This happy face indicates – gotta use vpn, for some reason!

So, beginning of this week marked 5-minute presentations. These were quite indicative but, more or less, people went through what they went through. I, kinda hesitated. And in fact, I had an around 4-day break. Now that I think about it, it’s quite kinda funny although coming to look at the Samsung Health app with 19.5h of sleep recorded and then another 13 hours the next day. Probably not healthy but eventually getting some sleep ought to be. Now that I think about, it’s kind of a good time to reflect on actually how much work was involved in the last weeks. As my rescuetime ain’t rescuing anyone or anything but it’s pretty good at keeping track of what I do digitally and whether I’m wasting my time or actually (at least) trying to put it into a productive mode.

And so while it is quite challenging to exclude Ed Tech on its own and count how many hours were put towards it, I’d still say there would be a decent amount of ~25-35 hours weekly, with some turbulence to add or subtract, significantly at times. And then to top it off with ~2 hours of travelling back and forth to the school, by taking the bike I’d be faster and healthier, by taking public transit I’d be toppling off with good over 2 hours and less on my kangaroo bank account. But sometimes it’d be cold or rainy and the choice would become all of a sudden, narrower. In any case, it is really quite a nice chunk of time and effort and the school does tend to take all of it, once I look back.

Playtech Week

Can’t say all these hours were purely productive but as an indicative form-factor, it works and it’s nice to see the hardware I decided to invest in prior, remains actually surprisingly stable and reliable, pulling off anything I really required from it (here goes a hail to Microsoft). Other than that, why am I mentioning all the work that also was outside of the class? Because many of the skills I learned from outside I managed to apply here. Disregarding Rhino that I learned back 4 years ago, I got a refresher here at Parsons. Some of the interaction methods were based on coding that I either learned or self-learned to apply in this project. Many of the experimentation methods, motion capture. Technically, with each week I see I could potentially undertake much more but there as many hours we get to work on, well, work.

So, moving forward, what do we got, what do we do, what have I done? Well, I conceived a presentation into which I threw a few cools toys, some of the processes that I felt were worth mentioning and that perhaps were not broached earlier. While the process of transforming sketches into 3D models was, perhaps a bit more of a refresher, it seems the more subtle part of adding microplastics was not quite seen or understood, as simple as the thing was. In the end, that made the audience a bit interested. Going through some of the difficulties and what my main focus was. I didn’t feel like giving the presentation as there was more that I wanted to throw in but there’s as much as we can do, considering the time all get.

From the moving ahead, well, there’s actually a list I’ve written down:

– Cover larger swaths of terrain with grass

– Make the bottles spawn in a delayed manner after the narration stops and make it stop before the experience ends, change the colour to blue and place them further away to descend over the horizon

– Ongoing calibration in Unity/Madmappa

On Thursday it’s packing day, on saturday showcase and we’re apparently in charge of building da thin’. As in the dome and setting everything up in just a few hours. I hope the weather will turn nice? In any case, there will be a little more work to be done within Unity, perhaps a few updates but at this point, it’s rather just tweaks, agreeing on how much should the projection mapping cover, carry out final tests and voila, everything should be in place. Contingency is as well, just I don’t have a parsons t-shirt (gotta get one).

In any case, I wrote this blog in advance as I just know how much work in coming and how much I should be doing and it’s very likely delays will happen (now hopefully not anymore 🙂

Dome Deconstruction Timelapse

So, Playtech took place and so I did not appear, as I had another thing due, taking place the entire day at the other end of the river. Not that end, and perhaps not a river but a bay but it’s New York, so who knows what is it? A peninsula? An atol? As ridiculous as it may sound, google maps tells me it’s part of Long Island Sound. In any case, I had to hack-a-thon, for an entirely different course, from 8 till 8 at a navy yard, although before heading out, I obviously prepared a notch and a thon, just a simple contingency plan in case anything was to fail, an email with a set of failsafes to make sure everything runs smoothly even if it were not.

After hacking-a-thon, at some point, I noticed that well, no incoming calls were coming in, no messages really, meanwhile just us working and as I assumed, everything should have gone well, during the presentations I sent a message and I received a message that everything did indeed go well. And then later on I’d receive a warm canvas email, saying a few details. Later on, I just learned that the narration seemed perhaps a bit detached and perhaps the calibration of the projector but overall the Dome projection was received positively.

