Week4-Half-full, Half-empty

Hello Everyone,

This week Poland “beats” Japan and goes home in a very bad style. It was a very disappointing World Cup for me and Poland. My another favorite team, Germany, … I have no words.

Day1


I worked on creating portals in Unity. This is a set of 2 mirrors which are visualizing the reflection of what another mirror would show. This portals allow the user to go into the mirror-portal and teleport to the place what the mirror is showing. There is an asset called Vive Stereo Rendering Toolkit which is doing the task.

Day2


I was trying to build the models of the bowling of my own and add some spice to it. First, I created the 3D models of a bowling ball and bowling pins in Blender, with no colors added. Then, I used the ZBrush to add some rock roughness to the bowling ball and pins, ZBrush allows to edit the sculpture of the 3D model. Afterwards, I needed to unwrap the 3D model in order to be able to color the specific places of the ball and pins, UV Layout by headus was a perfect program for that job. Finally, to add some material and coloring to the ball and pins, I used Substance Painter. In Substance Painter, I could connect everything above together and add the final touch. Then, Substance Painter will create the maps (normal, height, albedo, metallic smoothness) necessary for Unity to apply all the modifications to the 3D model of a ball and pins.

Notes: I used the free versions of these programs, so don’t hesitate to try them out.

Day3


Data Visualization workshop

Day three was very interesting, because I attended the Data Visualization workshop taught by Sharon. I learned a lot about how the data should be presented in order to make it easily understandable for the reader. Also, I learned that it is not easy to make a proper chart/graph, and there the aesthetics are very important in order to attract the attention of the reader and make it clear for the reader. Moreover, it is very easy to fool our eyes, we only know what we see, presented to us. But it is important to see the bigger picture, which is often difficult (or even intentionally) to present to the reader.

Day4


I tried to fly the drone with the mobile application DJI 4 Go. This application worked well. Basically the app allows to control the drone using the phone, to see what the drone is seeing and to photo or film the moment. I also tried to use Pix4D mobile app, this app could not be used without having another app Ctr+Dji, which connects to the drone and sends the data to Pix4D. However, because I did not have an appropriate phone, the app was available for the phone in the Play Store, so I downloaded somewhere else.

Later that day, I did a very stupid thing and broke the drone propellers, I really don’t want to talk about it, but want to apologize Eric for it. It was so embarrassing and disappointing. I felt so bad. I am so sorry.

Day5


I know that I am behind my initial timeline, but I still have time and with all the skills that I gained during these 4 weeks, now I am able to build what I need for the rest of my project.

Fixed timeline:

Week5

-Starting building the 3D scene in Blender with texturing and import to Unity, creating the scene.

Week6

-Creating a 3D model using drone photogrammetry and importing it to Unity along side with the 3D model.

-Filming 360 static videos of the cemetery and inserting to the Unity scene as the hotspots.

Week7

-Hamilton conference

Week8

-Improving the project and preparing for the final presentation.

Have a good weekend!

JHA

 

Week2 -Finally

Hello again!

Finally, the World Cup has started. I am so happy, but also a bit sad. Because of the time difference, it is difficult for me to watch the matches, especially during my working hours, but that’s fine, I can follow the score from time to time and watch highlights.

Apart from World Cup, I have worked on my project and discovered so much about the capabilities of Unity, which allows me to do projects on VR.

Day1


I attended the DSSF workshop about building webpages with HTML & CSS, GitHub, WordPress in the library. It was a very interesting course and I have learned very important basic components in HTML and CSS. Also, I was able to create my first public website under school domain. It is a very simple website though, you can find it here.

Day1- 3


Before Day3 I was studying for the FAA Remote Pilot Test with Alyssa and on Day3 we went together with Dr.Remy to take the test. Fortunately, we have passed the exams and we get the certificate of remote pilot for Small Unmanned Aircraft System, usually called drones. So now I can legally and responsibly fly the drone and implement the drone into my own project, which can be very helpful in creating 3d models using photogrammetry.

Mavic Pro DJI drone

Day4


On Day4, I focused on embedding the 360 videos to VR environment in Unity. Actually, it is a bit funny how the 360 video is projected in Unity. We have to use a sphere to put the 360 video on the surface of the sphere, but then we have to “reverse” the film and put the film not on the outer surface of the sphere but inner surface. Then, we can watch the film from inside the sphere and look around to watch the film like a 360 video. I also used teleporting, so that there is a way for an user to teleport into the film, when she/he wants to, and there is also a way out, after getting bored with the film.

360 video within the sphere in Unity

Math fact: In order to reverse the film to play inside of the sphere rather than outside, we have to reverse the normals of the vectors that are projecting the film on the surface of the sphere.

Day5


Apart from video, what makes VR experience more “realistic” is audio (more human senses are “fooled”). I played with audio by adding some sound effects to objects once triggered or to object collisions, when at least two objects are interacting with each other. Moreover, Unity gives the possibility of using 3D audio by implementing the Doppler effect, which makes the sound have higher frequency when closer to the user. Furthermore, I even tried to add some sound when the user is walking to make it even more real.

Next week I will try to build the scene and start filming some videos to add to my project.

Thank you for reading!

Have a good weekend 😀

JHA

WEEK 1 (June 4 – 8th)

WEEK 1 (June 4 – 8th)

My first week of the Digital Technology Summer Fellowship passed by very quickly! I spend the first few days of the internship continuing to study for the FAA Remote Pilot Aviation test so that I can be licensed and certified to commercially operate a drone for the purposes of my project as well as to represent Gettysburg College to the public. I am finding the Part 107 Rupprecht Law Study Guide and part 107 FAA certification videos to be extremely helpful in testing my knowledge and learning new material! I am reviewing aeronautical maps, aviation symbols, weather patterns, and legal conditions regarding where a drone is allowed to operate and during what circumstances. This past week I have also contacted professors from my past classes to ask for their advice of how I should, for example, create my own layers in ArcGIS using field data I collected myself. I plan on not only using the advice given by these professors but to also teach myself how to carry about these operations by searching for tutorial videos and articles online. 

On the very first day, I spent a significant amount of time planning milestones, budgets, and goals. I also came up with an official list of the tools and materials I will need to conduct my project such as a drone, total station, Carvey Inventables (3D printer), and Pix4D program (photogrammetry software). I have arranged with Professor Principato from the environmental science department to meet next week when she will briefly show me how to set up the total station to measure land elevation patterns. However, the set-up and operations of the total machine will mainly be self-taught much like everything else in this internship because I will need to fill in the gaps of knowledge and learn to use the functions of the machine to the advantage of my project goals.

I have also familiarized myself with how to operate a Mavic drone by searching for tutorials and articles online as well as reading the manual. Although I am not yet able to operate the drone, I find it useful to become comfortable with the controls and operations. I have also completed tutorials for Pix4D in order to have a better understanding of how to use the program for my project. So far I have learned about the georeferencing, coordinate system, and spatial data features of Pix4D. I am currently considering using only Pix4D to create the model of the campus instead of ArcGIS as well because I believe the data may be redundant if I were to use both programs. However, my project is still going through adaptations and the final product may be different from what I currently have in mind.

Tomorrow I plan on completing more Pix4D tutorials as well as discovering how I can import my own data and images taken by a drone to the program. I am very excited to see what happens!

 

Pix4DMapper Pro’s rayCloud video animation trajectory