1. Introduction
1.1 Research Background
As an experimental artistic project, this thesis creates an interactive classical painting in a 3D virtual environment, where the user can manipulate the art piece by using different types of interaction techniques. This project serves as a Bachelor’s thesis, as well as exploration into making an artistic virtual reality experience.
1.2 Research Objective
The main objective of the thesis is to create an already existing painting in a 3D space, where the user interacts with the figures using some interactive techniques, based on the principles of a good interaction design and thus analysing the results. However some of these interaction design principles will be neglected in order to see the respective effects on the user.
1.3 Structure of thesis
This Thesis is divided into 4 parts, with the first one going over arts in Virtual Reality and over examples of applications that implement artistic themes in VR. The second part concentrates on the methods and principles of good interaction design in a Virtual Reality environment and explaining the decision of using certain interaction types. Also going over the software and hardware used for the development purpose.
The third part examines the motif of the project, i.e “The Burning Giraffe”, examining and analysing the theme of the painting and highlighting the purpose of specified interaction techniques that will be used in this project. This part also addresses the background of the Artist and the origins of the art piece.
The last part serves as a development documentation for the product. It details the initial research, design and the development of the project and also summaries the conclusion drawn from this thesis and discusses the improvement and the expansion of this project.
2. Research Methods
This section goes over the methods and approach taken for this research. It will also explain the type of research this is . Furthermore a few examples of already existing artistic projects in VR will be described.
2.1 Research Methods and Approach
2.2 Arts in Virtual Reality
In the last two decades research has been mainly focused on the technical aspects, concentrating on the human interaction, therefore using this medium as an artistic expression has been neglected until recently. Although games have been the main drivers Virtual Reality market, the use of VR has extended in the recent years it has spread from games to numerous other fields such as education, healthcare, business and not to forget arts. Virtual Reality applications extend from educational context to training simulation to art exhibitions.
The most important feature that differentiates art in virtual reality from the classical art form is the immersiveness. Until now the ability to immerse oneself in an artwork has been limited. With virtual reality being a medium for providing an immerse experience the user can not only see an artwork with an extended field of view in a 3D virtual environment, he/she can also interact with the art work, which gives today’s artists another level of freedom for expressing themselves and influencing the viewers.
Today not only are there applications for creating art in an immersive Virtual Reality environment, there are also applications covering a white range of artistic fields, such as art installation, sculptures, performances and music. One example of creating art or rather painting is “Tilt Brush”, which is also the most renowned VR painting application. A few impressive examples of different artistic VR projects are described below.
One example of experimental arts in VR is Makropol, a Danish art studio. Makropol has developed numerous projects surrounding Virtual Reality. Their projects cover a wide spectrum of media and art forms, such as live performances in VR, Cinematography, theatre and art installations. One such example is “Anthropia”, a VR installation. It is an interactive, wireless VR experience in a space of 400 square meters. This experience give another level of immersiveness by combining real life elements and VR for instance, one can not only see the texture of grass in VR environment but he/she is also standing on such surface in real life within the interactive space.
Another example are the projects of Gibson/Martelli, a British electronic arts duo. They make artistic simulations in Virtual Reality and create infinite artworks and combining them with optical illusions.
Acute Art, founded in 2017, is a research hub that collaborates with contemporary artists to create digital art in new mediums including Virtual Realities. In their App you can find works of well-known visual artists such as Anish Kapoor, Jeff Koon, Marina Abramovíc and many more. Anish Kapoor famous for his sculptures and architectural works created his first virtual reality work, Into Yourself, Fall, which is an inner body experience, where the user descents into the human body and travels throughout the internal organs before thrown into the vast cosmos.
2.3 Artistic Research
The term ‘artistic research’ has many definitions and implications. As described in the book, Artistic Research, Theories, methods and Practices published by Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, a research is artistic when the artist researches the creative process of creating/producing an artwork, thus gathering knowledge on the subject. what differentiates an artistic research from a scientific research is that in an artistic research the artist can break rule whereas in scientific research it is limited. Artistic researchers are more flexible and can create their own methods, vocabulary and set of tools, giving them the freedom of experimentation whereas scientific research is restricted by its rules. In scientific research scientists try to prove something by means of research, artists on the other hand try to create an experience or an artwork and they don’t necessarily have to know what they’re trying to prove. In an artistic research the methodologies and strategies from other research fields are ‘borrowed’ and thus used/developed in an artistic way.
