Blog 2: Idea Finalizing & Pre-Production
For our dome project, we have finalized that we will design a fun ride that would take riders to various ancient worlds. The person observing, sitting in the dome, would move up and down like in an elevator—with a start in an underwater world, moving to a magical cave with old buildings, ending in floating islands in the air.
One of my primary concepts was to use a statue to raise the dome, based on inspiration from the Indian film Kalki 2898 AD. In the film, a statue assists a character to move higher up, and I adapted this concept to our project to simplify moving between worlds. I also proposed using Fluid Flux to generate realistic water effects and using the European Hornbeam asset pack in Unreal Engine's library to generate realistic vegetation in the cave scene.
Pre-Production Phase Problems
Transitions: One of our challenges was ensuring that transitions between the underwater, cave, and sky worlds would be smooth. We desired each world to be distinct yet related in the dome experience.
Asset Choice and Workflow: We debated whether to build new models from scratch or use existing models in Unreal Engine. The time-management aspect of custom work was crucial in making a decision.
Much of this phase was dedicated to researching old buildings, water effects, and transitioning scenes in a unique manner. We researched history and took inspiration from how movies visually tell stories.
Gombrich, E.H., 2000. The Story of Art. London: Phaidon Press.
Manovich, L., 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
FluidFlux. Fab (2024). Fab. [online] Fab.com. Available at: https://www.fab.com/listings/196c70cd-1283-4249-bf6b-c3019d1cbe11.
European Hornbeam. Fab (2024). Fab. [online] Fab.com. Available at: https://www.fab.com/listings/c6f917b6-ffcb-4b86-9d9f-5274ba7f6a8e