shaunmcculloughcreativetech-blog

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With everything complete besides the small hiccup getting my blogs to post out of drafts (Apologies if the 10ish blogs below this are out of order) Everything has gone pretty well.  Working with the rest of 3way glass was great as everyone was very comfortable and confident in their roles. I was aware that I would have to step outside my comfort zone this semester but that was also an attraction to me. Having not done really much creative writing/ language creation or worked physically within any game engine I was in deep with limited time to learn. I did make plenty of mistakes but I achieved what I wanted to in the end.  Kudos to the other team members for giving me time to learn and research post human elements and still contribute to the game.  Finishing the semester with the cosmos render allowed me to contribute with something I was very comfortable doing and it felt great! I think overall it was an awesome final semester as I learnt many new skills and produced work that I am proud of. ~Shaun

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Post Human Particle System: Fog and Snow

Up first was a background dust/snow effect that would be falling in from the surface. As we discussed in the group this was another tool to giving a sense of severity and gravity to the player falling at the start of the level. I made this particle system use very very small particles and applied gravity to them.  The only challenging part about this system was applying the collision and applying gravity. The following video shows them highlighted so you can see them and their motion.

Next up was fog. We wanted some generic fog to give certain areas atmosphere. We could also use it to obscure some key objects such as the mega centipede.  Building the fog was quite involved as in order to give it the effect we wanted I had to build two particle systems within one. Step one was create the textures for the fog in Photoshop. 

One is for the top layer particle system and the other bigger one is for the bottom. The top one is smudged more and combined with added transparency gives the top layer a subtle taper off from the bottom, main layer.

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Post Human: Building the Cosmos

For my installation experience I wanted to give the viewers access to more lore. Something easy to access like a QR code lets more than one person interact with our installation at one time.  For the lore expanding media I wanted to visualize the cosmos of our world as this gives me a medium to showcase multiple lore elements. (Such as: Naming convention, Theology, Cosmology, character backstory with details on the process of the Lumos event)

First thing I did was refine what planet specific lore I was going to use which can be found at the bottom of the post. Working in Photoshop I began building planets. I experimented with free textures and Photoshop effects. I built the cosmos in 3D even knowing that I would not get to fully showcase the 3rd dimension suitably. It did give more depth looking at it - and it did help when transitioning in the video.

For Nix in the bottom left I wanted a dark spiritual aspect to the planet. I planned that I would create the spherical center with the other planets then when everything is rendered out I can apply the effect I was after. For Jorox and Vanoax I generated the terrain in World machine to apply to planets.  Considering the lore interaction between Vanoax and Jorox I liked the idea of Vanoax resembling a moon like orbiter for Jorox. 

Once finishing the planets I played around with exact locations within the cosmos and which side of Jorox to display. The way I positioned Jorox gave me inspiration to add a tid bit of lore. I faced the crater/valley towards Golnax and added lore about follows of the golden gods creating mythology about it (The golden gods at Golnax fired divine power and destruction down when displeased at blasphemy to their religion)

Now that the Cosmos was rendered and laid out perfectly I added a few effects such as the darkness cloud around Nix and the golden gleam on Golnax. With this rendered I proceeded to animate the cosmos tour and add the planet specific Lore.