There are certain points according to which a research is artist, the most important ones are as following:
- The artwork should be the main focal point, making it the most important aspect.
- The methods used for the research should be experimental, also taking the meaning into consideration.
- The research must be self-reflective as well as self critical.
- It must contain diverse research and presentation methods.
- The interpretative quality of the research should not be neglected.
The main goal of such a research is developing the methods which is linked to the creative process of producing the work, defining the criteria for evaluating the results, modelling and illustrating designs or artworks. Moreover the objective should be to critically analyse art and the current trend, therefore examining the relationship between are and technological development.
3.Concept and Components
3.1 Oculus Rift
This thesis/project used two primary sources of hardware for completion. A head mounted display (HMD), Oculus Rift was used to present the experience. In parallel with the HMD a positional tracker device was used to receive user head motions.
HMD can be classified as a computer display device that can be worn on your head in order to present visuals directly to your eyes. The important feature of a HMD is the peripheral vision, the display is always positioned in front of the user’s eye whether the user looks to the front or turns the head, this ensures the total immersion of the user in the VR experience. The Oculus Rift head tracker analyses the users’ head movement and using that controls the view. Moreover the Rift uses motion tracking that allows users to move their head and upper body to get closer or father away from an object in the virtual world. The position tracking helps reducing the dizziness by allowing users to have some degree of movement.
The Rift has two OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays containing 1080 x 1200 pixels resolution for each eye, generating a final resolution of 2160 x 1200 pixels, with a refresh rate of 90Hz. The refresh rate ensures that the frame rate is high enough for smooth movements. Furthermore a low persistence OLED reduces motion sickness by avoiding blurring effect caused by the frame change rate. The frame change rate is low which means the image is shown for a few milliseconds afterwards there is a small interval where the screen is black before switching to a new image (too fast for the human brain to perceive), avoiding a the blurring effect. If the Frame change is rate is high, meaning an image is held until it is replaced by a new image, causes motion blur. A lower latency is also required for a full immersive experience. Latency in general means the interval or time between an input and output. An ideal experience usually has latency of 15ms – 20ms.
Since a single flat screen does not cover a person’s field of View (FoV) HMDs use optics in order to stretch the virtual image to an immersive level. A flat image is projected through the lens that covers the entire field of view. Two lenses are used to create a virtual image, the user sees an overlap of two images thus expanding the FoV (binocular FoV). Rift DK2 uses a FoV of 100°.
- structure of oculus rift
- controllers
- why oculus rift for this project
3.2 Unity
Before the development of this project an immediate decision was made to use Unity game engine because of my past experience with this engine and the ease of use. Moreover it features Oculus Rift support.
Unity is a cross platform game engine from developers Unity Technologies. The initial release was 2005 and the most recent release Unity 2018.03 was made available on December 13, 2018. Unity is a toolkit for not only making 3D but also 2D applications. The main scripting language used in Unity is C#. Other scripting languages that the platform supports is also JavaScript more specifically UnityScript. In Unity like in other engines a Framework is made available for the developer, which can be seen as a blueprint which is visually driven without any necessary knowledge if the underlying code. Which makes the development process not only easy but also fast. Unity technologies provide a vast number of tutorials and also pre-made assets, which was also a driving reason to use Unity 3D for the development.
Although Unity Engine is free there are some features that must be paid to be made available. One of these features is the Unity collaborate, which is a cloud based version control. It allows the whole team to merge different versions of the project and save the progress. Since this project is by a single developer a need for such collaborator wasn’t necessary.
3.4 Maya
Autodesk Maya is a 3D animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software, which was originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation. It is currently owned and further developed by Autodesk Inc. Maya provides a toolset for animation, computer graphics and environment. Although Unity also provides an environment for 3D modelling and texturing, a decision for using maya was made based on the precious experience with Maya and also because of the vast choice of tool selection. At first glance the User interface looks complicated and overwhelming for the user with menu leading to submenu offering even more options (Figure ..), but once the user get accustomed to the UI, Maya offers the best solution for modeling. It is recommended to use multiple screen desktop for the ease of use., so that the user has an overview of all the tools and options. Another factor that can be concerning is the rendering speed, which can take hours for rendering a single image. Thus it is recommended to use a computer with high specifics for rendering purposes. For games the 3D objects can easily be directly exported to the engine so that no further rendering within Maya is necessary. Exporting the models and animations done is Maya to Unity engine is uncomplicated. Although Maya is a paid software Autodesk offers a free license for students.
