Energy and Space

An artistic progression -- Erica Salling I share my Energy in this Space through my work as an interactive media artist

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So I was having a very exciting bug the other day, in which upon instantiating my “reeds,” some land cubes would decide to fly off into space!! 

This has since been fixed, along with the soil and oil placement, AND placing the trees ON the soil!!!!!!!!! :D 

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Randomized oil positioning is working!!

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Two screenshots from the Maya project file for the island -- on the right is the island in it’s entirety, and on the right is the island in wireframe mode except for the sections of “oil” blocks

Below that is a screenshot of the Unity project with the Island colored in (stand-in colors)

The orange squares are grass, the oil is the black areas, and the mangrove spots are the squares in the water

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before and after animations

the grass is growing!!

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Still tinkering :/ 

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After some tinkering, I have my island set and ready with the oil and grass where they should be! This is the scene view in edit mode with stand-in colors, as well as in the gameplay with my generated perlin and value noise textures! :D 

The player is that tiny white dot in the lower left of the island 

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A little environment creation -- moving away from instantiating and instead building a standalone environment complete with oil spill areas, sand, and little grass cubes popping up! Click on the grass to “grow” more!! All textures for the environment are procedurally generated using Value and Perlin noise :D 

More updates on the way!

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These are the first steps in my game - Rebirth. 

The terrain is being instantiated from tiny blocks, which will be used later in the game for functionality in rebuilding the environment. 

Right now I have cut out the load time (which is substantial) - I think a solution to this problem will be to remove blocks that are being instantiated atop one another, as those are not necessary and most likely taking up a lot of memory, causing the slow load time. 

Still working on the design/layout, as is obvious from the video, but with a little tweaking I will have a completed (starter) environment!! 

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Progression

I hope I don’t end up using that title for all of my posts, as much of my time is spent working on my personal and artistic progressions, but regardless;

This post is regarding my work on Rebirth

Throughout this weekend I spent vast amounts of my time looking into random noise, specifically Perlin and Simplex noise. These work by using mathematic randomization of pixels, gradients, etc. to create a psuedo-random image. I practiced with several tutorials, created a few textures with perlin noise, and made a Unity inspector editor of my very own!! However after two days of work I realized that for my purposes and scope, using Perlin or Simplex noise for my project was just a bit over-kill. 

I was able to learn quite a bit, and now I am focusing on instantiating my own basic island out of blocks, rather than having them instantiated randomly with a height map etc. I may try to implement a height map later on, but for now a simple island outline is all I need to begin working on the rest of the game aspects. 

I will be creating a tall, small block of grass atop a larger, shorter block of sand, which is then surrounded by a ring of “oil spill sand” cubes. These cubes will be available to the player to “clean up” while going about their rehabilitation of the island environment. 

This then brought me to wondering about how I would implement this look, and decided to have the cubes’ textures animate over 3 “cleans,” slowly going from a dark sand to the nice bright beachy sand we all know and love. 

While researching a bit, because I am a curious soul, I discovered that there is actually a project going on right now called the Sahara Forest Project, which has conceptuatlized and created solar power plants that can take sea water (from relatively far distances, too!) and desalinate and distill it for use to water greenhouse plants and plants in the surrounding desert. Their power plants are a closed systems, running on the power generated through the solar panels. They provide space for year-round food cultivation, as well as provide side products such as salt, algae, and more to sell. Check out their concept page to learn more.

I will try to post images of my bare bones game environment later tonight!

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Beginnings

Decided to start this little blog to have somewhere to post projects I’m working on, while also trying to force myself to think creatively and actively, putting those thoughts into words on an actual blog. 

Right now I’m in the midst of three major projects: 

1. The Stanford CDI website that I am redesigning for the CDI Board. I recently sent in a completed version, and am waiting to hear back from the board with comments on the design and general feel of the site. I have been working on the website for several months, started in the middle of the summer, and am fairly happy with the results though I do not believe the design to be up to my personal standards. I feel as though one of my weaknesses as an artist is that I do not have the best eye for design, though I have a solid ground of technical knowledge. 

2. A game, with the working title of “Rebirth,” that will be a 3D Voxel-terrain FPS game that involves rehabilitation of ecosystems on Earth, set years after humans (fictional narrative here, don’t freak out) have destroyed the Earth. The game involves a lot of research and environmental science to teach the player about the human activities, processes, businesses, etc that impact the environment. Specifically, I am focusing on creating a single level that involves the mangrove swamps and rainforests of Indonesia, showing the player the effects of deforestations, desertification, oil spills, habitat destruction and resulting events, and population control/workings. The player will “clean up” oil spills, “clone” animal and plant DNA of since (again, fictional for now) extinct species, and attempt to rehabilitate the habitat to a natural level of sustainability. 

3. I recently joined a team of my peers and coworkers at my job/internship (The Engagement Lab at Emerson College), working to put together an “interactive experience” that allows the viewer to explore the documents and evidence from a particular court case, revealing the sketchy nature of the case. The piece is (from my understanding) a way to reveal this evidence to the public, gain attention for the case and the (alleged) wrongfully convicted man who has been in prison for 30 years now. --Since the case is being looked into right now, I try to stay away from saying affirmatives, so everything is alleged and I am not affiliated with the case in any way other than this media project--

So this is the beginning to this blog, I will be posting more, of course, with updates and media to show what I am doing rather than just speak. But more than that, I hope to spur on creative conversations about work and media and interaction. 

The title of this blog is Energy and Space (ES, just like Erica Salling)

This is my space to discuss and share my inner workings as revealed through my work as a web and game design artist. Within this space, through my explorations of my own work, as well as work I find relevant and interesting, I hope to share an energy of progression, passion, integrity, hard work, and resilience. 

To put Energy into a project is one thing, we must all do that in our endeavors. But to put that project into a public Space for the world to see, review, connect with, and comment on -- that extends the Energy out further, interacting with people as they interact with the media. 

So with that, this is my Energy and Space -- I hope you enjoy