Tag Archives: Garden

The Geranium Project (R&D) 12

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Monday 9th September. A whole day in the studio trying to resolve a scale issue with Unity when importing from 3ds Max.

I spent the morning trying to work out UVW unwraps on a model in 3ds Max and the afternoon trying to work out why the scale won’t translate to Unity from 3ds Max. The frustration is palpable. So that’s six hours with nothing to show but a set of questions I can’t answer. It’s back to school tomorrow! (I need to go through some tutorials to see if I can find the things I’m not doing.

On Tuesday afternoon I worked out that Unity is working at a 1:50 ratio against 3ds Max, so I metre in Max is importing as 50 metres in Unity. This means my garden was 6.5 km in Unity once imported.

Wednesday morning I was interviewed by Harlan at Axisweb for the website and for some publicity for the event I’m running on 11th October. It will stand as a marker for progress against the ACE project outcomes. In the afternoon I had further frustration, this time with updates to software that ate all my data.

I also made a new version of the real garden model, ‘realgarden_11_0919.max’ ready to try out on Friday.

On Friday I finally got the expert assistance I have planned for. There is an interesting dynamic working with other artists who tend to have opinions as strong as my own. Establishing the boundaries of working practice is the most important part of the relationship. The first thing we established was that frustration with software is universal, and that its best if you work to the same versions as your partners. I feel that I can see the direction of the VR segment of the project now, it will start in the ‘room’ – the physical installation – and the user (player) will progress through the video that is showing simultaneously in the space into a photographic version of the garden. From there the user can move through to the abstract drawing version. Now it’s a case of making it.

As an aside I’ve illustrated this post with images from the latest video, versions of which I’m filming and trying out on a regular basis.

The Geranium Project (R&D) 11

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Another week of lots of work with apparently not much progress. It’s very easy to spend hours working on the computer and have little concrete to show for the effort. I’ve managed to use a particle system to put fog into one end of the drawing garden, and I did some work on Monday to add materials and so on.

I also had a look at one of the potential locations for a transition to another scene, or from another scene.

Over the next two days I worked on making a photographic version of the garden where the ‘player’ will start with a view to moving from there to the drawn garden.

Photographic Garden

A longer video of the garden with fog.

The Geranium Project (R&D) 10

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After a week off and installing the computer and VR kit at the studio this week was back to it.

Kit in Studio

The kit has to be packed away securely each day, which takes about 30 minutes, as the studio is in a high burglary area.

So far I’ve got an animation working thanks to Luke, one of my assistants, and I resolved the teleporting issues I’d had while the kit was at home.

I keep thinking this doesn’t seem to amount to much for all the time I’ve had but then a visitor tries it out and I’m reassured that it appears to be impressive. There is an advantage in using an uncommon technology but there is also the problem that the work becomes about the technology or that the technology dominates the idea.

I’m simultaneously disappointed that I’m not further ahead and pleased with the progress I’ve made, not that that makes much sense.