In the Thursday class Mairi went over the deliverables for assignment 3. This did help me as it reminded me of all the smaller things that need to be submitted and we could all ask any questions we had. I would have liked this to have happened slightly earlier in the semester to be a bit more organised.
We then went to the Empathic Computing Lab (ECL) to talk to our stream partners and experts. We had a few people in different fields of expertise offer their time to talk to us. I loved hearing about their current projects as it was all very interesting. It was a good opportunity to ask any questions, some not project related. I had a really great in depth discussion about a project where an AI can read EEG graphs with 80% Accuracy to determine what emotion the individual is feeling. This doesn't apply to my project but it was incredibly interesting to discuss as I am also a psychology student.
Even though a few of the people we talked to didn't have projects or technical knowledge that applied to me, listening to them still provided really useful insights and knowledge. This served as a reminded to always be open to hearing from everyone, even if you think they have nothing useful to offer.
It was also interesting to see that the ECL had a wide variety of members with different backgrounds, including designers. It definitely made me consider post graduate studying to be able to work of projects like these.
Related to the project, we had a unity expert come and talk to us. This was incredibly valuable as I was able to ask all of my questions around unity, animation and 3D models and feel I now have a better understanding of the process I need to be following. It's also comforting to know I now have someone to reach out to for help.
There was a lot of anxiety around making this VR game with no experience and no help, and looking back on it I think that was stopping me from wanting to jump in the deep end of this project.
I am very grateful Mairi set up this connection and I feel so much better about the project.
I will be spending the entire 2 week semester break doing as much unity and 3D moulding and animation as I can. I will be creating storyboards and concept plans, per the experts suggestion. I will then learning how to rig an animation in Blender and continuing to build my game.
Empathic Computing Lab. (2023). [Logo]. http://empathiccomputing.org