The following is my refined versions of the planet specific Lore: Nix: An ethereal place where the essence of everything passed is floating. Some humans can access this place in spirit form through meditation. Golnax: The home of the Golden Gods. The Golden Gods watch over the fertility, knowledge and love of humans. Humans that worshiped the golden gods spend a second lifetime on the golden planes of this planet before transcending to Nix. Jorox: The home of the Humans. There lies a single landmass surrounded by treacherous waters. A twisting river runs into a harsh valley known as the World Fissure. Worshippers of the Golden Gods claim this valley is a warning for humans who turn from them. Vanoax: The paradise world where humans sacrificed in the Lumos ceremony are brought after completing their trials. Having transcended the cosmos the survivors meditate on this worlds islands before decending to Jorox as a prophet to the people. Zirevaex: The home of the god Anivire who watches over all fortune and luck. Every generation one human transcends to Zirevaex upon death and becomes Anivire sending the previous human to Nix. Followers of Anivire see it as a great honor and pray to become it upon death. Sharjaex: The home of the gods of every skill. The gods here bestow talents and skills to humans upon their birth. The planet has a rocky outer layer featuring a multitude of holes and cavern entrances.Under the surface there are winding tunnels filled with lush greenery and strange creatures not found on Jorox. Silvax: The home of the Silver Gods. The Silver Gods control the order and nature of the realm. Humans Associate them with the weather, the growth of crops, the flow of water and gravity itself. Humans that worshiped the Silver Gods spend a second lifetime on the silver planes of this planet before transcending to Nix. Video can be found here aswell:

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Post Human Research: Death Stranding Trailer

With most of my work wrapped up and the semester almost finished I had assumed I would not be reflecting upon more post human media.  Watching the coverage on E3 I discovered I was wrong when I watched this trailer for ‘Death Stranding’.

The first thing I noticed was that the rain causes time dilation as you can see at the start with the rapid growth and death of the foliage. Also with the aging of the photograph and the drip that lands on his hand causing it to wrinkle. Further through the trailer my best guess as to the baby/fetus system is that it is a clone of himself. This could be for all the exposure to the weather - the old version of himself ages out while the baby accelerates to his age complete with his memories thus making himself semi immortal. Defeat at the hands of time is a very human thing, are the characters in this story transcending humanism with things like this?

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Post Human - Final C&C Script

Contextualization Working with Three Way Glass we created an immersive game called ‘Lumos’ based around theology and fantasy. My role in the group was to bring in experience from my post human research and aid in the immersion of the player. The main productions areas for this is the Particle Systems, Lore, Game-play and environment. My Post Human definition explores a singularity in human advancement that revolves around spiritual transcendence and the resulting Post Human scenario. The idea being that Post Human refers to what we define in religion and media as ‘God’. Not only this but I act under the assumption that the creativity in this immersive work is the ‘God’ figure - as Brent Waters puts it in his book, From Human to Posthuman; "Creativity serves as a 'God' which inspires the requisite awe as the basis of a trans-formative ethic, promoting the survival of celestial life.". I wanted to mirror this on a spiritual scale and contribute to media that details godly worlds, Theology and potentially a spiritual Post Human. Our game details a multitude of worlds that are used to aid in the journey and transformation of a human into a godly -post human- being. By aiding in the immersion of this media I will be contributing to the collection of theology based thoughts and inspiration of humans. In Jeanine Thweatt-Bates book ‘Cyborg Selves’ she asks, in relation to post humanism; “Why isn't it here yet? wont it be scary? Or maybe it will be brilliant. When it finally arrives will we have brought it on ourselves?" Is this referring to self improvement with augmentations to the point of singularity? or is the asking of the question implying that we will be guided to post humanism, not by ourselves, but by post humans themselves. Such as the theme demonstrated in the movie ‘Interstellar’ and reflected in our game ‘Lumos’. Thweatt-Bates, J. (2012). Cyborg Selves. doi:10.4324/9781315575728 Waters, B. (2006). From Human to Posthuman. doi:10.4324/9781315583372 Conceptualization The theme of my work roles was immersion. My mains roles were Naming convention, Particle systems, Game-play feedback as well as small world building or polish jobs. My naming convention was inspired by a fantasy convention that attributes certain meaning to a prefix, suffix or sound in a name or Noun. I designed and iterated a naming convention for key nouns based around their suffixes. I also incorporated post human research to do with Human restrictions on vocabulary. Particle Systems are a set of particles designed, coded and organised into a certain design. As the unity manual details it; “Each particle represents a small portion of a fluid or amorphous entity and the effect of all the particles together creates the impression of the complete entity.”  I designed Particle systems to simulate things including: Snow flakes falling, Dust landing impacts, Firefly’s and fog. I also designed and rendered the cosmos for ‘Lumos’. The render gives the viewer of our game installation a chance to dig deeper into the lore. The naming convention combined with details of each planet from Cara provides a visual identity for the cosmos. I built some of the terrains for planets in the software: world machine, for others I used graphics and generated effects in Photoshop I also organised appropriate people to come and play-test Lumos. I made sure to choose people with a lot of experience in the relevant genre to provide the best feedback. Technologies, U. (n.d.). What is a Particle System? Retrieved from https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysWhatIs.html  

