La Cucina Futurista MARGARET RIVER
LA CUCINA FUTURISTA: THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN ROADTRIP From the initial studio description, The Great Australian Road Trip began the semester with a touch of mystery. Not giving away too much information, we learned that the studio would be partnering with “Lûmé, a cutting edge, multi-disciplinary and multi-sensory restaurant”, where the projects would require students to create “an interactive projection mapping event.” Teaming up with a real life business was the first win and secondly, given the chance to learn “marketable digital skills within the VR relm was the second win, win. So what ecactly is the experience we are taking part in creating, well im glad you asked. As RMIT Industrial Design students, we have created 6 X 3 minute digital animations of locations around Australia. Each with its own story, the diner is taken to that location visually but also through their tastebuds as they are presented with food from the region simultaneiously. Using the first half of the semester as skill building, the second half was where the true action began. Splitting up into groups of 3 and 4 we perpaired ourselves for the MAMMOTH task ahead. (Mammoth... like the Mammoth Cave... ah you’ll see, just stay tuned!) We received a Location script with running thems directly from Lûmé where we could take their general direction and just run with it. Our group received the ‘Margaret River’ region along with a dark story which boosted our excitement levels. Finally a time to be creative through narrative. Immediately the group was throwing ideas around of how the story should flow, it was safe to say that we hit the ground running. Pioneering a VR experience for diners, Lûmé too is reeking benefits from this partnership. Setting up 3 large projector screens accompanied by an interactive circular table, the scale of this project carried emmense pressure for the students.
wvMaddison Ryder Project Manager
Desiree Riny Technical Officer
Vikram Kalidindi Creative Director
Marcus Cher Mentor
CONTENT
1 - 2
LOCATION
3 - 8
STORYBOARD
9 - 1 0
RESEARCH
1 1 - 1 6
THE BOTANICAL GARDENS
1 7 - 2 6
MODELS
2 7 - 3 2
DANDENONG RANGES
3 3 - 4 8
UNREAL 4 ENGINE ANIMATIONS
4 9 - 6 0
CONCLUSION
MARGARET RIVER Found on the West Coast of Australia, the Margaret River Region is a popular destination to see the beauty of this land. Attracting thrill from the waves to the caves, Margaret River is home to a seemingly endless list of adventures. Starting on the beautiful coast, lay with white sands and crystal blue waters people swarm to watch the Margaret River Pro Surfing Competition. Athletes from all over the globe come to compete for the title of Champion, drawing hundreds of spectators. However this isn’t all that this location has to offer. Heading inland from the beach, the region is filled with hiking and mountain biking tracks. However one of the main attractions are the limestone caves, resting beneath the Naturaliste Ridge. With an abundance of over 150 caves, Margaret River is truly an explorers dream.
BIOPHILIA
1
Biophilia is the way in which we connect ourselves with the natural world. Image 1 is a representation of a visual connection with nature, as the living area is encapsulated by nature and thus allows the occupier to be immersed in it. The second image demonstrates the presence of water. This biophilic statement acts to calm anyone who encounters the body of water. Thirdly the presence of diffused light sets the mood for a particular space through soft movement. These motions and visuals enforce a sense of calm the people surrounding.
3
2
1
2
FIBONACCI SEQUENCE The Fibonacci sequence is a list composed of numbers that are the sum of the two pervious numbers in the list. This sequence has a direct link to The Golden Ratio, which is said to be a formula for what we as humans find beautiful or attractive. Occurring in nature, the golden ratio is displayed in each of the images 1,2 and 3. The patterns expressed in this way are alluring to the eye and has been borrowed in many other forms of human life, such as photography and the rule of thirds.
THE BOTANICAL GARDENS Getting out of the classroom and immersing ourselves into nature was the perfect way to become inspired by the natural world around us. With the mission of photogrammetry this photography session was a big learning curve and we didn’t end up using any image in the making of assets. However we did gain knowledge about how to set up for photogrammetry along with lighting tips and tricks and was therefore able to carry out a road trip soon after resulting in success.
MODEL DEVELOMPENTS The following highlights three separate model developments varying from organic shapes to man-made. Each group presents the base model at increments of its creation with an adjacent fully rendered hero shot. The programs used were Maya, Mudbox, Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Building up from one to the other, these programs have supported each other quite well and thus have enabled detailed and hyper realistic models to be fabricated.
