Ideas for the 3-D lighting show:
After carrying out a sufficient amount of research into other 3-D projection mapping light shows, projectors and the NUCA campus, I feel ready to start creating ideas for the lighting show.
Above are some mind-maps I have written, exploring different possibilities for the 3-D projection mapping light show. I had to ensure ideas were realistic, but interesting enough to captivate a viewing audience and make them remember NUCA, in particular the Games Art and Design course.
I have decided to make use of the River Wensum that runs next to St George's Building, and project part of the lighting show into the river.
Of course, this may have created several problems when finding a position for the projector, if sufficient research hadn't been made. How ever, I have found a way to overcome this problem by exploring the area of St George's Building. I noticed that there is a platform lower than the public walkway, that is positioned only inches above the waterline. Placing a projector on this platform would be perfect for the projections that would be used on the river and bottom half of St George's Building.
How ever, if this projector was to be aimed higher, so that the projection would hit the top half of the building, it could possible create distortion as the viewing audience would not be level with where the projector was positioned. Therefore, I have decided to add another projector that would be positioned so that it could project the top half of the projection light show.
During the research stages, I discovered that projectors that emit 20,000 lumens would be best for projecting onto large buildings such as St George's.
The show would start with movement under the water, then suddenly hands would rise quickly out of the water, making water spray everywhere. In the real-world, this effect could made using a high pressure spray cleaning machine, which would be placed in the windows of the building. How ever, virtually, this effect could be made on software.
The hands will then move upwards across the building, trying to get inside of it by knocking on the wall, trying to open windows and bend the columns. After trying to bend a column, the hands break off one of the columns and drops it into the water. This effect would be made using software such as Maya and Adobe After Effects, coupled with a water rippling sound effect and possibly the use of a high pressure spray clean machine to add mist.
The hand then punches the middle of the St George Building wall, thus creating a hole in the wall. The sheer pressure of the hand's punch makes pieces of paper fly out of the building. Each with a picture of students' work on. The hand then proceeds to pick up pieces of paper that have fallen into the river, one at a time. Holding the work up, in order to let the viewing audience see students' pieces. After looking at the piece of work, the hands hang the piece of work up by folding it across the roof of St George's. After showing the audience each piece of work, the hands proceed to break off the decor on top of the building, breaks it into pieces in it's hands and then push the pieces into the broken hole, to fill it up.
Interactivity:
To incorporate interactivity into this lighting show, I have decided that a motion sensor could be placed near the path the audience would walk across. Once a member of the audience would walk past this sensor, movement would be seen in the River, in order to look like the creature is following the audience member. This creature would be the hands later to be seen in the lighting show.
Above: Here are some animations I made to show how movement underneath the river would be made as the viewing audience walked past the sensors. The direction the creature would make, would depend on what direction the audience member walked past the sensor. I made the second animation before I made the final windows on St George's Building, so please ignore them!
4-D Experience:
Despite being expensive, another idea I came up with is the incorporation of the "4-D experience", which has been used at important events and places like the London Eye. After reading many positive reviews praising the 4-D experience, I feel that the use of the 4-D experience in our projection show could reinforce how special NUCA is,as it would add another element to the show that would make the audiences remember us.
I feel that the use of water spraying and wind blowing could be used in shots when the hands raise out of the water. To add another feature that would heap originality onto our show, would be to add smells to different shots by using aroma machines, in order to achieve the 4-D experience. Smells such as the 'sea' or a subtle smell of 'fish' could be used when the hands make their present, in order to reinforce how the hands live in the river. These machines could be placed on the floor of the walkway, aiming up towards the audiences' faces.
Storyboarding the 3-D lighting show:
Today I began to storyboard the 3-D lighting show out as firstly, a draft then created a neat version. This version displayed notes on the actions taking place within the shot, the visual effects, sound effects and any possible dialogue.
I added a light layer of colouring onto the drawings to give myself an idea of what colours would work well in the lighting show, how ever, once I get to the editing stages on the project I suspect that these colouring ideas may change.
My next stages of work for this project, is to begin work on designing the 3-D model and creating some visual effects in video-editing software, such as Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects.
I have noticed that this project is incredibly short as opposed to other projects we have been set in the past, which has made me realise that the amount of work to be done may not fit perfectly to the set deadline. Therefore, I may need to make cuts on my ideas for this project, for example, I may not be able to model one large building and a hand in Maya in time. Due to time constraints, I have decided to draw out the hands on paper and in Photoshop, rather than model them. I must note that if this project was not hypothetical, and was to actually take place, I would model the hands in Maya.
Creating a 3-D model of St George's Building:
I have finally finished working on the 3-D model of St George's Building, using the 3-D modelling program 'Maya'. To do this, I referred back to my photographs I had taken earlier and split the photographs up into sections that I would have to model, the rest of the building that hadn't been split would be modelled by duplicating another layer.
After splitting up the building into sections of modelling to be made, I used polygon planes and the extrusion tool to shape the planes into St George's Building and eventually finished with the wireframe model below:
I faced many problems whilst modelling St George's Building, mainly relating to the specs of my PC. Unfortunately it finds it hard to cope with the requirements of texturing and modelling, and therefore ends up crashing the program or freezing my screen for hours - proving extremely frustrating for me, and set me back by three days. Despite the model being completed now, I have decided to try and use the Media Lab computers more often now, as they fit Maya's requirements and can handle models such as mine with much more ease.
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| Above: My model of St George's Building, created in Maya. |
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| Above: I created a simple polygon plane and added an Ocean Shader on top of it, in order to mimic the River Wensum. |
Creating visual effects to be projected:
