IMM Senior Thesis – Fall 2018

My second prototype was a written three act structure. The purpose of the three act structure is to organize the story of the short film. The structure breaks down the film in multiple parts for example there is a section called normal world, inciting incident, call to adventure, and more. The story is obviously crucial to the overall success of the film. For my film I am going to be switching up the genre is frequently so it’s important that I have a strong storyline that continues throughout the entire film despite the various changes it will go through. It can be very difficult to keep the story in order when dealing with multiple genres so this three act structure was helpful in organizing all of my ideas.

I had some classmates review my story during our last class meeting. It seems that the story was interesting and indep. This three act structure was about half of the film and I plan on doing another three act structure for the second half of the film. Something that I will keep in mind is making sure that I am creating a story that is possible for me to do. For example I have to make sure that I choose the correct settings to film and not plan a story line around a setting that I won’t be able to have access to. I plan on revising my story even more and will continue to make little tweaks and changes until I get my story line tight.

In my original prototype plan, I had said the 2nd prototype would be photographs of hand motions during crocheting. However, I was provided with a Leap Motion Controller the week before and decided to give that a go.

I attempted to setup the Leap Starter Development Kit (SDK) on my laptop and unfortunately in class last week, I couldn’t open the program or get the USB port on my computer to sense that the Leap controller was plugged in.

Although, this week, I finally managed to make the program work. I figured out that the Leap motion program senses the user’s hand (or hands), displays it on the computer screen, and automatically creates a rig for their hand(s). It’s really neat!

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get it to sense an object that the user is holding (in my case, the objects would be the crochet hook and yarn). I believe the phrase for sensing that is “tool tracking.” I wanted to figure that out for the next prototype phase, but sadly, I haven’t had any luck in finding the setting or application within the program that rigs objects. So, my next prototype, is going to be a mock up of how the interactive stitcher will look on screen. I’m going to take a screenshot of my rigged hand in the Leap motion app, and edit in the guide dialogue, the crochet hook, and the pattern. So I’ll be showing those prototypes and letting people test out the Leap Controller at Art After Dark.

For my second prototype, I decided to steer away from the visual aspect of things and focus on the implementation process. I worked in the program, Max, which I will potentially be using for the final project. I figured out how to set up my MIDI keyboard through Max and I made it so that the user can select between a number of different instruments to play with (just like any normal keyboard would). The difference is that I made it easy to understand, separating the different instruments families into categories and only selecting the instruments that create pitches, rather than sound (i.e. trumpet vs. woodblock).

Even from working with the sounds myself, I realized that a lot of these instruments sound terrible. The reason for this is because I was using general MIDI data to generate the sounds of each instrument. Based on the feedback I received, the main criticism was the quality of instrumentation and making each instrument sound realistic. Dr. Nakra suggested that I either find a source of instrument MIDI files online, or commit to a long and tedious process in Logic. Doing it through Logic would involve the following: play a single note with the instrument track I want, bounce that individual note as a wav file, import that file into Max, rinse and repeat with every note of every instrument. I’m still trying to decide on a realistic approach to the quality of instruments, and I’m glad to hear any suggestions. For the mean time, general MIDI instruments will be my audio source for the final prototype.

In addition to setting up the Max patch, I’ve also been researching on the function “Jitter” in Max, which will allow me to display graphics in real time. I hope that in the future, I will master this function and be able to implement my visuals into the Max patch.

For prototype 2, I decided to delve into some asset creation in the form of some weapon modeling. This turned out to be a slightly more harrowing task than I figured it would be, but I quickly adapted. The trouble was in just the couple of first days working with the 3DS Max software. I’ve used this software before so I’ve had some experience, as well as with other similar programs like Maya. However, it’s been a while, so it took some time and some tutorials to get used to all of the controls. The tutorial I used for the purposes of this prototype was this from this awesome series that delved into model creation, UV unwrapping, and texturing.

I wanted to create a bladed weapon for this prototype that could eventually be brought into Fallout 4 as a wieldable single-handed melee weapon. Following the aforementioned tutorial, I followed his workflow while he created his blade and translated that to the creation of mine. I had a different design of blade than him, his a modern kukri and mine a WW2 pilot’s machete, so I couldn’t follow it 100%. Regardless, I think I made a pretty awesome model.

Then it was on to the texturing in the program Surface Painter. I never used this program before, but I followed the same workflow from the same tutorial and created something much different than the example he was making. I wanted an old machete from some soldier long dead from the time when the bombs dropped. Thus, this machete is textured to look very old, worn, and damaged, but still sharp enough to cut a fool.

So there it is. Everything I did for prototype 2. I ultimately had fun doing this and can’t wait until I manage to get it in game. I hope to be able to also model a gun or two for my final mod as well. I learned from this prototype that modeling, UVing, and texturing takes a bunch of time to do it right. But to me, is very worth it.

The second Prototype I was working on focuses on more of the story I was writing, as well as the adding more to it. The feedback will help me fully complete my story and become the main idea for my project. I hope to fully get advice for the story and use that for writing. If more detail is needed, it will be added. However, I did not get much feedback for the second prototype, and hope to finally finish the story. This prototype told me to continue writing and make something amazing. I hope to make it all the way.

For my second prototype, I constructed a row of my spice rack out of cardboard and paper. I’ve noticed that I’ve been having a difficult time getting others to picture my project, so I decided to build a simple visual aid. I plan to present this at AIMM After Dark as well. My cardboard rack includes my intent to implement a tracking device that will know where every spice is on the rack. I will also explain the alternative QR-esque tracker that I discussed in class with Professor Ault.

Presenting this prototype was not my original idea. I had planned to work with Arduino and LEDs this week, but decided I really needed this visual aid for presenting purposes. I am still challenged with researching sensors and finding a way to work this into my project. This has by far been the biggest obstacle in my path. I hope to at least discover a solution to this before my third prototype.

I learned a lot from talking to Professor Ault about sensors. Instead of something involving RF, I could look into QR codes with a camera constantly tracking the position of all the codes above the spice rack. For this, I’d need some sort of tiered design instead of a stacked rack. This prototype has opened the floor for more questions and understanding from people I present this to, which has also led to more in depth discussion and contemplation on my part.