Major Project I - Final Project
ChenYuhan / 0378131
Major Project I / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Final Project
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INSTRUCTIONS
LECTURES
Project Management Document:
Major 1 Proposal:
A few months ago, I started Secret Tarot, a first-person VR narrative experience where players enter a vintage study late at night, pick up tarot cards, and watch the room dissolve into surreal memory scenes. The concept was simple on paper: minimal interaction, maximum emotion. Three cards. Three memories. One small room that becomes a gateway to someone's past.
What I didn't anticipate was how many invisible walls I would hit before the player ever placed their first card.
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| Fig. 1.1, study room, week 9 |
The study is the emotional core of the entire experience. It needed to evoke a sense of warmth, tranquility, and a touch of unease—a breathtaking space. I built the core scene: a wooden table, a chair, two candles, and a window gazing into the distance.
Lighting was the first area where I truly needed to be creative. I wanted the candles to be the primary warm light source, with the deep blue moonlight complementing the cool tones. Adjusting this contrast took longer than the modeling itself. On the monitor, the scene looked atmospheric: warm wood, cool shadows, and a sense of enclosure.
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| Fig. 1.2, Lighting, Week 9 |
Demo presentation:
The scale in VR allows for no deviation. A table that looks perfectly proportioned on screen feels like a giant's table when you stand next to it wearing the headset. The chairs are too tall, the windows are too big. I had to rebuild it.
The breakthrough came when I stopped relying on the monitor and started performing gray-box testing in VR. I modeled rough geometry, exported it to PlayCanvas, and tested it in the headset.
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| Fig. 1.3, test in PlayCanvas, week 11 |
Initially, I struggled with choosing between PlayCanvas and Unity. Unity boasts a powerful XR interaction toolkit, a superior lighting pipeline, and a vast resource library. PlayCanvas, on the other hand, is web-based, lightweight, and allows for rapid iteration without lengthy build times.
I ultimately decided to use PlayCanvas as a prototyping sandbox. My logic was: if I couldn't achieve a sense of space in a lightweight engine, forcing in the complexity of Unity wouldn't help. I used PlayCanvas to validate the scale of my research, test basic WebXR movement, and perform gray-box testing on my first memory scene—the "Fool's Garden."
This two-stage approach proved incredibly helpful. PlayCanvas became my sketchbook. I could test layouts and interaction logic in minutes instead of hours. The plan was to port the validated design to production later, but for this first major project, the priority was validating the loop's effectiveness in VR.
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| Fig. 1.4, Garden in PlayCanvas, Week 12 |
After the study's interactive system stabilized, I began creating my first memory scene: the Fool's Garden. In the story, this card represents the innocence of childhood—a warm and open space replacing the suffocating study.
I built a gray-box version in PlayCanvas: trees, paths, and flowerbeds.
The contrast between the enclosed study and the open garden is excellent.
I haven't added any atmosphere yet: warm yellow light, floating starlight particles, and soft mist. I'll add these layers after verifying the geometry of all three scenes.
Final Presentation:
FINAL PROJECT
Google Drive Link:
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