Idyll

3D Design
3D Modelling
Programming

School Project
Semester 5

For this assignment we had to create a virtual reality world, which we should be able to view in a 360 view in VR glasses. Together with my classmate Romina Kroll we brainstormed a lot on what we could do, eventually we decided to go for a world in which islands were created in the clouds. The end results were stunning and down below you can view the final stereorenders in your VR glasses yourself!

Click the link here to download the full stereoscopic renderings. They are best viewed within VR glasses. For oculus glasses it is possible to download the app 'DeoVR Video Player' and view them stereoscopically there.

The Story

Once upon a time, a young boy and his parents lived in a small countryside house, far away from the noise of the city, on the edge of a small lake. The family lived off of the land, cultivating their own crops. One year however, a winter like they had never seen before came: Despite the family's efforts, the crops did not survive. With all their harvest lost, the parents had no other option than traveling to the nearest town to buy food. They agreed that their son should stay behind to look after the house. From his bedroom window, the young boy watched the car's lights fade into the mists of the night. He did not mind being alone in the house: "the stars will keep me company" he thought. Sitting on the frame of his window and staring at the sky, he drifted away in a deep sleep. Suddenly, he was woken up by beaming lights: he noticed a stream of lanterns floating over his house and ascending to the clouds. Unlike the others, one of the lanterns seemed to be floating down closer and closer to his window. Mesmerised by the lantern's delicate dance, he was overwhelmed with a feeling of peace and calmness. Reaching for the falling lantern, he felt that all the worries that the winter had brought had been wiped away by the warmth of that light: 'I wish this moment would never end' he wished out loud, as he finally brushed his fingers against the paper of the lantern. In a flash, the lantern turned into ash in a matter of seconds. Still in shock, the young boy almost did not realise that the floor had started rumbling, while a loud cracking sound echoed from the outside. Instinctively, he rushed downstairs and out of the house, as he finally stood outside and looked at what was once his home, he realized the ground he had lived on had been placed in the sky, like a floating island. He ran towards the dock and screamed for his parents without and answer. Suddenly, it came to him, the lantern had listened to his wish, and he had to undo it so his parents could find him. Sadly, most of the lanterns had disappeared under the clouds. He thought of grabbing his fishing rod and fishing his magical lantern out of the stream to reverse his wish. There he still sits, hoping to find the right lantern in the middle of the sky.

Idyll Process

Creating Idyll required a lot of trial and error. Our first step was to create our main island. We did this in Zbrush so that we could add a lot of small details in it.

One of the longest and most time-consuming steps of our project was to find and create all of our assets. Some of them were downloaded from the internet and optimized and some of them created by ourselves completely. All of the materials were created and optimized in Substance Painter.

Since our world was supposed to take place in the clouds it was important that we created realistic clouds that were also managable to render. We created them ourselves in Houdini and added them later to our file in 3Ds Max. Besides that we also decided to implement some waterfalls coming from some of the islands. These were created with Phoenix

Important to our story was also our character! He didn't have to be perfect since we wouldn't use any close ups, but he had to be realistic enough to fit in our scene. After going through a few phases in 3Ds Max, Substance Painter and Marvelous Designer we ended up with this little guy.