Week 4: Post 1

At what point are you in your research? 

    At this point in time, I already have my topic and my research question established. I am now attempting to render my environments. The idea is that I am going to have the same landscape of the environment but I am going to have different looking assets (trees, grass, sticks, rocks, etc.). This is so there won't  be an actual difference between the two, just that one is photorealistic and one is non-photorealistic (almost like a video game). I am using Maya Autodesk to establish the floor of my landscape and using Unreal Engine for the assets. 

    I have to say that I am a bit overwhelmed.  I have so many questions as to how I am going to complete the two environments while also making them look aesthetically pleasing. Does every asset for both environments need to be in the same location? How am I going to ensure that every coordinate is exactly the same for each asset? How can I properly import my Maya landscape to Unreal without it looking bad? How am going to get the same assets for both environments? 

    I partially have a solution for the asset part. Unreal Engine has a plugin called Quixel which allows you to download free 3D assets that are very realistic. I have used it before but I am just worried that Vicki will not like some of the assets that they have to offer because of what the low poly assets look like (which will be for my non-photorealistic environment). They are not the best looking assets so I fear that she might want me to make my own. Vicki also tested positive for Covid today so I will most likely not be able to communicate with her for the next week. 

    With that being said, I have looked on some of the Unreal Engine forums with questions regarding getting coordinates for each asset. It doesn't look too difficult for me to implement it using C++ and some CSV files. I am going to need some help from Ville though, so I am going to ask him how to do that correctly. As for the actual asset portion, I have looked at Blender, which is a 3D graphic design program, to see how I could potentially make my own assets if it comes down to it. I am hoping that I won't have to render my own assets as that would be very time consuming and it would be yet another program that I would have to learn. 

    I'm going to email Vicki with some of my questions and hope for a response. I am really hoping that this doesn't take me 3 weeks to complete as I still want to run participants in this study. In the meantime, I'm just going to complete my Maya landscape and hope for the best.