It would be cool to draw stuff with just simply tapping the dome and picking a pen colour, right?

So perhaps I’ll return a little bit backward and mention a few details that I just left out, due to the onslaught of details that there were. As I could not get many of the interaction methods that worked on google cardboard but could naturally not in a Dome, due to simplifying the interaction and focusing on the immersion and correct response of the audience, some things like: Plastic bottles being inside fish could not be there anymore. As in like an X-ray mode that one of the team members mentioned at some point. Getting that interaction was tricky but it was nice to see it in action. Upon X-Raying the fish, the bottle would be gone and a score would be assigned. But that’s part of the production-phase, especially at an art-school, especially in my case when exploration of capabilities and facilities take priority. Sometimes it works and stays like with dancing man releasing microplastics and sometimes, they don’t.

I should also thank Microsoft at this point, despite we’re living in these crazy times of everyone being surveilled, many not being aware and some not that much caring such as myself, with the addition of thinking to know where the world is headed with technologies, I like to take advantage of what is possible. Having a timeline in Microsoft Photos and quickly navigating back to the weeks and the photos, and screenshots I was taking? Extremely useful and surprisingly seamless. Looking forward to a world map with those attached and filtered!

In any case, this was the time in which we focus on using Madmapper and collaborating in Unity, sharing files, updating the skybox video, adjusting some parts, playing with Madmapper, calibrating the projector, calibrating the Madmapper, testing all, testing again, adjusting a bit more and testing again. Introducing some interesting effects and potential artistically pleasing solutions and getting ready for, well, what’s next.

360 Pre-Beta Dome Timelapse

On April.22, each team did a 5-minutes presentation showing where they are. After the critique on our instruction card, we need to add some slogans to it so visitors can easily get what kind of experience is in the dome. We also tested our video using the projector in the dome for the final round testing, the side voice has a bit echo but it’s ok, it might get better with the speaker on Earth Day. Before Earth Day, we need to have everything finalized, including finalize the video with water sound, finalize both poster and instruction guide stand. Then, we talked about Earth Day schedule and transportation, we need to be there around 9 a.m. and set up our dome and projector. This week will be very productive and we are getting ready for Earth Day!

this week, we visited LCCS for the last time before Earth Day. Having seen the projections, the middle schoolers have a much better understanding of the concept and were very excited to improve it for Earth Day. While there, we finalized the storyline and recorded the narration of Ella as Jimmy John the turtle. Charlotte and Laila also created many beautiful drawings for the dome. It was a very productive session and we will be working on adding the assets and finalizing the project.

This week was crazy.

From what I heard, Playtech turned out just right but there are still things to work on.

I should also mention at this point that I did try recreating the fish from drawings to 3D models in Rhino in a quite rough way. They didn’t end up imho too bad but still figured I’d mention.

And I had it a bit documented already so I’ll just push here a few emails I’ve done preceding to Playtech:

………………..

Date: 12th April

No, the skybox is not mine. Qiyao worked on it. I’m just putting together the Unity scene, testing it, experimented and made sure it’s stable (and kinda worked a bit with the projection mapping).

I had to set up a new collab environment, check out ASAP if it works, I’m uploading stuff as I’m writing this email (sorry I could not get it set up earlier). Basically, there a few more steps: enabling collaborate function in Unity and setting the seat options (owner).

So, as you join da team I’ve created for this project, you’ll be able to access it from Unity -> In the Cloud -> Ed Tech tesrt. At this point, you’ll probably have a 1 number of 2 number next to In The Cloud.

Once you access it, you’ll be able to download the package by going into Ed Tech tesrt (this will start Unity) and then -> Collab (Dropdown menu) -> Hamburger Icon (next to the three people icon) called View History -> Restore/Install newest commit

In case all of this fails, I’ve uploaded a new .unitypackage on the shared drive folder.

