remy – Digital Technology Summer Fellows 2018

Hello Everyone,

The previous 8 weeks went by both so slow and so fast. On one hand, I don’t even remember when I took my drone license exam, but on the other hand, I feel like my first day of work was just yesterday. I really want to thank Educational Technology department for accepting me for DTSF 2018 and giving me the opportunity to tinker with technology. Thank you Dr. Eric Remy for everything you did for us, we always had the 100% support/help from you. Thank you Kaylynn and Marc for spending time with me and making the workplace more enjoyable. Thank you Renee and for cleaning for us after every single day. Thank you Eric (again), Greg, RC, Chris for the Hamilton Conference. Also, I want to thank everyone, who read my blog post, I really appreciate. At the end, I want to thank the team: Alyssa, Orrin, and Tyler, for co-working with me and spending time together.

Thanks to DTSF, I have learnt a lot about Virtual Reality, the technology which is still growing and has a lot of potential. I really enjoyed working/playing with VR, because I always learn new things about the possibility of VR. I hope VR could work on more platforms with more functionality and portable, so that more people could experience more VR contents.

During my first 3 weeks, I was learning Unity and watching so many tutorials about it. I started making simple mini “games”, where I tested interactions, physics, and movements within VR. I made some simple bowling, baseball, and tennis games. During next 1-2 weeks, I learned about Blender, where I designed my first 3d models, such as a tea cup, table, or assets for my mini “games” (bowling ball, and pins, tennis racket, baseball bat). In Blender, I learned shaping, texturing, UV mapping, and sculpting, which were essential for my project.

My initial project was supposed to be the Virtual Tour of the Gettysburg Battlefield, but due to complications with the National Park Service, I could not take any footage from it. In the end, I worked on the Lincoln Cemetery, which I think was a perfect choice, regarding size, location, accessibility, and historical importance. I did a simple tour of the Lincoln Cemetery, where I 3d modeled the cemetery with Blender, I created the photogrammetry 3d mesh with drone pictures, and I embedded 360 videos. I combined everything together in VR engine, Unity, where I added more interactions with the user.

At the end of this fellowship, I learned so much, I want to learn even more. I can make simple VR content in Unity and 3D model in Blender. Moreover, I can do drone photogrammetry and build 3d models out of it. In addition to what I have learned, I would like to learn making VR content in Unreal Engine, which is a bit more powerful and more options for VR. I hope IT and ET will continue working with VR and allow students to work/play with it more.

Thank you Eric again, I really am happy that I was able to work with you, and be able to learn new skills, which are helpful not only for now, but also for later in life.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Thank you and bye bye!

Best wishes,

JHA

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.

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.

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

Tag: remy

WEEK8 – Thank you and bye bye!

Week2 -Finally

Day1

Day1- 3

Day4

Day5