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Post Human Immersion - Fireflies Particle System

One of the most difficult Particle systems for me to create was the fireflies in the cave. This straight away stood out as difficult due to the requirement for them to centralize around an axis as well as illumination and pattern. When I set out to find some research material to do with fireflies I was surprised to find that there was surprisingly little media with good animated fireflies to analyse. I managed to dig and find 3 reasonable sources of fireflies. 

@3:15 My first thoughts went to grave of the fireflies - an animated movie about World War II Japan. However I found that there was actually a live action version that had a pretty good scene in terms of research.  When the fireflies are released they actually really resemble the starting cone shape particle system you can load up. When they expand I can see some slight negative movement in their movement pattern.

@0:14 This video was an animation I found on Youtube whilst searching. Although it wasn’t the greatest research in terms of movement pattern of fireflies it was interesting to see fireflies with a ‘Sprite’ system attached. This was good to see as working with Bligh we had started working out how we could incorporate a sprite from him into the particle system that I would make. 

@0:26 This movie clip was another great resource. In this clip we can see some great light illumination effects in terms of how the fireflies light up the environment. The main take away for me to apply to my own work was that the illumination was high intensity but short range. When the fireflies started illuminating they didn’t cast a faint green glow on the whole field they had a strong glow but it was localized with a very faint overall green tone. 

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Post Human Particle Effects: Fireflies Creation

Into Unity I went to start building Fireflies. Starting off with a basic particle system I first adjusted the emission shape (What type of origin point the particles would appear to be shot out from) as well as particle size, speed and count. The following video also shows me adjusting the size over time graph. The point of this was to give the particles a kind of throbbing glow effect much like the light-source of fireflies in media.

The next step is to inverse the movement. This starts the fireflies off in the right direction in order to orbit a target. When we add the ability to loop in on themselves non-inverted velocity will cause an unsavory wreathing effect.  Inverting will also clump the particles more together similar to how fireflies would swarm together.

Its now time for a very precise part, adding noise to the movement. Noise in terms of particle generation refers to random static based movement patterns. As you can see in the following video, the firefly particles now behave and change direction in a similar way to static on the right we created by adding the specific values. 

Jumping forward you can see in the following video that the particles are starting to look more realistic after adding Blighs sprite sheet and parenting the system to a ‘wind zone’. The sprite sheet is essentially an image file that contains all of the frames needed to animate something (Think frames like in a movie) The sprite sheet here gives the fireflies some subtle flying movements.  A wind zone in Unity effects an area much like wind would. You can program the direction and strength. By parenting the firefly particle system to it the fireflies are always effected the same way by it. This makes it appear that the fireflies are themselves flying around in this way. The wind zone I used was spherical so it appears the fireflies are looping around in on each other (Looping around the beetle in the game).

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Post Human: Team Member Roles

For our immersive theology based game: ‘Lumos’, These have been our team member roles in the project: Cara: Lore, feedback. Bligh: Art, Animation, Level Design, character design. Claudia: Unity mechanics, gameplay and logic programming  Matthew: Concept art, character design, Sound design. Shaun: World Expansion, Particle systems, Language convention, Post Human Poster. My roles extended: Expansion:  - For our physical installment through QR code I will be letting people explore further into the world with cosmos renders and Lore details. I will also be exploring installation elements to accentuate our theme. Particle Systems: - I am making the particle systems within unity that help build immersion. This includes lighting effects and atmospheric elements. Some of the creatures are built using particle systems with the addition of sprites from Bligh. Language Convention: - I am creating the language convention used across the worlds where our game takes place. This is built around a symbolic suffix used in key worlds of Nouns relating to the world and world events. For example the game title ‘Lumos’ the suffix ‘mos’ representing the journey from the sacrificial death through knowledge back to the world of humans as a prophet. This is combined with a English relatable prefix Lu-m from Luminosity. This represents the lighting and theme of the game where the light guides you through the particular trial the game is set in (Fear). Poster: - I will be designing the poster that represents the post human elements in the physical installation. This will include the QR codes to expand into the deeper lore elements.  

