Experience Design And Documentation
With pre-production finished, it was time to begin working on the experience itself. I wanted to start by creating the environment as a base for the experience, this allowed me to see how users would interact with it. The experience would borrow from the Burberry/Harrods web scene that had doors that opened to beautiful experiences, allowing users to shop inside of a store. I started with this, building a very basic and beautiful experience that acted as an introduction to the fashion gallery.
Users would enter the experience, and be met with the main menu, which acts as a training scenario for how VR works. There is a voice telling them the instructions on how to use the VR controls, as well as the purpose of the next scene. Upon learning this, the user can click the play button, which opens the doors into the fashion gallery.
When the user enters the fashion gallery, they see models walking around with weighted clothes. There are signs on the ceiling, showing the user how to properly navigate the scene. There are five parts inside the gallery: The future-realistic Clothing Section, the Made To Measure Section, the Metahuman Tailoring Section, the Sculpture Section, and the Art Piece Section.
Here is a list of each section and its purpose. The sections are paired with audio clips that tells the user what the purpose of the area is, as well as how to interact with it.
Future-Realistic Clothing Section:
The clothing is designed to look futuristic and showcase the possibilities of materials and cuts in the future. These are items that could be runway items in a few years and help to show the users how designers are trying to innovate fashion. In the future, this will be an AR section where users will be able to take these articles of clothing and put them on their real bodies. This would use some type of filter such as Snapchat or Instagram, to identify the person by body type and face recognition.
Made to Measure Section:
This section is for beginners, the users will be told how to interact with the items throughout the environment. They’ll be able to pick up the clothing items and put them onto a metahuman model, so they can visualize how these assets would look on their bodies. A widget will appear on the clothing, that allows thew user to view the item on-site or potentially purchase it.
Metahuman Tailoring Section:
This section is for VIP customers, and the audio will explain how users can get their body and face scanned to create custom clothing for their body size and shape, to be more precise. In the future, this could be used to try on different clothes in a virtual setting, then purchase those clothes knowing they perfectly fit their body. In this section, there are 3 examples of different metahumans, including one of myself. I created this with a 3D face scan, but others would be able to use a mobile application to create a model of their own face.
Sculpture Section:
This section adds to the artistic value of the experience, using sculptures from different artists to create a unified aesthetic for a beautiful art show. This differs from reality, as you’re able to pick up the items and closely examine them before purchasing them. You can see the intricate details of the item without damaging it or breaking the rules of the gallery. My research showed that fashion and art shows are closely connected, so this sculpture gallery adds an essential element to the fashion gallery experience.
Art Piece Section:
This is a section that showcases paintings and drawings in an extremely immersive way. Users are able to pick up the art pieces and place them in different areas and positions to see how they would potentially look in their homes. They’re also able to get a close up view, and artists are able to showcase their work safely without having to worry about shipping or potentially damaging their art pieces in galleries. In the future, this could be used by artists to sell their art to a wealthy clientele and build relationships with fashion brands/galleries.
The mechanics in a VR experience are the rules and interactions that define how players can interact and move with the virtual environment, and achieve goals. The purpose is to make the experience more immersive and entertaining, and most importantly, easy to use.
I implemented the walking mechanics in the second scene, except for the Main Menu. At first, it was very confusing, and I had to get rid of some global volume in the environment, which I used to filter the sky. In the Main Menu, the walking mechanic was deactivated as it was deemed unnecessary.
3D Interior Design and Documentation (Production: Development), -Metahuman & 3D Scanning
For the gallery itself, I wanted to do something that mirrored the fashion shows and art galleries I had been to. This meant, things needed to be minimalist, focusing on either monochromatic or duotones at the absolute most. After trying multiple colour patterns, I found that black and white looked the simplest, and also the most beautiful. This needed to be very simple because there were a lot of different ideas happening within one scene. If the colours were too busy, they could distract the users, making it difficult to navigate.
For the character design, I wanted to keep things simple, as I saw very early that using high-poly models could drastically slow down the experience. This meant the entire scene could not be metahumans, I had to find alternatives online. I used Mixamo and the Unreal Asset Store to find models which looked nice and fitting to the experience, without sacrificing a lot of power. I decided to use the basic Unreal mannequin and some models I found online for the fashion walk. The unreal skeletons would act as the audience since these models didn’t need to have clothing, they were just there to fill out the experience. The models needed to have clothing with weight on them and walk through the experience as if they were in a real fashion show.
Not satisfied with the animations I found online, I decided to use the motion capture room to create a custom catwalk animation. I used the Rokoko suit along with my friend who did the catwalk, I then took this animation and put it inside of Unreal on my two characters. I ensured those clothes were weighted so the animations would look more realistic and interesting to the user.
-Fashion Digital Assets
The clothing assets were found online, and I looked to model them after the Burberry experience, which had a collection of handbags and shows. Polycount wasn’t a huge concern for this aspect because the items were fairly small. I used a basic hat, which I changed the material on to make different versions, I also found a bag and jacket that I felt would go well on the model. These were paired with blueprints, allowing the user to pick them up and place them on the nearby metahuman.
The items on the model were from the asset store, these were stock models with no weight added onto them. With the help of Natalia, I was able to paint the weight on these clothing items, making them much more realistic and engaging. On one model, there was a simple skirt that bounced up and down as the model walked, on the other model, there was a skirt that blew in the wind behind the model.
For the experience, the brand mentioned earlier, DicksonLim.com, was supposed to provide some 3D clothing assets, including a blazer, waistcoats, pants, and iconic looks from red carpets all over the world. This wasn’t able to come in time, so instead, I opted to use assets I found online. In the future, I will implement these assets so users will be able to see excuse items.
I created blueprints for all the assets including sculptures, art drawings and clothes assets, this is quite time consuming. I keep play testing during the process, to ensure that all the items have interactions and grabable, i created notes for each items (name and description), however, becasue of the lack of space on my laptop and lagging during the VR mode. therefore, i made few examples showcase inside of the Made To Measure section.
For the sound design within my project, I selected the background music from one of my favourite tracks. This music choice helped me to establish the mood and ambience of the gallery space, with contemporary beats give an energetic vibe. I created introduction voices for each section, which play a crucial role in the project by giving players or users a clear introduction to the experience. I used a karaoke speaker to produce a robotic voice and enhanced the futuristic feel by adjusting the pitch for each section.