SHARK BITE SURFBOARD
SPELUNKING HELMET
CAVE ARCHWAY
PHOTOGRAMMETRY Photogrammetry is the act of turning real life objects into 3D digital models by taking multiple images from different angles of the item. Then by inserting these groups of images into programs like Agisoft PhotoScan, the software calculates the fully textured model from the data in the images. To get the best results, images without shadows on the object was key, and therefore we needed to have a killer studio set up. Naturally, by being students we sourced the cheapest way to this photogrammetry studio. Vikram sourced all parts from Ikea, which consisted of a laundry basket (turned light diffuser), a wooden Lazy Susan (to rotate the model) and two white light lamps with clamps. All we needed was some furniture we found around the house to fix the lights too and camera equipment and we were set. As you can see on the following spread, the set up was successful and the model imported into Unreal Engine 4 translated all details perfectly, to give us an awesome beach rock.
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DANDENONG RANGES Venturing out of the city, we wanted to understand the environment similar to the forests found in the Margaret River Region... therefore a road trip was on the cards. Heading up to the Dandenong Ranges we were able to immerse ourselves into the feel of the forest as well as pick up some small assets such as rocks and twigs that we could translate into logs and boulders/cliffs. On our adventures we also performed some in situ photogrammetry of larger rocks or tree stumps, these proved quite difficult, as the lighting wasn’t ideal as it was too bright and therefore cast shadows on the objects resulting in unusable images. This journey was a very positive experience both in terms of progression in the assignment and team bonding, cemented over lunch in a small cafÊ in Sassafras.
UNREAL 4 ENGINE Unreal has been a large challenge four Margaret River group. The vast abundance of plugins and additional elements to the program makes time with Unreal lengthy when often playing a game of trial and error. However in saying that, the skills Technical Officer Desiree and also Vikram have built through these experiences makes any new challenge in the program easier and easier to overcome. Practise truly does make perfect. In the following section you will see progression from one element to another and decisions made as a team to better suit the aesthetics and ease of building each landscape.
BEACH SCENE The beach scene is situated after the Margaret River Pro Competition where the winner and a few friends and family still remain at the site. The atmosphere it light and brigjt like a warm summers day with only light white clouds filling the sky. Images to the right were references while creating the landscape. When modeling the length and width of the beach as well as the positioning of rocks (some in the water and some out) was taken into consideration to achieve a reastic environment.
LAND
Initally to shape the land, landscape auto terrainwas used. However it didn’t look realistic and made shaping the land difficult. We came to the conclusion that starting on a new landscape with the ocean already working was the best way to move forward.
OCEAN
The top two images display the initial ocean in the beach scene. Unhappy with the transparency of the water and its lack of interaction with the land, we decided to switch to the Ocean Shader.
SAND TEXTURE
The image above displays a sand texture that Desiree has created with maps from Crazy Bump. In contrast to the top left image, tessellations were increased through the landscape coordinate component to achieve a random and more natural look.
This map shows the bump the material has gained over the sands surface, adding to the realistic affect.
FOREST/RIVER SCENE On the right are two of the inspirational images used to simulate the aesthetic of the river scene. The calm water against mangled trees jutting out over the bank has been interpreted in a similar way to highlight continuity within our modelling and the Margaret River Region in Western Australia. The river has been created in sweeps and bends to add interest into the animation to give a hyper realistic and adventurous feeling. The following images are snapshots of the forest river scene, leading up to the Mammoth Cave.
We tried not to take ourselves too seriously...
...but we knew the importance of team work and to achieve great things we had to work as a solid unit... and that we did.
CONCLUSION... BUT ALSO AN INTRODUCTION
La Cucina Futurista: The Great Australian Road Trip has been an incredible journey that has allowed us to enter the world of Virtual Reality and also Mixed Reality. Working with a restaurant to the status of Lûmé has also been a once in a lifetime opportunity and opens up many doors for future collaborations. The five programs along with the mentorship of Marcus has equipped us with not only industry standard skills that will help us stand out from the sea of designers, but also social skills to help us do the same. Confidence has been built within the Margaret River team, where the responsibilities we have faced within these assignments can be reflected upon the ‘real’ world. So here it is not a conclusion. Not a completion of an assignment, rather the beginning of another that will be even bigger than what we have just experienced.
REFERENCES Caves Margaret River | Mammoth Cave Margaret River. (2017). Your Margaret River Region. Retrieved 17 October 2017, from https://www. margaretriver.com/attractions/caves/ 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design. (2017). Terrapinbrightgreen.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://www.terrapinbrightgreen. com/reports/14-patterns/#non-rhythmic-sensory-stimuli La Cucina Futurista: The Great Australian Roadtrip. (2017). RMIT Upperpool. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from http://upperpool. rmitidsites.net.au/studio-3-ind/ How the golden ratio manifests in nature. (2017). MNN - Mother Nature Network. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://www.mnn. com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/how-golden-ratiomanifests-nature