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Post Human: Perspective

Laurent posted an article containing this video into the google community.  The video shows planet earths timeline in the form of the distance between the coasts of America. The analogy shows us how limited our civilisations memory and establishment is. The main point is that it shows how much the growth of life and technology on earth resembles an exponential graph, it shows how close we are relative to the earths timeline to approaching singularity. Even if you look just at the timeline starting from the first human we can see the exponential evolution which fits into the singularity graph:

This lets us see how close we are to the human singularity, Trans humans and Post Humans.

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Conceptual and Contextual Statements Draft 2

Contextual Statement

[1] Working with Three Way Glass we created an immersive game based around theology and fantasy. My role in the group was to bring in experience from my post human research and aid in the immersion of the player. The main productions areas for this was the Particle Systems, Lore, Game-play and environment. [2]  My Post Human definition explores a singularity in human advancement that revolves around spiritual transcendence and the resulting Post Human scenario. The idea being that Post Human refers to what we define in religion and media as ‘God’. [3] I have researched how media created based around the future influences technological advances in the future {QUOTE} I want to mirror this on a spiritual scale and contribute to media that details godly worlds, Theology and potentially a spiritual Post Human. [4] Our game details a multitude of worlds that are used to aid in the journey and transformation of a human into a godly -post human- being. By aiding in the immersion of this media I will be contributing to the collection of theology based thoughts and inspiration of humans. [5] My research also shows that the greater the immersion into media, the greater the inspiration gained from it {QUOTE} [6] [1] - Group/game logo shots [2] - Particle systems shots, Lore characters details [3] - Post Human diagrams\links [4] - Example shots from quotes/research e.g 20k Leagues/ Jules Vern etc [5] - Worlds setup lore shots more PS and Immersion shots [6] - Research detail shots

Conceptual Statement 

[1] The theme of my work roles was immersion. My mains roles were Naming convention, Particle systems, Game-play feedback as well as small world building/polish jobs. [2] My naming convention was inspired by a fantasy convention that attributes certain meaning to a prefix, suffix or sound in a name or Noun.  I designed and iterated a naming convention for key nouns based around their suffixes. I also incorporated post human research to do with Human restrictions on vocabulary. [3] Particle Systems are a set of particles designed, coded and organised into a certain design. “Particles are small, simple images or meshes that are displayed and moved in great numbers by a particle system. Each particle represents a small portion of a fluid or amorphous entity and the effect of all the particles together creates the impression of the complete entity. Using a smoke cloud as an example, each particle would have a small smoke texture resembling a tiny cloud in its own right. When many of these mini-clouds are arranged together in an area of the scene, the overall effect is of a larger, volume-filling cloud.” [4] - Unity Manual I designed Particle systems to simulate things including: Snow flakes falling, Dust landing impacts, Firefly's, fog. [Video showing Particle Systems explaining small details and how they differentiate from each other] [+add on extra things I polish for the immersion] [1] - Title slide, opening [2] - Game-play videos   [3] - Naming convention  [4] - Example particle systems along with quote   

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Post Human Week 7 Presentation

Today I had my week 7 presentation and critique. In my presentation I recapped how I was exploring the post human form of theology. Next I talked about how in our group we were creating a game, details within the game and its theology. I explained how my primary role in the group was to aid in building the immersion. I showed my first task: creating a naming convention for the games lore in which would be used for objects, characters and events. My primary feedback was in terms of clarity. The way I formatted my presentation people were unsure what median or product I was applying my post human themes and that it would have made more sense to explain the game first. I think this should be a major focus for me going forward. I wrestled with this problem last semester, trying to explain my project in simple terms.  The feedback has made me think about the ‘elevator pitch’ where you describe your project in the time it would take to ride the elevator (~10 seconds) I think my presentation did show the themes, ideas and my progress reasonably well I just show the ordering a little wrong. I think it would have been much easier to follow if I had. 