3.5 Make Human
Make Human is an open source tool for making 3D characters. It is developed by the Make Human Team, a community of programmers, artists, and academics interested in 3D design. In Make Human one can modify a standard mesh in different variety of characters, from male to female. The UI of the application is simple with different options such as height, weight, length of limbs, gender, ethnicity. The user can modify these attributes by moving the associated slider for different values. One can also choose between different type of geometry and skeleton for animation. The assembled Human characters can be exported as dae, fox and obj files, which can be imported in other 3D softwares, such as Maya.
4. User-Interaction in Virtual Reality
Since the focus of this project is the implementation of user-interaction techniques in Virtual Reality this section is devoted to an overview of the human-centered interaction and the principles of a good interaction design. Moreover an explanation for using certain principles and also diversion from some of these will be presented.
4.1 Human-centred interaction
According to Jason Jerald in his book The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality interaction is defined as following,
“Interaction is the communication that occurs between a user and the VR application that is mediated through the use of input and output devices”
What differs an interaction in a VR environment from a desktop is that the user is within the environment itself instead of looking at a limited space of a desktop screen which leads us to the point that the interaction in a virtual world should be close to the interaction in the real world. The challenge one faces while designing this type of interaction techniques is not only to make the interaction effective and intuitive but also to design it in such a way that it has minimal effect on the immersiveness of the experience.
The core concept of a human-centered interaction is intuitiveness. But what makes an interface intuitive? An intuitive interface is an interface which the user can easily understand and not only it is easy to use but also predictable. A few principles can be followed in designing a good interface design. These also apply to the interfaces and interaction design for a VR application. In the following section these principles will be discussed.
4.2 Principles of interaction Design
The principles described here are defined by Don Norman, director of the Design Lab at the University of California. According to Norman since the user is cut off from the real world discoverability is a significant part in designing. Discovering about the working of an interface can be reached through consistent affordance, unambiguous signifiers, constraints to guide actions and ease interpretation, immediate and useful feedback, and obvious and understandable mapping. These will be briefly described below because some of these principles were used to make the interactions in this VR experience.
4.2.1 Affordance
Affordance is the relation between a user’s capabilities of interacting with an object and the object’s properties, thus it describes the actions that can possibly be taken and the possibilities of interacting with an object. An example would be switching on and switching off of a light switch by the user’s hand.
4.2.2 Signifiers
Signifier, as the name says, is a signal that indicated toward a possible action through signs, labels or images. Through a good signifier a user can already have an idea what kind of interaction is possible for a specific object.
4.2.3 Constraints
Constraints are the limitation the developer/designer puts on the user to guide his/her actions. Constraints can be beneficial for ease of interpretation and actions can be more precise. One method that is commonly used is limiting the degree of freedom (DoF) for an entity which means that the interface can only work in a limited number of dimensions, for instance limiting a slider to only move along a single axis.
4.2.4 Feedback
Similar to signifiers feedback are signs that indicate the result of an action or the status of an action. A timely feedback is necessary for understanding the state of the object which is being interacted with. This also helps in driving the future actions. Sensory Substitutions such as sounds, objects being highlighted, vibration of hand-hand-held controller etc. can be used to give a proper feedback. One thing that should be avoided is the overlapping of too many types of feedback because it can lead to annoyance and confusion.
4.2.5 Mapping
Mapping is the relationship between two or more entities. The user can easily understand the relation between a control and its results after a certain action when the mapping between control, action and results s obvious.
Compliance
compliance is the sensory feedback with the input device regarding the time and space. Compliances are important for reducing motion sickness. There are two types of compliances spatial and non-spatial.
Spatial compliance
Spatial mapping is like direct mapping. The user can immediately understand the action for example, to move an object up the player moves the hand holding the object up. Spatial compliance consists of position, directional and nulling compliance.
As the name says position compliance is the mapping of the input and correct position. One example of this compliance is the position of the controllers, the user after putting the HMD on can see the correct position of the controllers.