From things to note:

– Qiyao was working on an updated skybox, reflected text, clear sky, perhaps also different colours. To update the skybox you need to:

– Import the video file (just drag and drop into Assets folder, wherever)

– Find on the left-hand side in hierarchy (by searching or scrolling through) test2_2 (Converted)

– Click on it

– In the inspector on the right-hand side Video Player component there is Video Clip (and currently Dome Animation v3)

– All you have to do is drag and drop the new Video file into the box with Dome Animation v3 on it

– The skybox will automatically update, at first it will look black but once you play it, the skybox should run updated

In case you want to mess around with skybox options in detail, the skybox itself can be found in: Materials -> Materials -> Sky; and then you can browse through the shader options like Skybox Cubemap, 6-sided, panoramic etc. You can however, adjust the rotation of the skybox, which can prove useful during the calibration. Once you click on Sky, you’ll have the options visible in the inspector.

From other very important things:

I don’t know if that will happen once you download the project but if you use .unitypackage, it’s very likely your dome projection prefab will not work.

All you have to do, is import from your own hydrodrangeas project the dome projection prefab component, delete the existing one, throw in the new one. You may try doing the same with the existing prefab you import with the Ed Tech tesrt.unitypackage but from what I recall, that would just not work for some reason. If you import it again and add the component to Player in hierarchy, it will work.

I will try to update as much as I can before I go to sleep and perhaps also before the hackathon for Tech Media Democracy starts. But let me know ASAP whether anything doesn’t work, at the latest please text me or anything before 8:30, afterwards I will have very limited availability throughout the entire day.

It’s all a bit wordy but all should be included in case of what if, what may etc.

Post-scriptum:

– You can easily adjust last-minute colours of particular objects, like bottles by changing the material colours for: Plastic, Wieko (you may have to adjust both: Albedo and Emission colors)

– If you see missing scripts or even prefabs, don’t panic, take a look if it runs. I had to carve out GoogleCardboard stuff, so you may come across missing scripts but it works without them

– If you or anyone else hates the raining bottles, just disable ‘vending machine’ object in the hierarchy. The bottles disappear after 60 seconds, the scene runs well on my computer even for longer periods of time but if it doesn’t on yours, just disable this ‘vending machine’. If that doesn’t help, look up also the terrain and disable it. If that doesn’t fix it, idk, disable ‘xbot’ and ‘xbox (1)’ in hierarchy, as the mocap + shader combo releasing particles may be just too heavy

– If you can’t get madmapper configured on time, just use use Game windows in Unity project and adjust the scale slider

With all this, you should be set and be able to madmap anything you need!

I’ll try to push through any updates once I receive, either updated skybox or sound or other stuff. The base is there, even underwater sounds.

Hope all this helps if needed,

Cheers,

Fuad

Hello all,

Looking back at what happened two weeks ago doesn’t seem like much of a stunt, however, once you try looking back and see all the haze of everything that’s been taking place, you cannot really settle on what really happened on which day and what exactly happened, it’s just this much work, which just squeezes throughout time of which you eventually start losing track. And as I try dealing with a variety of courses and Ed Tech being one of them, dedicating you unscathed concentration on one, second, fifth project, managing, converging ideas and dealing with multiple, sometimes overlapping between projects stakeholders, I feel this all will likely replicate to the working environment for me eventually, which all in all is good.

Oh, now I remember what happened. We went on a trip to LCCS, where we converged the groups: Ocean Odyssey and Blussion and we were presenting the low-fidelity prototypes. I personally, decided to continue working on the Unity prototype in which I tried converging a variety of the ideas that popped up. I had a prototype created in earlier weeks, however it did not quite work as intended and so I discouraged myself from presenting it. Due to my experience with projection mapping, I decided to refrain from providing the user movement if it’s going to be placed in a Dome environment due to just, the experience becoming blurry likely due to projector’s refresh rate. While light travels unbeatably fast, there are some other processes that just doesn’t make the shift of colour within the scene immediate and all sort of stuff can start happening: ghosting, blurring, artifacts etc.

