I’m happy to show to the community our progress for Architectual VR environments! We made a little video <here>. It was nice to experiment with cinematics, althought the place is built for the HTC Vive.
Basically, I’m hoping to get some feedback from the community on the quality and design and how we might improve things further.
One thing I haven’t figured out is how to handle the background (i.e. right now it’s essentially one building sitting on a large empty surface). Traditional backdrops don’t work very well since they don’t have perspective. I was thinking to build some ‘generic green hills’ that can be re-used as I build other environments. What do you guys / girls think?
Some solid work here. I’ll agree with EarVant that some shaders could use a bit of polish to really sell it. When many elements look true to life, all it takes is one shader to be off to kill the believably. I’d address the apple, wine/wine glass, and glass lamps enclosed bulbs. More roughness on the apple, with some simple SSS, proper translucency on the wine, and for your glass surfaces, read up on fresnel.
In terms of camera motion, I’d slow things down a bit and let the eye have time to explore the frame. More slow pans, less rotations. Try to focus more on establishing shots before pushing on individual elements. We want appreciate the layout and design of the space. Use focus to your advantage more, especially if you’re concerned about not having a finished bg environment.
If you want to highlight some nice details on assets, stage them close to camera while taking in the whole scene, but try not to center them in the frame. Another option is to split the screen and have the hero closeups in smaller windows on the right hand side of the frame, with a still or very slow moving larger view on the left-hand side of frame. If these don’t make sense, check out the The Third & The Seventh, it uses a lot of the techniques I mention here to make mostly architectural spaces feel very dynamic.