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Post Human Week 3 Presentation

Today I talked about my studio project; I am in a group With Matt, Bligh, Claudia and Cara. We are making an immersive adventure 2d game. The game will have a rich lore and theology backstory. Theology will be my post human theme. I will be bringing Post-human ideas and themes to the game.  I was recommended some Post-Human media   I didn’t get much feedback but I thought my presentation went quite well. I think I was able to explain how I was heading in the direction of a theology based post human idea.  

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Post Human - Blog and Research Feedback

Meeting with Laurent I good some good feedback to reflect upon in terms of how I can blog, document and research better. My key points were to: - Convert my notes from my week 3 and 7 presentations into a reflective blog post. - Outline key team member roles within our studio group on my blog - Revisit some posts and elaborate my reflections on them. - Laurent suggested re-visiting my post on my work Venn diagram, however I believe it would be better to just create my next iteration and reflect on that. I think this because our project has developed and morphed enough to warrant revisiting what categories to explore. - Look at some more posts from the google community and reflect on them - Make sure I am using APA referencing - Save all/enough of my c/c statements recording to show my development and upload them.

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This is a preliminary version of another particle system I am working on. These are atmospheric snow particles for the opening of the cave.  Currently the particle system is in the shape of a long rectangle the size of the first shaft of the crevice. I am exploring whether I can get particle collision working well in the shaft or filling out areas with clones of the particle system. My primary idea for this system came for play-testing feedback. We got feedback that when the character falls down the shaft it didn’t feel fast or impacting, it didn’t feel realistic. The goal of me working on particle systems is to aid in realism and immersion. I figured that the snow particles would help in giving the perspective of speed as the player can recognise the speed of the snow falling and easily compare it to the speed of the player falling.

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Post Human: Contextual and Conceptual Statements Drafting

Conceptual Video Script [Video Showcasing game-play and close ups of particle systems + Lore] Narrating over the video talk about: Goal of work is to create immersion into our lore and themes (Theology based) Game-play Concepts - How game-play is made to feel fluid to aid in immersion Lore and story - How rich lore and purposeful language and creation is used to aid immersion. Particle Systems - How these aid in building physics in the world - adding life to the world (Greatly aiding immersion) How all these aspect contribute to the storytelling -> Good storytelling very important to immersion. *Key point = Information conveyed so that someone unfamiliar can understand the key concepts. -Video format should help this as I can visualise things to help my articulation. Contextual Video Script [Video contents relating to specific points, video of me speaking, gameplay video] Narrating over video talk about: My definition of post human: theology based evolution etc - Relation between transcending to a post human state and theology -Talk about research: futuristic media portrayals contribution to future thinking, How applying this context to theology contributes to future cosmology/theology (How it's impossible to prove it doesn’t) -Talk about the context of creating theology based media in this sense. -Research on greater immersion = greater inspiration. I must make sure it is clear and easy to understand

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Implementation of Particle Systems - Immersion  Finally got collision working for the first particle system which will work as dust puffs from the player landing.  This is part of my task to add immersion to the game world. As I have previously talked about immersion is important for getting viewers to experience our post human theme of theology.

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Over the mid semester break I began by learning the basics of Unity. I also created the first iteration of the first particle system I’m working on.  This is a video of the basic workings of particle system.  There are a couple of things missing that needs to be implemented, firstly and most obviously is the collision detection which will be implemented in our game scene.  The colour I left as a light brown to be most visible in my test scene but in our game scene it will be darker and have scaling over time transparency.