Directional compliance asserts that the objects in a virtual environment move and rotate according to the manipulated input device, i.e move in the same direction. This way the user can predict/anticipate the response thus he/she can execute the action appropriately. In this project this compliance will be neglected to see the effect on the user. The direction and the rotation of the manipulated object will be the opposite as intended by the user.
Nulling compliance states that the objects should return to the initial position when the user places returns the controller corresponding with the object to it’s initial position.
Non-spatial mapping
non-spatial mapping are the functions according to which the spatial input is turned into a non-spatial output or vice versa. An example of non-spatial mapping would be if a user moves the controller/hand up the volume is increased and moving the hand downwards signifies less.
4.3 VR interaction concepts
Of course interaction in VR is different than interactions in equivalent real world. In this field VR has an obvious advantage. This section concentrates on the interaction concepts compared to the real-world.
4.3.1 Interaction Fidelity
Interaction fidelity is the degree to which degree the actions used in a virtual world for accomplishing a task is similar to the action (physical actions) used in the real-world for instance, walking in virtual world and the corresponding walking movement in the real world.
4.3.2 Gestures
One of the main means of interaction with or without a controller are the gestures. Different type of gestures convey different information. This information can be categorised into four types, spatial, symbolic, pathic and affective information.
Spatial information is the information gesture refers to for instance, pushing or pulling, drawing a path, describing size by closing hand together or moving them away from each other, rotating by twisting motion etc.
Symbolic information refers to signs associated with certain gestures for example, waving hello or goodbye.
Pathic and Affective information is hard to implement in a VR since they convey the moods and emotion according to the posture of the user.
4.4 Interaction techniques and Current state of technology
This section will be dedicated to the interaction pattern and techniques typical to VR. Interaction pattern are are concepts that reoccur across different applications. Interaction techniques fall under interaction pattern. An interaction pattern can have several interaction techniques. The main interaction pattern and the corresponding techniques are listed below. The main interaction pattern and techniques used in this project will be explained in the section below.
4.4.1 Selection Pattern
selection pattern is one of the fundamental pattern, it includes hand selection pattern, pointing pattern, image-plane selection pattern, and volume based selection pattern. The hand and pointing pattern are most interesting for this project since it mimics real world interaction. examples of the interaction techniques for this pattern are realistic or non-realistic hands. Realistic hands are appropriate for this project because the user embodies the figure. The challenge in implementing this technique is the use of inverse kinematics since the movement should look realistic meaning the torso and arm should move along with the hand.
4.4.2 Manipulation pattern
Manipulation pattern is another pattern which is unavoidable in this project. This pattern regards the modifying of the object attributes such as scale, orientation, shape, color or texture. Due to the intent of making the interaction realistic direct hand manipulation is used in this experience. The user can directly manipulate the objects using the virtual hands.
5. The Burning Giraffe
The Burning Giraffe one of the most noticeable works from the famous surrealist artist of the 20th century Salvador Dalí. Dated back to 1937 this painting represents numerous topics expanding from the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud to female sexuality, making it one of my favourite works from the artist and also the 3D setting/environment of this project.
5.1 Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí born in 1904 in Catalonia Spain is one of the most influential surrealist artists of his time. He is not only renowned for his eccentric mannerisms and unique dress but also for his vast number of artistic styles and techniques. His works expand from painting to sculptures, filmmaking and printing with the human subconsciousness being a frequent topic of this work. Dalí like many other artists of the 20th century was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis. This is a reoccurring theme in Dalí art and also one of the main topic in the painting “The Burning Giraffe”.
Dalí developed an interest in arts at a very young age and his mother and father nurtured his interest in arts. At the age of ten he had his first drawing lessons. He enrolled in the Madrid School of fine Arts in his teens and was introduced to the fellow artists such as Pepin Bello, Luis Buñuel, and Federico Garcia. Dalí lost his mother at the age of 16 which had a great impact on him and also on his art. His first exhibition was organised by his Father at his home in Figueres.
Dalí always drew attention to himself as an eccentric person with his unusual dressing and manners, one such example is his moustache which became an iconic trademark/symbol associated to him until today. His artistic style was developed in the late 1920s when he joined the Surrealism movement. Before that he was greatly influenced by Picasso and Diego Velazquez. The Surrealist movement began after the first world war in Paris, it is a collective or rather an association of individuals grouped around the artist Andre Breton. Among others the leading participants in this movement were Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte, Andre Masson, Yves Tanguay and Salvador Dalí.
