<aside> 🔗
</aside>
In this Devlog I will go over my contribution to the Enschede Weaving Factory project. For this project I took up the role of clothing/character artist.
On the first day of the project, a meeting was held between the team and Rob Maas, in which he explained the project, his wishes as the client, and expectations from the final product. During this meeting, Rob made it clear that the aim of the project is showcasing the factory in a realistic manner with historical accuracy. While the initial files of the project include an outside neighborhood around the factory, the focus for our contribution is to make the inside of the factory. An immersive atmosphere is expected, including the warm, loud, dusty, and dirty conditions in which people had to work.
My contribution for this project would revolve around creating the workers in the factory, with the main focus (in accordance with my learning goals) on creating clothes using Marvelous Designer. I focused on setting up and familiarizing myself with the programs and tools I would be using.
Since both Marvelous Designer and MetaHumans would be completely new for me, I spend a couple of weeks exploring these programs. This meant following along a great deal of “beginner” tutorials (Marvelous Designer, 2022) as well as reading up on the official documentation (CLO Virtual Fashion Inc., 2024).
With art specifically, I have a strong believe that learning through practice is incredibly valuable. Which is why I spend a large amount of time learning these completely new programs.
The more you f*ck around, the more you find out
The final product delivered at the end of the project was a live scene of a 1920s-1930s weaving factory with workers made using Metahuman creator, Marvelous Designer and motion capture suits. The factory is decorated by assets such as lockers, crates, and boxes, as well as the rows of fully animated machines. According to our research, each worker was in charge of approximately four machines, and the factory was built to-scale, meaning the worker to machine ratio shown in the project is as accurate as we could make it. The loud sounds of the machines can be heard all throughout the factory, as well as the occasional cough from workers. We wanted the focus of the experience to be on realistic atmosphere, with heavy fog and low lighting in the factory to represent the conditions the workers had to be in during that time.
Once in the experience, the user’s only means of interaction is through a VR headset. We removed the use of controllers as to avoid steep learning curves and long queues at the exhibit. The user can teleport between teleportation points within the factory by maintaining their eyes on the point they want to teleport to for approximately 2-3 seconds.
Lastly, a trailer was created to showcase the project, including both scenes outside of the experience, as well as some inside.
Table of contents