SEA OF STORIES
ROLE : TECHNICAL DESIGNER | SEPTEMBER 2016 - DECEMBER 2016 | TEAM SIZE = 4
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OVERVIEWThe Sea of Stories is an attempt to create a computer generated pice of art for VR, which means all the assets are created within Unreal Engine. In doing so we hoped to discover rules of composition for VR as a medium for art. The experience itself is an exploration of a fantasy world with an ocean and it's currents each a visual representaton of a story.
As technical designer my role was to assemble all the different pieces to create the experience and handle all the real time rendered components of the experience. |
OVERDRAW
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Due to the nature of the world being largely fluid based almost all of the Unreal Engine materials used are transparent. This means all objects that overlap in the viewer's field of vision needs to be rendered multiple times. Furthermore, Unreal can't detect obfuscated objects and hide them. Our solution was to manually disable invisible elements and objects that don't contribute to the viewer's field of vision at a given point in times :
1) Player is encapsulated in a sphere during a certain duration of the experience. During this phase the entire external world is disabled.
2) Sky is disabled when the viewer is underwater.
1) Player is encapsulated in a sphere during a certain duration of the experience. During this phase the entire external world is disabled.
2) Sky is disabled when the viewer is underwater.
BAD PERSPECTIVE
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A slightly less obvious reason causing poor performance in parts of the experience was bad perspective. When the viewer was placed inside the current, the camera is aligned with the direction of the current. This means the entire geometry is projected to a tiny area of the screen causing massive overdraw. The solution was to simply realign the currents to prevent this scenario.
PARTICLE COMPLEXITY
SHADER COMPLEXITY BEFORE OPTIMIZATION
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SHADER COMPLEXITY AFTER OPTIMIZATION
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Another aspect involved in creating a dynamic fluid world was heavy usage of translucent particle systems. A simple trick which can be used on elements such as fog and water splash effects is decreasing the density of particles and increasing the size and opacity of the particles to reduce complexity while achieving similar visual aesthetic.