Dalí painted his most famous and work “The persistence of Memory” in 1931. In this work the image of melting watches was depicted. The melting watches, barren landscapes, female figures reoccur in his painting often. He also mastered the skill of optical illusion. Not only did he paint, he also made several films, even a short film for Disney called “Destino”. One of his biggest project is the Dali Theatre and Museum in his Home town, Figueres. The museum displays a diverse collection of his work. He is also buried there. Dalí died of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 84.
5.2 Analysis and interpretation
The Burning Giraffe dates from 1937 and was painted during the deadly civil war in Spain. The painting measures only 35cm X 27cm. It is currently housed in the Kunstmuseum in Basel Switzerland. The main theme of this painting is the repression of unconscious desires and socially unacceptable behaviour regarding the female sexuality.
The title of the image is “The Burning Giraffe” although the Giraffe seen in the image is relatively small compared to the figure in the foreground and is pushed back at the back of the picture. It depicts the artists feelings about the Spanish civil war and recurs like many other symbols frequently in Dalí’s work.
Female sexuality is a common theme in Dalí work. The two figures in this picture are clearly female. Dalí later described it as “Femme-coccyx” (tail bone woman).
These figure appear to be deprived of the fundamental sensory agency such as hearing, sight and speech. This reflects/mirrors that these figures are suppressed and are not control of their individual freedom. As Sigmund Freud said in his famous quote,
“He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” – Sigmund Freud
The drawers protruding out of the thorax and the left leg mirror this. These drawers relate directly to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. This asserts that humans repress their inner and subconscious life and female sexuality and impulsive desires are subdued since it is seen as unacceptable regarding the societal norms. These desires are hidden from public and we ourselves can reveal that, as we are in control of opening and closing these drawers. Not only through the drawers but also through the exposed skin on the female figures’s arms the rediscovery of one’s inner being is highlighted/ drawn into attention.
For as long as we can remember the female sexuality is regarded as something to be tamed and is repressed under the male authority. This gender inequality is emphasised by the construction protruding from the back female figure, which is holding the unstable and unbalanced figure. This crumbling body is supported by the crutches that represent the patriarchal system of our society.
According to some critics through the display of the small figure next to it the figure of the burning giraffe the fatherly and authoritative figure is represented which accentuates the predomination of male authority. In my opinion this constellation represents Spain at the time Dalí painted the piece. It seems as if the small figure set fire to the giraffe. The small human figure represents the people of Spain during the civil war who through the contradictory political views and violence turned Spain into a battleground.
The overall atmosphere of this picture is morbid. Through the use of primary color palette with vivid colours such as blue, red and black Dalí constructs a dream-like apocalyptic landscape. Not only through the use of color but also the characteristics of the landscape, which is deprived of any vegetation, a feeling of isolation is conveyed/heightened.
5.3 Why Burning Giraffe?
As mentioned above The burning Giraffe is one of my favourite surrealist painting of Dalí. Not only because of the vast number of topic represented in the painting but also because of the atmosphere of the entire scene. I chose this particular piece for my project because it is not only technically feasible but also provides/offers a lot of opportunities to implement different types of interaction techniques for instance, opening and closing of the drawers and movement of the figures. The two figures which are the main focus of interactions were for me the main reason for choosing this artwork mainly because considering my knowledge and experience in 3D design they seemed realisable/easy to implement. Furthermore the interaction techniques used reflect the theme of the artwork, which will be further explained in the following section.
5.5 Interaction techniques goals
The characters/ figures in this experience represent the user themselves. No only does this help with the immersiveness of the experience but it also represents the user as an omnipotent being who is in full control over himself and also can manipulate the other figure. As mentioned above the drawers represent the doors of the human psyche, which can only be opened through psychoanalysis according to Freud. Since in this project the user can open and close the drawers himself it reflects on the point that we ourselves have full control on our psyche and we ourselves are responsible for revealing our subconscious desires. Since movement is inverse it shows that we are not in full control of our subconsciousness after all but only to some extent. Moreover it depicts that we misinterpret our own psyche.
Because the Giraffe itself relatively small space of the painting and implementing real fire is expensive I chose to only implement the main figures in this project. Other factors which played an important part for this decision were time and complexity. I wanted this experience to be simple leaving any complicated parts and concentrate on the user-interaction.
