Part of our experiments into digital nature and real time rendering, we explored the idea of creating a virtual world that kids and family could explore together at the same time. These are some of our results.
Our idea was the create a tropical paradise, a kind of place one would dream of going on a vacation, to explore the beautiful nature, but also the local inhabitants and their lives.
first you have to create an island…
Adding roads so one can drive around the island and explore a variety of places and vistas.
Adding roads is an important step in the process as it both establishes where other components will go, but also modifies the terrain. Here we see a valley being modeled with an adjacent road that can take in the vista.
Adding little villages and harbors make exploring fun, especially when you can hop on a boat and drive around, or dive into the water to watch the fish swim by.
Adding details, to make it interactive. Yes, these people can walk along pre-determined paths (with a little coding) and interact with their environment. This is beginning to become a fun place to explore… lets see more?
Those lanterns light up in the evening when the sun, in real time, sets, and given a breeze move to the wind as do the plants.
Yes the chickens ‘cluck’ and do their thing, looking for food.
And indeed those are birds flying in the sky, and an entire ocean to explore as well. Island hopping anyone?
Our Flow Graph for the AI ‘people’ in order to get them to move when ‘triggered’. That is, they don’t move if there is no one to see them and only move when the user comes into view or are within an area. Typically the AI will repeat their ‘path’ until the user leaves the area.