Jiaqi Wu | UI/UX Designer
MOLECAP
ABOUT THE PROJECT
MoleCap is a project that built by a team of 6 in 4 months. It aims at exploring possible proper input for Virtual Reality world in order to give the player a real immersive VR experience. We started out our project prototyping and exploring. Later on, using the knowledge we got from early stage we built an immersive music game.
MY ROLE
3D artist, UX designer, concept artist
In this project, my work includes:
Elevator to the specific section
RESEARCH & PROTOTYP
We were all very new to motion capture system when the project started. To better find out what mocap-VR combination can do, we started with a prototype month in which we developed 2 different prototypes with 2 different ideas to sort of test the boundary of this system.
ICICA
Icica is designed to let the player feel their body transforming to other objects which, in this case, is ice. This prototype focuses on body visualization and melting simulation.
Environment Design for Icica
To better prompt the player, as the player's body turning into ice, he can see that the environment is changing from indoor to outdoor. When in the indoor environment, the player can observe his body through a mirror on the wall. While in the outdoor environment, the player can observe his body through the water surface of the lake.
MOSICA
The goal of Mosica is to explore using indirect control to prompt player to stay inside the tracking area. Because as soon as the player goes outside of the tracking area, the experience would be cut to the end.
Concept Art for Mosica
My art input for Mosica is mainly concept art. As the prototype requires analysing music and visualising the sound frequency based on how players interact with it. The idea is that the lighting effect would change according to the gesture of the player. I referenced a lot of stage lighting and produced a set of concept art.
FINAL PRODUCT-BUBBLE TOWER
After prototype phase, with feedbacks from all the playtest and faculty. We set out to develop our final product: an immersive music game in which player will be standing on a humongous round piano to play specific note. As the game proceed the player will also be lifting from the bottom of a tower to the top of the tower.
Design Process
I started with concept art before jumping into modeling. I created multiple concept art pictures of the environment and piano to show to my teammates and instructors what the world is like in my imagination. I don't think it's a good idea to start modeling before knowing everyone is on the same page.
Piano Interaction Concept
These two pictures are the visualization of the piano keyboard in the virtual world. I want to explore things like how big in scale it is compared to the virtual body of the player, and how would it feel like to have the piano lifting up.
Environment Concept
The environment is always a little bit more important in a virtual reality world than in a regular video game world. In order to decide the tone for this world, I did two sketches that depict two different worlds.
Changing Envrionment
Being lift up to somewhere high is a really important part of our experience. However, during playtesting, we found that it is not as simple as we thought to bring that part of the experience to the player. Because: A, players were often too busy with the gameplay part and not paying attention to the environment; B, there was no adjacent building in my original concept, players can't realize they were being lifted up without reference.
Our solution to this problem: A, build an environment that will change rather drastically during the lifting up process; B, adding floating islands to the setting as their reference.
Therefore, I created another concept shows that the environment is going through seasonal change while playing. And floating islands are all themed according to the season in that level.
3D Model of the Tower
Screenshots from the Game
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POSTER DESIGN
As for the poster design, I was trying to communicate the message "mysterious box". Because motion capture system is known as its cube space tracking area. And I designed that it has the same amount of tentacles as the number of cameras inside the system. One of the tentacles has grabbed a leg to indicate the sense of "motion capture" and also means that it's a captive and attractive experience we're developing.