6. Development Log
This section will be going over the development of this project, along with some pictures of the development project.
6.1 initial research
After posing the challenge of developing a virtual reality application, I first brainstormed the suitable motif of the project. Although it was clear from the beginning that a combination of arts and virtual reality was the goal of the thesis, I was uncertain if it will be an interactive exhibition, sculpture or painting. After doing initial research on arts in virtual reality it became clear that there is not enough classical arts (paintings, sculptures, drawings) implementation in VR. During my research I came upon a 3D model of one of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh “Vincent Van Gogh’s Room”. It was the main drive to take a painting and make an interactive experience for this thesis. As mentioned in the section 5.3 the reason for taking a surrealism painting was because of pure preference.
After deciding on the motif of the project and doing initial research on the interactive techniques and method (see section 4), I made a draft of the possible interaction techniques I would implement. The main interaction types I decided on were, firstly the user should be able to move the character’s limbs, open/close the drawers and secondly it should be mirrored. After the main goals were set and the basic structure of the thesis was made, I started designing the character in Maya. This process will be described in the next section.
6.2 Design process
Before beginning to implement the interaction techniques in Unity, I wanted to model the 3D character first. Although I could use white boxed for unity. I decided to concentrate on the 3D model first because visual arts is an important factor of this thesis and after modelling the main character I could concentrate on the interaction more accurately.
6.2.1 3D character modelling
Since I already had basic knowledge in 3d design and with Maya I initially assumed that the modelling would be an arbitrary process; on the contrary, I found it to be most frustrating. Making a humanoid in Maya or any other 3D software is excruciating since the geometry should contain quads and one should avoid triangles because that could pose problems for animation and character movement. I was familiar with Make Human an application for assembling human models (see section 3.5) and decided to assemble a human character there. It was quite simple and I could export a rigged character to Maya. Of course the model was too realistic and I had to manipulate the mesh in Maya and make some tweaks. First I made some changes on the scaling the limbs and descaling the waist, using the surface sculpting tool. I modelled the drawers after the main character was set and integrated it to the mesh. The next step was to create the face scarf which was a bit tricky because it should have the characteristics or appearance of a fabric. After the mesh was finished and the scarf too, I concentrated on the clothes. My first attempt was to use the nCloth feature of Maya, which creates an animated fabric but in this case the nCloth element would fit with the mesh and it did not look similar to the reference picture. In the end I modelled the clothes in Maya using the human mesh and the surface sculpting tool.
6.2.2 Character Rigging and skinning
As mentioned above the human model made in MakeHuman already came with a rigid i.e a skeleton for manipulating the pose of the character. By changing the geometry of the character mesh the connection between the skeleton and the mesh was lost. Moreover the orientation of the character joint was completely wrong. I had to reorient every joint manually which was time consuming and it would have been a wiser decision to make a new skeleton in Maya but since a lot of time has already been spent on orienting the skeleton, I decided to rig the same bone structure. The next step was skinning. This was my first time rigging a character I was unfamiliar with skinning, after doing some research and going through some tutorials. I was able to paint the skin weights on the mesh according to the joint. Skinning in general can be explained as binding the mesh to the skeleton and specifying the control a join has on specific areas of the mesh, for instance if a wrist joint has influence on the shoulder it doesn’t look right. I painted the influence each joint by using the skin painting tool in Maya and tested it by animating the character, so that there aren’t any unnecessary folds in the geometry. Instead of doing the same procedure for the clothes I mirrored the skin weight of the main mesh on the clothing. The last step was to make the crutches, using simple geometry.
6.2.3 Texturing
Since the visuals of this project are based on a painting, the textures needed for the geometry had to be made unique. So, not only did I was it crucial to model the character, it was also important to make a duplicate of the textures. I decided to make my own textures in Photoshop. The main challenge was to make textures containing brush strokes similar to realistic painting style,I had to create my own photoshop brush preset for this purpose. Another problem was the UV mapping which is basically how the texture is projected on the 3D model. Some textures from Maya such as Arnold are not supported in Unity that’s why I made placeholder textures and started developing the experience in Unity, before making the final textures. Unity also does not support bump maps exported from Maya. That’s why I had to redo a few textures after realising it.
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