On the other spectrum, from Unity and the Google Cardboard prototype I created running on my Android phone, there were quite a few obstacles to deal with along. I had to install Android Studio to get the SDK package to get it running but even then I remained with other issues, how to recreate the interaction methods in a new scene? What sort of interactions should be in the scene? I chucked into it a counter system, along with basic colour shifting due to gazing on the objects, which in this particular case I kept as just simple cubes. I used Gaia Procedural Environments system to create a new environment but that was one of my first approaches to it, with the documentation being quite unforthcoming I had to experiment a bit and then refine the environment to feel more life-like. And then there were clashes between the plugins that I had to debug and make an attempt at resolving and then the waiting time to get the prototype built, which can take ages and in this case, it still would need a good about hour to get it all up and running.

The effort was relatively rewarding, though, as Gaia comes with some underwater post-processing effects that make it look as if you were actually underwater with the addition of appropriate and according sounds. The interactions worked and I eventually presented the cardboard prototype which didn’t quite look good within the google cardboard, unfortunately. I personally thought of the experience to be rather quite average but instead, I actually received quite a bit of attention and feedback, with one LCCS student remarking the experience as ‘cool’, others pitching in ideas, asking whether this can be done or that.

The entire point of this prototype was to give an idea of what is possible to be created, how the students ideas can be synthesised and to imagine how all of this could look in a Dome, where the entire environment would be rendered onto a 360 environment to be all around you, and to start thinking about how the experience should look like at a more refined stage later on.

I managed to work on the prototype while others did sketches, drawings and continued to discuss on what is needed to get the experience right. I managed to introduce an iteration in which transparent, red cylinders would be dropping from the sky and float down all around whoever would be experiencing it, with the option for them to act and make the cylinders disapear. A direct reference to some of the core features, ideas voiced earlier I believe in Blussion, where people could start cleaning the ocean or polluting it even more (the latter I did not introduce). I also started to tweak the colours so that they appropriately reacted with the 3D glasses which was quite a pain, a bit of foreshadowing of what was to come next.

Here is a demonstration of one of the problems I had, as I would keep on losing the interaction method once I descended below a specific level.

Afterwards, we were scheduling what each of us needed to keep working in the coming days, which assets, what narrative, recordings, all of that etc. And so we continued working.

PS: Also, I had a longer version of the post but wordpress decided to not update the thing and all was lost (note to whoever decided to work on a wordpress environment)

FINAL VISIT TO LCCS

Few updates#

A.  we continued to work on sound design and wrapped up coupled  detailed recording ( whoosh sound to full-fill the experience in Cospaces )

steps we still working;

The completion of the jacks, Milo scene.

On April.15, we visited LCCS for the last time. It was a busy day but we got what we need so far. We made a to-do list for LCCS students to create drawings/assets for Earth Day, we also documented each of their names for future credits. We did more research about the Hudson river ocean life, so they can draw specific species. After we collected over 10 drawings, I scanned them and polished them using photoshop. Also, the LCCS team wrote the script and facts and we have Ella’s voice recorded for a better experience on Earth Day. For next Monday, we need to finish editing all the new drawings we received (both blue and red world) and create a guide/instruction for visitors on Earth Day.

On our final LCCS visit, our team prioritized the following items:

Trash Trivia questions

We went over some of the questions and asked the students to come up with 1 fun question each. An example we gave them was: What would a visiting alien say is a huge problem on Earth?

Questions we collectively came up with are:

Whose fault is it that we are consuming plastic?

• Corporations
• -Factories
• -Fish
• -People
• -Plastic

What are the qualities of plastic? / If plastic were a person, what would their personality be like?

• Sneaky
• *Slippery
• Annoying
• Mean
• Fake
• Scapegoat

Costume/outfit for Earth Day

Ailisha suggested we use lots of leaves to cover the top of the torso completely and we decided to go with green and/or brown coloured outfit for the Earth Day final showcase. The leaves could be made of stiff paper or scrap fabrics.

Tent interior

Can be decorated with draped fabrics creating volume in certain parts of the tent. Richard made two suggestions: we make a green/brownish stream out of the fabrics; we put pots of trash inside the tent at different corners – but keep it simple/minimalistic/clean and maybe only use plastic bottles. Raquel and I decided to check out the NYC based scrap fabric recycler FabScrap at the wharehouse to source some materials for our tent interior decoration and Earth Day outfits.

Trash Trivia PowerPoint

Some aesthetic questions were addressed such as displaying the question at the top of the answer box, using a different layout that makes it obvious how many points a question is worth.

