Outside In
| This project was done as a part of the Creative Technology course assignment, 2021. You can find the Unity project by clicking the Github icon. -> |  |
Introduction
The theme behind this project was to find a way to bring the outside world inside. With technology that can allow us to do this, we chose to do an AR portal. These allow people to hold up their phone, cast a doorway into another world and walk through it! The content through the door can be a 360 video or a completely computer-generated environment.
Context and Audience
With an interest in Pokémon, especially with the new Pokémon Movie, Detective Pikachu, so drawing inspiration from that, the augmented room I decided to portal to was going to be an abandoned science lab used for Pokémon (like in the movie).
The intended audience proves to be children and teenagers. But this would be suitable for any Pokémon fan.
The intended audience proves to be children and teenagers. But this would be suitable for any Pokémon fan.
A little backstory (with the Pokémon involved in this project): A group of scientists are offered funding into genetic research if they agree to try and clone the greatest ever legendary Pokémon, Mew, the result is success and Mewtwo is born. However, Mewtwo is bitter about his purpose in life and kills his masters.
Design
The user would be able to step into the abandoned science lab and explore. There will be certain features and objects in the scene that will allow the user to interact or play with them. This app can further be extended into a game or can move into multiple portals.
AR portal room plan
The user starts out with placing the portal. Upon entering the room, the user is placed into the abandoned Pokémon lab. The user can then walk around and explore the surroundings. Colliding into the PC will turn it on, triggering a flash or series of sparks. A translucent Mew appears from the Mewtwo chamber and starts flying around.
Extended functionality: There would be a bunch of Pokéballs lying around with Pokémon you could let out and play with.
Development
Starting with the building of the room, all the assets and
models were collected or built and placed in the environment.
Following a tutorial, the base setup of the portal was done. Most of the materials seemed to fade off well with the shader, but others were giving a little trouble. After going through a lot of material, the elements outside the portal seem to disappear well.
Not all the materials were responding to their given
materials, so there were objects placed without materials for the purpose of
completing the scene. Given more time and focus, more functionality could’ve
been added to the scene.
Another (still existing) problem was that the portal kept
moving a little along with the user, which meant that you needed a lot of space
to move in and around.
Evaluation
Final video project: GlobAR
Japonia
Our class thought up the idea of having a collection of "doors" to go through, more like the Monsters Inc. concept. Since we had all picked ideas and themes related closely to Japan, Japonia was born.
Japonia portal map
Japonia consisted of:
In future for Japonia we would like there to be hidden worlds, tasks in AR such as overlapping interfaces that interact with the real world and fantasy ones in AR.
In later development, we would like Japonia to feature more portals, varying styles and designs, some that are unlock-able by finding keys in the smaller portals.
