States of Mind - Room media test

Okayyy, so following on from my previous post about using a story as an emotional catalyst to illustrate this "states of mind" idea I had, I've been working in Maya to create a room which showcases three stages of this story over time. The first story I decided to go with was stillbirth, or miscarriage in the late stages of pregnancy. As stated previously, this was inspired by the events in the intro to Pixar's UP.

So I started off with the first version of the room, which was all about excitement, happiness and expectation.

Started out by modelling the basic shape of the room and then modeled the individual crib parts with the idea that they had come out of a flatpack box, sort of like IKEA products. This is to show the progress of the room as later versions would show the crib built and completed. I also included a ladder at the wall as I'm going to have a mural on the wall (again inspired by UP) to suggest their excitement and obvious glee in the expectation of their child as they handpaint the mural to add a personal touch to their child's room.

This image shows the sunlight streaming in through the window to fall on the crib parts, to convey an idea of happiness and lightheartedness.

This image shows the mural in progress, and shows the bump maps applied to the wooden crib and ladder.

Floor is super shiny, and so is the crib! Need to fix this be decreasing the specular rollof and the reflectivity. Added in an obvious light source - a bare bulb, to give the room a bit more light. Kept the bulb bare to again help to illustrate the progress of the room over time, as future iterations will have a lampshade.

Above image shows the room in it's finished "constructing" stage. I added in the flatpack box to suggest the parents were so excited about decorating the room that they have yet to discard the box in their haste to get started. I also added in a dustsheet over the shiny wooden floor as I realised that if people are painting in a room, they'd usually cover up any surfaces that might get paint spilled on them. Some paint tins were added in on top of the ladder. All in all the bright and mellow yellow colour of this room is supposed to convey a relaxing yet happy enironment. I tried to keep the shadows soft and unimposing, and keep the room bright all in attempt to add to this excited, all-round contented feel and create an atmosphere of safety.

Above image shows the second version of the nursery room, the "completed" stage. The ladder, paint tins and dust sheet have been removed and the mural has been completed, as has the crib which now stands basked in the sunlight steaming from the window. An empty rocking chair sits by the finished crib, to enhance the idea of "expectation" and "excitement" as the parents have set up where they will sit in the room already. A storage dresser for baby clothes etc has been included on the right hand side, and a baby changing station on the left. This iteration would have more props such as baby clothes stacked on the dresser or baby changing materials, but I have yet to implement them as I was trying to get something finished for the progress presentations which would clearly illustrate my idea, so I didn't have the time to include all the props and elements which would be in the final iteration. The lampshade casts a really horrible dark shadow on the ceiling and this was not intentional nor do I think it looks good. This is because the volume light I used to light the whole room is situated underneath the lampshade, but moving it cast the lampshade shadow in other ways so I've yet to figure out a good lighting technique to remove this brash dark shadow. Also there needs to be a light bounce reflection on the floor from the sunlight and the actual lamp itself. I want to include a light fog effect for the sunlight to show off some small dust particles in the light stream from the window, not just purely for aesthetic effect as I think would also help to illustrate the importance of the crib and symbolise that this baby is literally the light of the parent's lives. 

This image shows the room in the "after" stages, after the suggested miscarriage or stillbirth. The room is drastically darker to immediately create a contrast and imply that a horrible event has taken place. However, the sunlight visible outside and the resulting light on the crib, I felt, was a bit jarring to the image and took most of the effect away.

So I decided, it would work better at night, rather than putting curtains up. It also suggests a darkness of the mind and mental state. The moonlight falls on the crib in an attempt at poignant lighting. All the shadows in the room are very dark, and looming and almost suffocating to create an idea of grief and suffering. There are also cardboard boxes on the floor and dresser with "Charity" written across them, to imply that the baby clothes have been packed away to donate as they are no longer needed. This iteration is really dark and all 3 stages need more work done to them, but I just want to have something ready to show at the presentation on Thursday, to give a general idea of what my project is, and how it's progressed. 

Nursary scene research.

Created a mood board which represents the main assets I'll need to make. Full asset lists below

Nursery Scene1 - Constructing.

LADDERS.

DUST SHEET.

PAINT TINS

CRIB PARTS

CRIB BOX

WALLS

WINDOW

FLOOR

CEILING

LIGHT FIXTURE

LIGHT BULB

Nursery Scene 2 - Constructed.

CRIB COMPLETED

TEDDY BEAR

VASE

TULIPS

BLINDS

DRAWERS

CHANGING STATION

NAPPY BIN

NAPPY BOX

TOILETRIES

FLOOR LAMP

LAMPSHADE x2

ROCKING CHAIR


Nursery Scene 3 - After Stillbirth
CHARITY BOXES
(Main focus in this scene is not to introduce new geometry, but to let the lighting and colour do the talking about the tragic event that's taken place.)

Brainstorming

Took Ryan's advice and had a bit of a brainstorming session with a friend to see what input they could give me and just to help shape up my project and make it a bit clearer.

