Phobia
*The video is the collection of student works in classes VR/AR Fundamental. Our project starts from 08:57 to 13:57
Date
May 2021
Teammates
Jun Zhou
Jason Xu
My Role
Ideation
Animation
Unity Scene Building
VFX Building
Tools
Unity
PR
Awards
2021 Future Lab
Background Reasearch
During the lockdown of the COVID, VR techniques have experienced explosive growth throughout the world, including their application in offices, entertainment, and even fitness area. And spring 2021 was the first semester continuing the in-person teaching since the outbreak of the COVID virus. We want to build something to celebrate us being able to gather around in person again. So instead of each of us wearing the headset and enjoying ourselves respectively in the virtual world, we are more in favor of building something that people can watch together and share this moment with each other.
Regarding this as our guiding philosophy, we eventually decide to accomplish a short 3D projection animation that will be played in public. It uses the same techniques and technologies for making head-based VR and AR (3D modeling in Unity, ortho-stereoscopic projection, spatial audio) but to make a projection-based virtual- and magic - wall.
Principles of 3D Projection

First, we need to figure out the underlying working mechanism of 3D projection. We have checked a lot of materials to summarize that physics law into the following 4 principles.
1. Only horizontal displacement of objects in left and right images is allowed. There should never be any vertical displacement.
2. When the left image is displaced to the left of the right image, parallax is positive and the image appears behind the screen.
3. When the left image is displaced to the right of the right image, parallax is negative and the image appears in front of the screen.
4. When there’s no horizontal displacement at all, parallax is zero and the image appears on the screen.
Applying these principles to animation making, one straightforward way is to simply overlap the original video clip with another layer of itself, but with a certain distance deviation.
Video Sources
Projector Stacks
Up & Down
3D Glasses
Fear (AI)




Ideation
Equipped with a good command of the basic physics laws that support the project, we begin to brainstorm the theme and the theme and plot of it. We get the inspiration from the previously released NETFLIX Series "Love, Death and Robots" and decide to build our content based on three core elements, emotions, AI, and human beings.
Self -Awakening
AI

Turing Test
Replaceable
Intellectual Ability
Experiment
Scene 1: Birth
System Initialization
Cathedral + Classroom + Train + Chaos + Tunnels
Aware of the weird surroundings
Transition: Portal A
Scene 2: Train
Survival Test
Train + Murder + Zombie + Death + Flurried
Running into the unknown zone for escaping
Emotions
Fear (AIs)
Horrible (Audience)
Seeking to Survive
Arrogancy
Transition: Portal B
Human Beings
Dominance
Fear (New Tech)
Loop & Repeat
Inhumanity
Scene 3: Death
Witness AI's death
Classroom + Ghost Student + Zombies + Creepy
Jump into the tunnel for saving himself
After determining the theme and the mood board, with further research on the unique style of Japanese horror movies and rumors, we choose 3 scene locations to develop our story, which are the church, a train, and a classroom respectively.
The script tells a story that scientists are continuously repeating inhumane experiments on the AIs to testing whether they are intellectually sophisticated enough to survive the game. Based on a simple yes or no result, scientists tune different parameters, hoping to create AIs that have self-consciousness, enabling them to pass the game. While from an observer's perspective, while looking at CCTV, we realize that these AIs already have generated emotions like fear. And this could be counted as evidence of the origin of AI self-consciousness. If the experiment continues going on, it's hard to predict whether humans can get along with these AIs. They might even raise the banner of the rebellion and destroy us. But we don't plan to give the audience a concrete answer here, an open ending might be more thought-provoking.
As for the transition part, we come up with the idea of using a tunnel to transport the main character from one place to the other. This solution intends to bring the most shocking visual impacts on the audience since the 3D glasses will provide them with an illusion that the tunnel is running towards them.
Production
Portals: VFX Effects
The technical difficulty is mainly concentrated on how to build portals of high quality. They ought to stand out in the whole project since they meant to surprise the audience with their magic 3D effect. After looking up the related knowledge online, we decide to directly build it in the VFX system from the HDRP (High Definition Render Pipeline) mode of Unity.


VFX Source Code
Parameters
Demo
Other tunnels, for example, the green one serving as the transition between the train station and the classroom, is also built in the same way.
Animation
To make the objects and characters move, we use a blend of "Animator" and "Animation" functions in Unity to create a coherent incident. By inserting time stamps and tuning the relative object position and the rotation at that specific moment, we are able to make every frame match our expectations. Moreover, for the more complicated movements, like the walking of a zombie, we use the template from the "Mixamo".

When we finish recording all the footages in Unity. We create the opening in AE and edit all of the audio and video sources in PR.
Exhibition
We have displayed our work at the 2021 Spring IMA End-of-Semester Show and 2021 Future Lab. During both exhibitions, we have heard positive feedback from the audience saying that the visuals are impressive and they totally understand what we are trying to convey. We exchange ideas with some of them with thoughts on the opening end. Below are the photos of the scene.
Reflection
The improvement is mainly about the script, especially for the ending part. If we have more time to construct another scene and the animation. We may want to show the process of falling after jumping out of the school's window. We have an idea of while falling, the AI tries to flip himself around and discovers that the AI previously he saw in the school who committed suicide is on the top of a huge pile of stinking bodies. Our main character doesn't suffer from sudden death, after enduring a long and silent time of loneliness, he gradually closes his eyes and the experiment goes on. This could dig more depth into the topic of AIs originating the self-consciousness and meanwhile echoes the foreshadowing details.