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Creating Worlds from Paintings

7/14/2020

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The Mission

Here in the Polygonal Mind team we always try to reach new heights when presentings our visuals. Our latest environment which we created on VRChat is a testament of that.
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On this article I wanted to talk more about how we developed this idea to create the world and from where it comes.
Resources

  • An Artist you like
  • The software of your preference
Creating worlds from paintings
Bringing 2D into 3D

Momus Park was the first time we tried this with surprising results. For those who don't know, the majority of the textures used are based on the The Starry Night from Van Gogh. Trying to imitate the spirals and the brush strokes from the sky and the city on the models.
Momus park in decentraland
Momus Park
In this project, we took these ideas and methods a step further, by not only trying to recreate the texture but also the looks inside the painting. Creating in that way a world in which wherever you went or looked, you experienced the sensation of being inside a painting, uniting 2D and 3D.
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Actually, this is not a new concept, however most of the 3D works that try this method are static images or videos, an impressive technique and design without a doubt but it's a shame that you can't go around the world they created.
Where to start

Once we have limited what we want to do and the feeling we want to get, it's time to gather references and styles.

In this case, we were looking for artists that had painted open aired spaces and gardens, since the main theme of this world it's called Avatar Garden. Meaning that the player have to have places to walk throught, select the different avatars and relax zones where the players can meet with other people.
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The other condition that we put ourselves was that it had to be a classical painting, since we were connecting the 3D and the 2D, we thought it will be interesting to join a classic art medium with a new one. Putting this two things together inmediatly gave us the thought of the impresionist movement, with artists such as Claude Monet or Édouard Manet.
Un bar aux Folies Bergère - Édouard Manet
Un bar aux Folies Bergère - Édouard Manet
Water Lilies - Monet Series
Water Lilies Monet Series
This style has a lot characteristics that make it ideal for this, the textures have a lot of personality with a strong presence of brush strokes and spots of colours, making it really easy to create tileable textures. Finally after reviewing a few artists, we decanted ourselves for Gauguin and his tahitian landscapes.
Gauguin painting
Gauguin painting
Take notes

Once we have an artist selected, it's important to take notes. Each artist has a particular style that took years to develop, and if we want to recreate their paintings or artworks, it's a must to try to imitate these details. In this case we can pinpoint a few things from the get go that will helps us in order to recreate it:
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  • the colors are saturated and very strong (red, greens and yellows predominate in the scene)
 
  • the brush stroke is visible, characteristic of the impresionist movement.
 
  • the shapes are represantive, not a literal representation of the object (as the impresionists said, recreate the impression the object left)
 
  • the cool colors are used very scarcely and in zones that is inevitable their use, for example the sky or the darker parts of the jungle.
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When we have these main points clear it's time to prepare the props and the assets. To get started, we created some of the most basics props to fill a simple scene. That way we can define more details and polish the models even more.
3D trees based on paintings
Original models based on the painting on the right
Gauguin painting
This also helped us to develop a pipeline that allowed us to work more efficiently, which more or less consists of this:

  • create a list of models and textures you will need.
 
  • try to use tileable textures, it will be preferible to use that as base for the models, for example in this world, we created a single texture with colour variants from green, red and yellow.
 
  • create the models and try to reuse the textures, if a texture is required, ask yourself if it will be possible to repeat it, if it's possible make the texture tilebable so that it can be reused, if not, paint the model in Substance to recreate the strokes more faithfully.
 
  • we can use the transparencies to add more details on the models and recreate the texture of the bushes and trees (more of that in the next point).

Finally, in the spirit of Gauguin, we decided to change the world to an island instead of a garden.
Improvise, Adapt and Overcome

Creating this pipeline gave us an idea about what we will need to make, however it's not as easy as that. As always happens in these kind of projects, we found a series of problems. Especially when adapting some of the assets into the paintings style.

There were times when we had to reject some models because even though the final result may look impressive, the time spend on it, the resources it took or the number of tris, made the process not worth it.
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For example this tree below (reference on the left), to recreate it we put a base on the leaves with a green texture, and them we recreated the yellow strokes with transparent planes. On the right you can see the tree in the process. Sadly we had to drop it because of the reasons stated above.
Gauguin painting
original tree
3D tree based on painting
tree in 3D
Other example comes from the vegetation, in particular from the bushes, since the forms are not very detailed, if took a lot of tries until we achieved a satisfying shape, it was a difficult time to make because a lot of times they resembled deformated spheres. Since this was a necessary model, we repeated the model until we achieved the desired result.
3D bushes based on painting
Final shape of the bushes
The most important lesson from this point is that not everything comes as one imagines it, so when you arrive to this, is important to stop and think about it. It is necessary? it is taking a lot of your time? how can I change it? This is normal, so it's important to improvise, adapt and overcome.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
If you keep going you can finally obtain the desired results, as you can see:
100 Avatars world in vrchat
100 Avatars world in vrchat
100 Avatars world in vrchat
100 Avatars world in vrchat
Conclusion

While working on this project we discovered that it was a good way to test our limits, and what we can do inside an enviroment project. We tried to recreate a paradise that Gauguin viewed when he first traveled to Tahiti. All in all, I hope to see you there.
Vacation cat

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Laura Usón
3D ARTIST
Passionate about videogames, movies and creatures. artist by day and superhero at night.
Cent
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Worlds in VRChat, uploading and doing cross-platform environments.

