Thesis Progress

Here is a brief update on my progress from last week.

What I worked on was mainly playing around with this fractal generator that can make something like this:

Or this..

I have been really fascinated with what certain animations I want to mess around with. I got hooked on creating fractal animations from this video:

I wanted to create a puzzle concept similar to this effect. I came across this website: http://www.mysticfractal.com/mandalabeth_gallery/index.htm where it allows you to access certain versions of a program that allows you to create a fractal and export it as a OBJ file.

From the website I can generate certain fractal patterns by using mathematical formulas. Although I did not know what I was doing, I read up on the manual that the program came with, I played around with certain formulas to create this:

I imported the OBJ into Maya and created a simple animation to see what it would look like.

This is what the program looks like when you open it.

This is where you can import functions:

Here is my simple animation:

So after messing around with a fractal generator, I decided to combine the mobile puppet tool into a new level and create a new world using Quixel. Quixel is a new software that links into your Unreal engine and lets you use their library of 3D objects with textures that were created with photogrammetry. Here is a video of the new feature:

So here are two videos of me messing around with Quixel and the puppet tool in the new world:

And then I wanted to see what the fractal animation would look like in the world and some free special effect materials in Unreal:

The effects came from a Unreal starter pack. I was messing with textures.

Next steps to work on are functionality and design. Design and create an abstract shape that can be animated and controlled by the AR phone. Think of trigger animations and building materials.