So had a bit of a chat with Lorna and hashed out some ideas.
Came to the conclusion that the "states of mind" project idea will need a story behind it to act as an emotional catalyst to put the rooms into context, instead of just being a visual representation of a generalised idea of "depression" or "paranoia" etc. Also that the rooms are supposed to be relatable and provoke an audience reaction, even if it is just recognition of what has potentially happened.

Some examples of powerful relatable life "stories" that could act as catalysts are; Death, Breakup, Marriage, Birth, Alcoholism, Marriage, illness -Cancer.

Another idea was to take a single room and go through the story using 3 or 4 different processes, looking at the intro to UP for inspiration. The things the people within the house are going through is very evident in the house itself. The colour scripts for UP do a particularly good job of representing this emotional journey.

The nursery room in particular, redecorated to the travel room, is a very powerful scene.

Also, after his wife's death, the house becomes more like a museum and her picture stays out on display, and he still keeps her empty chair beside his.

In terms of conceptualising a room to fit a story and show a state of mind, we started thinking about a scene which has a certain degree of dissonance. For example; a calendar which shows the wrong month for the season outside - indicative that something is wrong i.e death or depression (the inhabitant(s) couldn't be bothered to change it.)

Also thinking about how something would look when folk are happy - clean, tidy, everything looks really fresh. flowers/plants etc. This would actually be more difficult than showcasing a depressing atmosphere.

Take something like a nursey, how would that look progressively over time if something bad, like stillbirth,  happened?

1st version of the room would show boxes everywhere, half painted walls and a crib in construction. screws all over the floor etc.
2nd room version would show progressively more baby stuff, maybe even some daffodills, painted fully and brightly lit - springtime - happy.
3rd version would be  darkly lit, empty, jumpers and baby toys etc put away in boxes - the baby was never born - sadness, grief, death.

I'm going to start putting this scene together to show at the presentation next week and illustrate how a room can change over time and showcase the state of mind of the character in relation to the events they are currently going through.

Supervisor Meeting 04.03.13

Had so many setbacks this week what with my laptop hard drive failure and having to try and sort out getting it fixed, it's been stressful to say the least. As a result of that I tried to get on with what work I could in terms of case studies, dissertation intro and a tutorial but after speaking to Ryan I know that I really need to just get my head down and get as much practical work done as possible to show at Crit week presentations. I hadn't yet started work on my final project piece so at least I didn't lose anything there. This weeks tasks are all about preparing for crit week. I need to show how my project has developed and changed since then, and show my practical response to feedback so that means firing out a lot more practical development work that is relative to the project piece. If I can't get a lot of maya work done, Ryan said that I should be prepared to provide detailed information on exactly how it's going to progress. I need to pick up the pace and make up for lost time.

Essentially, don't go out this weekend, work in uni as much as possible to avoid distraction and speak to peers about my project and get there input which will help to frame and shape the project more.

Fog Attempt

Okay, so after reading up on the different lighting patterns and techniques used in games to provoke a specific emotional reaction from the audience, I had a go at creating a creepy graveyard scene using fog. A bit cliche yes, but I thought better to start with something that is easily recognised and identified with as a genre.

I found a tutorial on creating fog using fluid effects to create fog, without it being too taxing on the machine.

So I started off following a tutorial which involved assigning a 3D tecture to the fluid effect, which ends up controlling must of the fog. Initially it looked like this, pretty grainy and not too great.

So I fired in a point light on top of a candle to generate some more atmosphere. The fog was too low down and seemed to be absorbing the effect of the point light before it had a chance to light up the gravestone.

Changed the render settings Max Sampler to try and get rid of some of the grainyness of the fog.  I thought maybe including a directional light to simulate moonlight would help bring some more visibility to the scene.The point light still wasn't going a very long way to lighting up the grave stone so need to fiddle about with the decay rate settings and intensity.

Increased the intensity of the point light above the candle. Still too dark, I'm not sure if the fog fluid is mucking up the lights or something, but the point of this tutorial was to generate a fog effect and for a first attempt I'm pretty pleased with the turn out. Increasing the bias would make the fog thicker and create a different effect but for the purposes of this tutorial I wanted to see how fog could add a horror-esque feel to an environment. Will probably try and create a larger scene with dispersing or perhaps even animated fog next time.

Lighting and Emotion

Lighting and Tension

Light is simulated by the manipulation of these following influencing factors;

Brightness/Luminance
Colour
Hard/Soft shadow quality
Direction
Variation over time.

Lights in a scene will interfere with surfaces and other light sources and introduces the effects of brightness and colour contrast, colour bounce and shadows. The temporal factor is believed to be key to the effect of this approach due to the nature of the eye and it's need to balance the projected colour in order to achieve white colour. For example, when projected with red colour, the eye will try to compensate with cyan to attempt to achieve white colour, causing the eye fatigue which in turn directly affects the participants stress level, and has a knock on affect on arousal. 

