Learning and Play is to design a platform for an educational game using Virtual reality, in order to engage students in learning new contents. This project responds to the challenge of creating new teaching methods, capable to motivate curiosity to learn in an immersive experience through space.
I wanted to experience in first person the mood of the place and the building. The following pictures were taken in order to study materials’ textures, interior and exterior light, landscape environment, interior of the church and sense of scale. I took 618 photos and 37 minutes’ worth of video.
The blueprints used for the reconstruction were acquired from the Gunnar Bugge's. As the process of modeling the church was underway, a deeper comprehension was attained from the readings of Harris. The process used in reconstructing the church in Maya began to mimic how the church was actually built. In the construction of the original church, foundations were laid while columns were erected around it; bracings were eventually placed between the columns. The same process was used while laying the skeleton of the church. While modeling the church, poly counts for art assets were kept to a minimum in case of the project being ported to handheld devices.
Creating textures for the church is just as important if not more important than the modeling itself. The textures are what will give the structure an actual "feel" in this project. Learning what types of wood and how they were prepared for construction were essential for aiding in the creation of textures. Using the plugin xNormal assisted in the process of giving these objects a sense of depth with the creation of normal maps. The Stavkirke is covered in tiles that are shaped like scales. In order to replicate the difficult patterns and other delicate textures, a software called Substance Designer was used. This software is a material authoring and scan processing Tool that allowed me to utilize four distinct graph types: Node-based graphs, MDL materials, Math functions, and Noise Editor. Great time and care went in to replicating the dragon scales shillings on the structure.
To create the virtual reality experience, the software Unity3D was used. The environment that encompasses the Stavkirke intends to create an atmosphere of seclusion. The Stavkirke is in a valley surrounded by two mountain ranges, similar to the actual location of the church. The difference is that trees native to the area surround the site of the game, which act as natural barriers, blocking the player from accessing unwanted areas. Also, trees help to create a sense of direction towards the Stavkirke, located in a small region of the terrain. Players still have the ability to see the mountain ranges if they decided to look up, allowing the experience to act like a “vertical slice” of the project rather than a full game. During the experience the player is able to see fall colors around the church in order to create contrast between the Stavkirke (in dark browns) and the environment created by vibrant greens, oranges, and yellows. The location of the game also includes a small grave yard behind the church, and the lighting inside of the Stavkirke is darker than the surroundings in order to mimic the real-life locations. The plugin UniStorm created by Black Horizon Studios is a plugin that attaches itself to the Unity3D project folder and simulates real-time lighting and weather. This allowed for the customization of the virtual experience with minimum effort and makes room for more time spent on completing art assets and refining the virtual experience. Another plugin that benefitted the project was UBER Shader Ultra developed by Tomasz Stobierski. It is a plugin that takes preexisting shaders and renders them at higher qualities than the base Unity3D engine provides.
The objective of the project is to design a platform for an educational game with an immersive experience through space, and what makes this project unique is that students can download artifacts during the virtual experience and send them to a three-dimensional printer.
