[galacticod]

We got featured on the LEAP Motion development blog!

[designersof]

Oh My Cod! | I think the fish speaks for itself.

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[galacticod]

Become a fish and explore the coral reefs while learning about the dangers our reefs are facing.

You can now download our project over at our website! Windows, Mac, and Linux are supported.

[galacticod]

Galacticod Engage at ImagineRIT!

Our exhibit at ImagineRIT was an overwhelming success. It was profoundly fulfilling to watch endless crowds of people gather to see and experience the results of our countless hours of hard work from these past few months. There aren't enough words in the world to convey how amazing, incredibly touching, and powerful it was to witness the reactions of people as they genuinely enjoyed the experience we crafted for Ripple; it was a definite energy booster throughout the long day. A gracious thank you to everyone who made this possible!

P.S. I love this team. Our incredibly talented members squeezed out every ounce of talent and effort they had in them to create the best experience possible and we pulled it off. 

[galacticod]

Promo Video & Final Stretch

It's almost here! ImagineRIT is less than a day away and we're just about finished. Ripple is looking solid and with this stunning promo video that Sean made it's all coming together.

We've worked extensively on merging all the devs and designers work into one file. That includes all the assets, GUI scripts, flocking, sounds, motion paths, etc. We had a few bugs after the initial merge but Galacticod squashed 'em. 

The level off script that Luis built where the fish would center itself after it turned up and down worked wonders and made controlling the fish extremely fluid, but it caused some bugs with the fish on it's z axis. We were able to fix it and controlling the fish is as easy as it ever could be. 

We're also working on the Ripple website which should be live by tonight but at the latest before ImagineRIT.

Right now we're in the labs putting the finishing touches on Ripple. Everyone's working their hardest and we're all anxious for Imagine.

Next comes setting up the room and displays. Here's to an amazing ImagineRIT.

Galacticod ENGAGE!

[awkwardsituationist]

[awkwardsituationist]

earth day

[galacticod]

Happy Earth Day!

[galacticod]

Flocking!

For any virtual environment, AI is key. Zohran has been working on Flocking algorithms for schools of fish to be integrated into Ripple. With a lot of help from Nancy, one of our professors for New Media Team Project, we've figured out a way to allow us to have these fish group up and move together. The code uses basic steering behaviors based on Craig Reynolds original boid behaviors. These include: Separation which allows the flock to maintain distance between each other. Alignment which uses the average heading of the flockmates. Cohesion to move toward the average position. It also uses some rudimentary obstacle avoidance to allow it to dodge boundaries. The flocking code is still being tested and implemented but it's on it's way.

[galacticod]

GUI Progress

Over the past few weeks, learning how to implement a custom GUI within Unity has been an interesting challenge.  Our designer Sean created a really gorgeous and elegant mockup of an interface that is beholden to the design aesthetics of our overall world. It conveys what we are striving to achieve with our user interactions, communicating important, relevant information. It is still in the process of iteration, but for the moment, it is a good representation of what we would like the final design to be like. On the development side, the challenges lie with understanding the various ways that exist within Unity to create a GUI. Depth of customization is something that feels very lacking within Unity as most implementations seem extremely simplistic and not conducive to creating rich, highly visual text effects alongside dynamic updating of the text that is onscreen.  Figuring out how to manipulate that text has been one of the biggest challenges, ranging from positioning it inside of a defined area, updating the content inside of text objects, animating the position of text objects across the screen with easing, and adding a fading effect. This has all been in service of achieving the look and feel of our initial mockup and Unity has definitely felt very limited in the customization of text as opposed to something like Photoshop. Development of the GUI continues on as our designer Tom continues to iterate on the look of the interface.

[galacticod]

For Ripple, creating a believable and visually engaging environment is key. After the base environment was complete, Jimmy, Tom, and Sean worked on modeling coral consistent with the low poly look and feel. The models were created using a combination of C4D and Maya, and exported in FBX format. In Unity, the coral was imported and placed around the environment. Several environment effects were added.

[galacticod]

Using the LEAP to control our fish

We placed the LEAP sideways so that it could accurately track the palm in a way that was natural to the user

[galacticod]

Ripple

For our team project we wanted people to physically interact with a digital environment. We decided to build a coral reef environment where anyone could “swim around” and learn about the reefs.

We wanted something more interactive than a mouse and keyboard to experience the beauty of the coral reefs. With a fish as our main character, what was the most natural, physical, metaphor for representing a fish?

Our hand, moving side to side.

Making The LEAP

Once we decided on a method of control, we began imagining the types of interactions that could be used to control a fish’s swim with our hands:

We would swim forward when swiping left and right.

Moving your hand left, right, up, or down would move you in those directions.

Other interactions included moving a cursor around with your hand as you interact with an interface. That interface would display information about the reefs and present questions that users could answer, with a variety of gestures. (If a question asked how much garbage was being dumped in the reefs each year, the user could move their hand up and down to indicate a certain level of trash). Accurate hand tracking was going to be key.

A few of us on the team were already aware of the LEAP Motion and it was one of the first devices that came to mind. The LEAP Motion’s focus on hand and gesture tracking was exactly what we needed.

