This week is interchange week, I attended several events during this week. Unlike the previous interchange, I decided to try and expand my horizons more.
On Monday, I attended AI in healthcare, which was apart of Norwich’s science festival. I found it really interesting as the guest speaker talked about how it’s important for data to remain unbiased, and how despite AI becoming more advanced — there can always be outliers that cannot be predicted. For instance, the speakers mentioned a storm that happened back in the 1980’s. This storm ended up causing millions in damages, yet couldn’t be predicted. There is still a debate that even though weather models have become better at predicting over the years, there are still outliers that will be hard to predict (especially when not enough data is given to predict the circumstances of outlier)
On Tuesday, I attended a 3D modelling workshop since I really enjoyed working in blender during class and wanted to expand my skills. Even though this workshop was hosted in maya instead of blender, a lot of the skills are transferable. I really enjoyed this session and am considering placing my sword in my VR world (I made the mistake on not saving my cat I made prior to onedrive, so I ended up having to delete it.
I also attended a talk about the science of self: influence. This talk discussed about how people can influence others and themselves on a smaller scale. What particularly stood out to me is how I’ve learnt to categorize how I see happiness with my work. I tend to be very picky about what I make, and take a long time to make decisions, I am also more prone to self doubt. This would mostly put me in the maximiser category, but I also love efficiency and once I make the right choices with what I make or do I feel content. Seeing this comparison on how I am made me think about how I work. Despite my love of efficiency, I also procrastinate a lot looking for the ‘best opinion’. It made me realise that coming to a ‘good enough’ decision at times would allow me to allocate my time better during projects instead of dwelling on a specific thing.
On Wednesday, I attended an ‘imaginary beasts’ drawing session, while it leaned more on the creative side and none of the technological side it was nice to try a new artistic medium (in my case, crayons). It pushed me out of my comfort zone to create a new ‘imaginary beast’, but I’m glad I did as I enjoyed exploring my own creativity. later on that same day, I attended the science of self: how we break. This talked about how stress and overlaying issues in people’s lives. While this wasn’t my favourite talk of the week, I thought the concept of allostatic load (trying to maintain normality during times of uncertainty and change) was an interesting topic that I’ll definitely remember.
on Thursday I attended the science of self: loneliness talk. I really like psychology and am interested in mental health and loneliness as a topic, so I was excited to attend. I was particularly drawn to when the speaker mentioned how virtual reality is starting to be used as an assistive tool in therapy. They said VR can be used to track and compare how people with social difficulties interact in social situations. I also feel like it could be beneficial for people who cannot travel far, yet still want a more immersive therapy session than attending an online session. This was the last science week lecture I went to but I think it was one of my favourites.
On Friday, I had a go at using Clo3D. Clo3D is a 3D outfit virtualiser. It was a bit of a leap of fate, I have no experience in fashion design and I only enjoy it from afar in the form of cosplays and character design, but I really enjoyed it and found it easier than 3D modelling. The host of this workshop said that this tool is becoming increasingly popular and is starting to be used in industries outside of fashion and it is also said to be a more sustainable option for planning the creation of outfits. Below, I’ve linked a design I made during the session. I wonder if this will open up another avenue for me but only time will tell!
For my final interchange session, I attended ‘a date with a concept’, where I got a change to talk to people on different courses about my project. I’m not the best at talking about myself, but I met some wonderful people who were all very passionate about my project and their own. Talking about what I am planning on creating and hearing their enthusiasm felt very heartwarming and also helped cement my own ideas. It was hosted in the architecture building which I have never entered before, so it was great to be able to visit it.
Since I didn’t have as much energy or time throughout the week I didn’t have as much time to work on my project, but I did try to implement a door opening mechanic.
I brought home a VR headset to borrow, however since it was a quest 1 and not a quest 3, it requires me to download android device bridge. I also have a windows PC at home which required me to create a metaverse account. I have managed to see up a lot of it, but the ADB confuses me. I’ll either have to get help with it or request to borrow the quest 3.
I had a lot of ambitions for what I was going to create in my world. Originally I was going to animate my cat moving towards a food bowl. This would occur when you would snap a bag of cat food into a socket near the bowl, and the bowl would have the illusion of being ‘filled’ and ‘eaten’ by manipulating the y coordinate of the food inside the bowl. However, given the fact that I have never worked with C# before, I felt this idea may be over ambitious given the timeframe and my current knowledge.
I looked up some tutorials from: link here[], which were really helpful. I also looked at some W3schools tutorials for some C# syntax. I am planning on implementing a gun that can shoot at some cardboard cutouts — these cardboard cutouts will have their position manipulated (as they fall) when the bullet prefab collides with them. I’ll also have a resetting in-scene UI to reset, similar to the reset scene inside the room – but if possible I’ll try to make it only reset the position of the cardboard cutouts. The gun shooting part I’ve has been inspired by the bubble blower, but I’ll have to test the feasibility of the UI resetting only specific objects.
I also set out an email to try and get some feedback for the course as a student rep. I created a google forms survey for this as I want to help everyone get their ideas out even if they are too shy or busy to turn up.
overall, I have been very busy this week! But I hope to get more work done on my project