May I was able to take further some exploration with using Unity to create visuals for a stage show. Ya Devi was a performance by Devika Rao Theatre , funded by the Arts Council and presented at the Stage, Leeds University - and it was an opportunity to create an improvised version of a previous unity prototype, into a visual for the show. Behind the scenes video  Visual for show - ( not music used in performance ) The visual was a response to a music piece and choreography around 'Pain'. The abstact quality of the cloth at times - when dropping its weight vertically created a siloutte of a shawl. From this pre-recorded visual, the dancer - Manuela Benini was able to choreograph her movement in response. This interactive cloth based visual, is ready to be driven by either wearable technology or VJed - and run in a live capacity.. but that brings its own technical challenges and risks during a live show. Part of my research for 2015/16 is to explore this in depth. ...

Over the last two years ( here and there ) , I have been involved in developing a serious game prototype for the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds. This has entailed in producing an explorable virtual environment created with Unity, as part of a blended learning exercise to teach field work skills for Geology Students. It also informed my Research activity at Leeds College of Art. This slideshare below - covers the background and scope of the project - and was used as part of our presentation at GeoSoc HEN Annual Meeting - Plymouth University - 21st/22nd January 2015 -  https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/GSL-HEN-15-Sharing-Educational-Practice Geological Mapping Training in Virtual Environment from Annabeth Robinson The latest version can be found here -  http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/virtual_worlds/demo/   - please make sure you are using a computer, rather than a tablet device, and you download the unity plugin to allow you to play. ...

Autodesk Pinocchio is a free technology preview from Autodesk Labs. Through your web-browser you can create a Maya or FBX 3D Character - with a range of clothing and skin textures, as well as it being rigged and weight painted ready to animate. You can control the complexity of the rigging - which includes Facial Rigs. A quick test to take a model across to Unity - showed no complications, and literally took minutes to get something ready for a game asset. For animating, you may want to create controllers. Using with Motioncapture should be a doddle, just double check the way the bones are named. Overall has a bit of a vibe of Second Life, but this should be a great tool for OpenWorlds like ReactionGrids' Jibe - which uses Unity, as well as Machinima. Certainly going to be making a few characters... The Demo is available till Sept 2013

Hopefully this might be useful to some others.... I'm still getting to grips with Unity. This is a simple approach to cut between multiple cameras in Unity using the animation timeline - to help create cinematics / machinima. 1) Create an Empty Gameobject - I named it CamSwitcher 2) Make a new Javascript - I called mine  'CamSwitch' - and place the javascript below into it : var cam1 : Camera;  var cam2 : Camera;  var cam3 : Camera;  function SwitchCam1()  { cam1.enabled = true; cam2.enabled = false; cam3.enabled = false; }  function SwitchCam2()  { cam1.enabled = false; cam2.enabled = true; cam3.enabled = false; }  function SwitchCam3()  { cam1.enabled = false; cam2.enabled = false; cam3.enabled = true; } follow the logic of the script if you want to add more cameras - for example var cam4 : Camera; function SwitchCam4() { cam1.enabled = false; cam2.enabled = false; cam3.enabled = false; cam4.enabled = true; } 3) ...