This project was an introduction to both 3D modeling and virtual game design. Utilizing programs that were new to me like Maya and Unity Game Engine, the goal was to create a virtual reality experience that showcases digital replicas of historical artifacts that would be found within a more extensive collection. I chose to create a showroom that celebrates the legacy of the British rock band, Queen. My concept was to have three musical instruments as my artifacts. I 3D modeled Brain May's guitar as well as incorporated audio elements and other artifacts such as records and concert tickets around the showroom that are tangible and interactive for the user.
Immersion Workshop
Before starting our virtual exhibition, we designed and facilitated workshops in teams to analyze, compare, and contrast an aspect of virtual reality and its cultural and social relevance, use cases, and how it affects user experience. My team focused on immersion. Immersion is such an important factor in any virtual experience and what I learned from designing this workshop and seeing how participants reacted, greatly impacted the decisions I made in my virtual Queen showroom.
Style Sheets
The first phase of creating a 3D model in Maya was creating 2D style sheets from the front and side views. I did this in Adobe Illustrator and used an actual image of May's guitar so I could make it as accurate and detailed as possible. Importing these two separate views into Maya makes the extrusion of shapes much easier.
Front View
Side View
Creating the Model
Developing a digital replica of the guitar was a challenging but rewarding process. The main challenge was the curves of the body of the guitar. I looked up several ways to make curved poly models online and found that many people use the bezier curve and then extrude that face. The issue with this is that Maya does not respond great to curved faces and so the large face was divided into a bunch of smaller faces making it extremely complicated to manipulate the shape how I wanted as well as slowing down the program. Ultimately, my TA Amarth showed me how to manipulate the vertices of a cube to the curves and rounded edges of the body of the guitar which was a much easier way to accomplish what I was trying to do. The other main struggle I had with my model was the strings because of their small size and the precise manipulations of the edges I had to do to extrude it up the length of the guitar, It was tedious but worked out in the end. After creating a UV map and adding textures to my artifact I was very proud of the result.
Showroom Production
I used a general template to design my showroom in Unity and altered it as I needed to best display my artifact and imagery. Building the showroom in Unity was a lot of fun. Since we had the template to use, it was more about adding imagery, videos, and sound versus building anything. I put my artifacts at the back of the space so when you spawn into the room you see the three items together. The grand piano and microphone model were sourced from TurboSquid. I spent a good chunk of my time during this phase sourcing imagery and videos. I was able to source a ton of images just from Google and aimed to include many with Brian May's guitar in the photo so that people could see the comparison of that and my completed artifact. I also put eight of their popular albums in the display cases. The interactive elements are ticket stubs on a table in the showroom that can be picked up to look at. I also added the Bohemian Rhapsody music video on the wall so that Queen's music would be playing while you explore the showroom.
Final Showroom Walk Through
Reflection
Overall, I learned a lot about both Maya and Unity during this process. I am most proud of the guitar artifact just because I put some much time into it and tried my best to make it super realistic with the metallic textures. I don't quite feel super confident in either program but the best way to get better is to just keep creating in both platforms. I really like how my showroom turned out and I think if I were to do this project again I would attempt to add more physical things associated with the band to fill the ground space. The workshops we did before this project helped me think about what elements to include in order to make it as immersive as I could. This project was a lot of fun and a great introduction to creating virtual reality experiences.