[galacticod]

Jimmy officially modeled, textured, rigged, and animated our main character the clownfish! We chose the clownfish because we believe people identify more with them due to Finding Nemo. They're also the same colors as RIT's school colors... :)

The animation you see is it's idle state, or in other words, when users aren't interacting with the LEAP Motion. However, when they do use the LEAP Motion, Unity allows the fish to blend into its secondary animation, which is swimming. It's tail and fins will animate back and forth faster, indicating that the fish is moving forward.

We'll be connecting this guy with the LEAP Motion soon and integrating it into Unity, stay tuned!

[galacticod]

The biggest aspect of this project is to create the coral reef environment. Determining things like size, points of interest, and location for interactivity are all things to take into account. Having never created a fully explorable environment in Unity before, the first question was where do we start?

Obviously a reference is always a good place to begin, and the closest things we could find to coral reef blueprints were island height maps. Their organic and rocky forms made for a perfect reference. So by using their shapes as inspiration, we created an outline in Adobe Illustrator. Different aspects of the environment would be taken into account including different levels, tunnels, spires, arches, and height and steepness of the walls.

We then imported this outline into Cinema 4D and declared zones 1-5. By declaring zones, it made it easier to determine interactive object locations and individual characteristics of the environment.

From there, we used one large Metaball (In case you don't know how Metaballs work, it's a feature in C4D that allows you to create a "blob" which can easily be sculpted into organic shapes). We then went from zone to zone, building up the walls and gradually creating a bowl-like ecosystem. The walls had to be slanted and tall enough so that if the player was on one side of the environment, they wouldn't be able to see beyond the playable world on the opposite end.

So our next step is to integrate our controllable fish, and populate the world with our coral reef and sea life models, which will be coming up soon!

[galacticod]

We created our official branding styleguide! We've outlined the moodboard, colors, and typefaces to use to keep the design of our project on track. Another purpose for this deck is to establish the aesthetic for our posters, promotional items, documents, and other design endeavors that might present themselves throughout the next few weeks.

[galacticod]

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[galacticod]

What a busy weekend we had!

Friday night (2/28/14) we all got together at Jimmy's apartment. He figured since there were so many of us, that since we were getting together to discuss the project anyway, we could all help him out with a little something. He had a large pool table in his garage that he needed in his living room. This thing was a beast. It took 9 guys and 1 girl (me) to move this sucker. It must have been 1,000 lbs. What a monster!!! So this took up a good hour at least. In return, Jimmy made sure to order pizza (YUM!) and lots of it. We also got to meet with Jake. Jake is a student at Eastman School of Music and will be working with us to create atmospheric sounds that will be playing while people are interacting with our environment. We wanted soft, smooth music so as not to be too distracting or anything. Jake pulled out a keyboard and started playing different tunes. We didn't expect anything on the spot so it was a super pleasant surprise. He seemed to be producing some really awesome stuff, we couldn't choose. So he said he'll put together a couple short demos for us and we'll be able to pick from those. We're so excited! We believe him to be a secret genius.

So after that, we got to work. We had some bumps we had to work out such as where things are going to be placed in our environment. So we just started sketching and everyone had great input. We also realized how good Tom has been as our leader. He really keeps us on track and motivated.

So the next day was our big field trip to the Aquarium! We took a trip all the way up to Niagara Falls which is about an hour and a half away. We took 2 cars, one being the cool kids car, the other being just a regular car :p

Upon arriving at the Aquarium, we were greeted by a lady who encouraged us to go watch the show. Apparently a sealion show was just about to start. After the show, we met with Dan Arcara. He is the supervisor of the Exhibits. He was very friendly and very helpful. We met down in the basement as this was the quietest place of them all. We got to describe our project and show him some of the progress we've made so far. They seemed really excited about it and thought it was a great way to tell the facts while still making it interesting and engaging.

He had some suggestions and gave us a lot of information. He also gave us a tour of the back of the aquarium. We got to go behind the tanks and see where they kept the chemicals, lights, and other maintenance materials. Dan was very informative and super helpful. He also mentioned his interest in hosting our exhibit in the aquarium as an attraction after Imagine RIT. WHAT?!?! That's so crazy! So they will be coming to RIT for May 3rd to check out the exhibit and see how it works. They really showed a great deal of interest! He then gave us a tour of the actual aquarium and specifically the information they had on coral reefs. We took tons of pictures and video to make sure we didn't miss anything! This was a great opportunity for us and we are all so glad we went. The experience of seeing these fish in their natural habitat was more informative than we could have thought. It gave us great insight.

After the Aquarium, we went over to see the falls. Brian had never been before so we had to. It was very cold but overall a really nice day. Then on the drive home, we stopped in Rochester for some Garbage plates. Soooo good! Then called it a night.

Since then, we have been just building assets. Sean built a whale skeleton and Sarah worked on making a jellyfish!

What are our next steps then? Well, here's what we're doing. Assets, assets, assets. The designers and developers alike are working on getting assets for our environment. We have a huge environment to fill with lots of beautiful things so we have to get moving!

For our developers: they are working on getting the gestures with the LEAP to be more natural and less forced. They've done an awesome job so far in getting them to work together. It's all a matter of polishing it up and making it more useable.

We are excited for our progress! We've been hitting all our marks so far. It's just a matter now of just getting stuff done!

Go team Galacticod!!!

[galacticod]

making progress