A 3D interactive experience that places the user in a virtual train station designed to increase awareness and support for the public transportation system in Vancouver
Status
Complete, not shipped
Role
Developer, Designer, Artist
Software
Unreal Engine 4, Blender
Beyond The Sky
Evolution
First Pass
The first prototype was built to demonstrate the scale of the station and give a sense of what sorts of engagements and features we wanted to implement.
Second Pass
The second iteration allowed us to get a sense for the material direction, creating a multipurpose interaction system and streamlining parameters that would allow us to make changes quickly and modularly.
Final pass
For delivery we polished the look of the station, added all the NPC audio/dialogue, displayed the signage/wayfinding and placed additional set dressing to bring the station to life.
Materials
Triplaner worldspace
The materials make use of world space and triplaner mapping to display a consistent resolution. Using this method I can optimize draw calls by applying one material for the walls, floors and ceilings.
Water and caustics
The water and glass materials use Thin Layer Translucency. This setup allows me to customize the shine, murkiness and color of the waters surface as well as applying the micro details on top. An added trick of Thin Layer Translucency is that we can simulate water depth and refraction using textures.
Decals
I made two decal variants, one that displays static images and another that displays gifs. Both decal materials have customization parameters that allow us to change the scale and position texture coordinates, emissive, roughness and normal strength.
Interactions
interaction Interface
The interaction interface drives all interactions within the station. It isolates references making it so that it doesn’t matter what is being interacted with as long as it implements the interaction interface. I made two interaction types in Beyond The Sky, the first is for general interactions and the second is for mobile interactions. the player can experiment which type of interaction will trigger a response.
Dialogue & Subtitles
NPCs with a storyline have a special system in place that plays a set number of voice lines accompanied by a text that displays in the subtitles. I developed this system to be expandable so that we are able to add any number of audio and text samples so that they automatically display when the player engages with NPC quests.
User Interface
HUD
The heads up display is a more overt implementation of UI. The HUD will display general information such as controls and screen overlays
Diegetic UI
Decals were also used to create in world UI known as diegetic UI. This signage adds believability to the scene while still giving context to the location and whereabouts of the station to help orient the player.
Player Guidance
This implementation sits somewhere in between diegetic and world-space UI. It’s not fully a part of the world but still indicates to the player what they are supposed to pay attention to.
Closing
Beyond The Sky was an immense learning experience. I worked with product managers, graphic designers, 3D artists and UX designers to bring this to life. As always, my goal is to create optimized experiences that deliver on the projects goals. discussing with the team and aligning on deliverables allowed me to step into a leadership role and help guide the team through technical challenges. Beyond The Sky helped me understand how to scope better and deliver on experiences driven by user research.