7/2/2020

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Upload worlds to vrchat cross platform
The Mission

Uploading something to VRChat is extremely easy and it has made a new dawn for community content as the Unity Engine has a flexible editor that can help you create amazing worlds where to hang out with your friends.
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Creating content is good, but better is to do it in a way that everyone can enjoy it!
Resources

  • Unity 2018.4.20f1
    • Android SDK installed
  • VRChat SDK
    • VRCSDK2 for Legacy Worlds and Avatars
    • VRCSDK3 for Udon Worlds (alpha)
  • Photoshop
Creators that think about optimization and user experience are cool meme
Before doing anything, let's keep some important stuff in mind:

Of course, first of all you need to have the SDK imported into the project in order to upload your content. Never mix the SDK2 or SDK3 in the same project, do clean uninstalls of the sdk prior to uploading or migrating the projects as it can corrupt your data. Currently (22/June/20) the most stable SDK is the VRCSDK2 as it contains the legacy inputs and triggers for worlds.
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As the official page says: "Choose wisely."
vrchat choose your sdk wisely
https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/choosing-your-sdk
Worlds with cross-platform support share the same "seed" or "world-id" provided by VRChat once you upload the world for the first time. There is no real limitation for the PC version more than having a thought on lower pc machines and not to overload the scene with RT events or graphics that require real-time processing.

To start the port to the Quest version, first of all duplicate the project as a way of back up and also to make the convenient tweaks you think you have to do to match the hardware limitations of the platform. The Unity profiles is a great help to know what is loading and how much is taking to render each frame of the camera.


As a creator, you should keep an eye on the performance of your world:
  • Tweak and polish performance, learn to know how the Unity Engine behaves itself with the data you are giving:
    • "Static" gameObjects in scene help Unity improve framerate by freezing their render batching.
    • Use the less shader passes as possible. (Keep transparency usage low)
    • Bake lights and avoid real-time lighting for Quest
    • Use only one Directional Light in mixed mode to fake normals into bakes and to give Avatars detail and light direction (as it was a "sun" light).
 
  • Set up an Occlusion Culling matrix and optimize it to make the engine only render what it has to be visible on screen.
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  • Keep the collision complexity as simple as possible, avoid using mesh colliders and instead recreate your scene with box colliders or other primitive shapes that grant fast-loading and good player interaction with it.


For the Quest version (which is the version that is going to run on an Android platform with graphical limitations), keep in mind the following hard specifications:
  • Keep the build file around 30 mb. All worlds that exceed 50 mb won't run on Quest.
 
  • Texture size space should be kept the lower the better, pack atlas and keep it as a square 1024px texture when possible as they are read faster than higher texture sizes.
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  • Keep the material list low.
Useful links:
https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/quest-content-optimization
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightMode-Mixed.html
https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/submitting-a-world-to-be-made-public
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/OcclusionCulling.html
https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/setting-up-the-sdk
Prepare Unity to be able to upload scenes to VRChat

Once you have created and optimized the scene for your first time upload (PC build), just click the Show Control Panel button to do all the work to test and upload.

This window will ask you for an account in order to start working, log in and you will be granted access to upload your content.

The tab "Builder" is going to be your bestie during the upload and preparing the scene, this tab will tell you whatever is wrong with your world and will give you instructions to avoid errors.

The first thing it will tell you is that you dont have a scene descriptor. Scene descriptors are gameObjects placed once in the scene as "directors" and managers of the scene content and the rest of gameObjects. They state general behaviours and manage the spawns of players.
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Create an Empty gameObject on your scene, call it Descriptor and add the Component VRC_Scene_Descriptor to it. Then create another Empty Object, call it Spawn and make it son of the Descriptor. You can place more spawn points and add them to the array list. The gameObjects work as a transform point to place the player when entering the scene.
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vrchat sdk show control panel
vrchat unity sdk builder screenshot
A common developer screenshot of the builder
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You can customize the orientation of the player spawn, by default is the Z-Axis (blue) in charge of the forward direction.
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Once you have this basic setup, you now can press the big button and upload your content for the first time!
Configure vrchat world 100 avatars
Once the SDK packages all your data and makes it ready to upload, prior to start it will ask you to put the name and other descriptions to your world (Unity will go play mode). Do a thumbnail, state tags or mark specific content and check the box prior to upload.
If you want your World to be public you must have at least "Known User" to be able to send it to Community Labs and let VRChat review if your World is good to be Public.
My PC build is live, what now?

Next steps are important, first of all duplicate your project, this way one project (development ended) will be the PC version and the other will be the Quest/Android version. I usually make use of the PC version as the master and the Quest version a semi-automatic downgrade.
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Once duplicated, open the project with Unity. We are going to need the project in Android, once its open, go to File > Build Settings. You will see a list of diferent platforms to build your project with. Click on the Android platform and next click "Switch Platform".
Unity build settings android
Click on Switch Platform and wait until the process ends. It may take some time, depending on the size of your project. Once ended the platform switch, the Unity environment will be set with Android.

With the change of environment, you will no longer be able to do local tests so keep in mind to do "core" stuff on the pc build prior to duplicate the project. Use this project as a downgrade on texture sizing, high level compression and low-near-zero dynamic or real-time events being displayed on screen. With the same scene, the descriptor will be mantaining its World ID and with the upload the World will be updated with Quest support.
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During the upload keep all info input the same as the PC version: name, tag, description...
Useful links:
https://docs.unity3d.com/530/Documentation/Manual/android-sdksetup.html
https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/cross-platform-setup
That's it, we hope to see your amazing world over VRChat!

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Alejandro Peño
TECHNICAL ARTIST
Videogame and animation enthusiast. I aspire to become a great videogame artist and developer, providing enriching experiences for those who share my passion.
Linkedin
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Kourtin
ENVIRONMENT ARTIST
I purr when you're not looking. I'm passionate about environments and all the techie stuff to make them look rad. Learning and improving everyday to be a better hooman.
Twitter
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