In a lighting analysis study conducted by Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Niedenthal, Igor Knez, Priya Almeida and Joseph Zupko for GameStudies.org; they analysed an array of films in order to determine a selection of patterns of lighting which could then be further broken down into the following categories;

• 1. Patterns which subject the audience to a series of low contrast images followed by high contrast images, and vice versa, (in terms of brightness or colour tone eg warm/cool) increase projected tension
• 2. Patterns which subject the audience to low affinity of colour, followed by high affinity of colour, and vice versa, (in terms of saturation/brightness/warmth) increase projected tension.
• 3. Patterns which subject the audience to a long duration of high contrast of high affinity colour (in terms of saturation/brightness/warmth) causes increased projected tension.

Typically, the greater the contrast in a visual component  the more the visual intensity or dynamic increases. The greater the affinity in a visual component, the more the visual intensity or dynamic decreases.  

When speaking of intensity or dynamic it is in relation to the emotional reaction the audience/player feels. The reaction can be emotional (laughing, crying, screaming) or physical (tensed muscles, covering their eyes or fidgeting.) Normally, the more intense the visual stimulus, the more intense the audience's reaction will be. (Block. 2001. The Visual Story - Seeing the Structure of Film, Tv and New Media.)

The above patterns have been embedded within games statically by manipulating of materials and lighting in levels. Horror games such as the "Silent Hill" series are a good example of how lighting patterns can be used in games in order to contribute to and enhance gameplay.

Survival Horror games typically create their emotional effect by establishing and maintaining a state of vulnerability in the players mind. This is usually achieved by keeping the player in the dark in terms of knowledge about whats going on - to maintain an element of suspense and tension. Visuals are used to enhance this feeling of vulnerability by keeping the object of terror, be that a monster or a creepy looming objective destination, at least partially obscured, enhancing the "thriller" aspect of the game. Obscurity can be produced by anything that blocks clear perception ie : darkness, fog and blocking by architectural objects (occlusion).

This particular genre of games appear to rely on contrast, be that the contrast of day/night, light/dark, and warm/cool. In the study conducted by El-Nasr et al, they found that both Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2 have a similar day/night cycle over the game as a whole. That is to say, it begins in the daytime, followed by dusk and night to be completed at dawn or sunrise. Typically, the majority of all action in these games takes place at night or in foggy moonlight, where there is little bright light sources and a lot of contrast and visual obscurity. Much of the action takes place away from natural light sources in the interior spaces, creating the feeling of tension and a sense of being trapped. 

El-Nasr et al state that the lighting patterns identified above are most often experienced in time through the exploration of virtual space; that is to say that they are reliant upon the players movement from one environment to another. Most game environments are currently built with static lighting which allows for little variation in order to account for state change or tension, and can often bring the player out of the narrative context and in doing so, break the immersive emotional power of the game.  

Dynamic Lighting

Simulated lighting in virtual game worlds, like light in real space, has an effect on the emotional experiences of players. The established link between visual sense and emotional response shows that game designers have a vast array of powerful tools at their disposal with which to create and manipulate moods and atmospheres, as well as being able to directly affect the mental state of the player. Like much of environmental narrative approaches, many lighting techniques used in game have already been established in traditional media such as theater, film and architecture. Game designers have adopted these established techniques and practices and applied them to the game world to enhance the sense of aesthetic space and control the player experience by  determining the materials and scene lighting to generate a particular feel and atmosphere for each game level.

"While many lighting principles can be borrowed from film and theatre lighting design theories, the interactive nature of games distinguishes them substantially from film and theatre." - El Nasr et al ( http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/elnasr_niedenthal_knez_almeida_zupko )

Games are dynamic and interactive, therefore they are unpredictable in terms of lighting as the freedom afforded to the players will interfere with the player positions and cannot always allow for realistic lighting or perfect reactionary lighting effects which are relevant to the narrative context..  This is where Dynamic Lighting comes into play. Dynamic Lighting is a simulated illumination which is calculated in real time, enabling reflexive and relevant lighting calculations which can account for interactive real-time variables such as player positions, narrative context and camera movement. An example of a game which uses this type of lighting is Skyrim from Bethesda. 

The lighting changes with camera movements (if you stare into the sun, there is a glare, and shadows change depending on position.)
This use of dynamic lighting enhance player immersion in the game world and allows for more dramatic content and emotional experiences in comparison to methods which rely on static lighting.

Lighting is a complex process. Moving the position of or changing the colour of one light could change the entire perception of the image/environment, or it could have no perceptual change at all in relation to the current colours used in the image and the context. Vast and minute changes in an environment, and its relative connotations, can be achieved by changing the parameters of colours, positioning and angles in relation to the textures, colours and materials within an environment. Dynamic Lighting therefore requires a dynamic system which take into account all these variables and produces the right effect in relation to the current narrative context and game state. 

Typical...

After having a discussion about backing files up and how I'd never suffered a hard drive failure in my life....my less than 5 month old laptop hard drive decided to give up for no reason last night. It's now been put into a repair shop to get looked at and should hopefully be back in working order with a new hard drive installed by next week. Most of my files were backed up, with a few exceptions. So for folk reading this, back up your files, sudden death of the hard drive for inexplicable reasons does happen, and I couldn't be more gutted for it.

Anway, issue getting dealt with, onwards to more work and practically living in uni for the foreseeable future...