MC Script

Richard prepared a script for us to use on Earth Day based on his experience of Play Tech.

MC Script

 

Intro:

Welcome to Trash Trivia!

A trivia that will make you smile, pollution won’t be worth your while.

Everyone get comfortable first, adjust yourself to the setting, and let me explain the rules:

There will be two teams of 3, each side of chairs representing who’s in what team.

To determine which team goes first, I will ask all of you to touch your noses. First team with all their members to do so, gets to go first.
Then the projection screen in front of you will display a series of questions, kind of like a family feud style game board.

 

The board will display a question that will have multiple possible answers.

The team that has been decided to go  first will take their first guess to answer the question.

If they get it right, they will earn as many points as each answer’s point worth.

At the bottom of a question will display each answer point worth in parenthesis.

Ex. (Each answer is worth 2 points)

However, if the team gets it wrong, they will receive no points at all.

 

Taking Turns:

Once a team has answered (regardless if they get it right or wrong), the opposing team will take their guess. Once they give their answer, their opposing team will guess again. This cycle continues until the question is fully answered or if the time limit runs out. Each question will have a time limit of 4 minutes!

Once the question is complete, we will advance on to the next question.

 

Objective:

Team with the most points win!

Let’s get started!

 

Correct Question Responses:

“That is correct! You get [insert number] points for answering correctly!”

“You guessed it! That would add [insert number] points to your total score!”

 

Incorrect Question Responses:

“That was a smart guess, but unfortunately it was incorrect.”

“Very bright answer, but sadly it wasn’t one of our top answers on the board.”

 

Transition

Take a moment to observe the answers on the board. Think to yourself what you found shocking or interesting.

*wait for 10 seconds*

Is everyone ready?

Okay great! Moving on to the next question!

 

Conclusion:

(speak with enthusiasm and suspense)

That would conclude our game! I hope you found it fun, but now we are to reveal the winner…

Drumroll please!

*dodododoododododododo*

(scorekeeper reveals total points of each team)

[Insert team name] is the winner!

But honestly, we all are the winners here for taking the time to play our game. It’s all about the knowledge gained during the experience. Mother nature is a beautiful thing and humans shouldn’t be harming it any further.

We should all treat our home with respect, but unfortunately not a lot of people know the truth behind pollution’s effects.

We thank you so much for your participation.

Have a nice day!

(on way out, someone hands out [biodegradable leafs] to participants)

Sound Effects

Raquel and I thought we should record some voiceovers of the kids saying things such as “That’s a creative answer, but it’s not what we’re looking for.” or “Better luck next time”. We wanted to use these instead of the current sound effect that plays everytime someone gets the answer wrong. But the kids liked the existing sound FX and thought it was fun. As a result we did not do the recording.

Schedule and tasks for Earth Day

MC schedule:

12-12.45pm Bolor/Raquel

12.45-1.30pm Iba/Alisha

1.30-2.15pm Kamali/Pearl

2.15-3pm Iba/Alisha

3-3.45pm Kamali/Pearl

Overview

The Play Tech experience was so much fun! We received a lot of feedback from our LCCS team which consisted of Richard and Ailisha on the day. We played two games with each game consisting of 3 questions (This took us good 45 minutes!). The teams that participated were made up of families, friends and, we’re quite certain, also kids who most likely just met on the day (i.e. who are not friends or from the same family). It appeared that the participants enjoyed the game and everyone, including the parents, engaged well with it.

Key Takeaways

1. Structure the game so that each game starts with an easy question, followed by a medium difficulty question and ends with a difficult question.

2. A buzzer or another system may be needed instead of the nose-touching to determine who goes first -> we decided to keep the nose-touching idea.

3. Strikes (X’s) on the PowerPoint are unnecessary – we did not use them as we allowed each team to take turns with the answers instead of following the exact Family Feud style where a team continues to give more answers until they get the answer wrong.

4. A contrast colour background for the questions would help highlight them better on the screen.

5. Simplify some answers to make them easier to guess: e.g. instead of listing South African countries individually as the right answers, one could simply say South Africa and receive the same points.

More to follow…