Sid Diaz

  What reminds me of the film Avatar (2009) (Film)1 is the iconic forest of Pandora. This forest has different plants that give a unique look and feel to the cinematic film. The beautiful alien-like plant design inspired this project. For example, I saw this plant design on Pinterest (Figure 1) . This design inspiration helps me to sketch out the plants I wanted to add on my Unity scene. Figure 1 Source Courtesy of Pinterest: Avatar Plants, Biomydra (2023) Sketching my ideas will help me later to plan how the plant will look in the scene and what are the elements I need to build the forest. (Figure 2) This helps me to plan out the next steps in creating the 3D designs and textures in Blender, as well as determining the software I need to make it work. Figure 2 Source Plant Sketches, Studies on my Sketchpad and Save on my PC (2023) Setting The Scene Going back to Unity, I first imported the 3D designed trees that I created in Blender to the scene. (Figure 3) Adding trees in Uni...

  The growing popularity of virtual reality provides a new way to reimagine the science fiction genre through immersive experience. Both are stretching the imagination of the audience to explore places that are unfamiliar and different from reality. Science Fiction has been successful as a genre whether as a book, graphic novel, film, animation, or game. This project explores how virtual reality can tap into a new dimension of adventure, storytelling, and a sense of awe. Figure 1 Source Courtesy of Freepik. (Night Sky Glows with Galaxy Mystical Silhouette Generative AI) “VR is shared and objectively present like the physical world, composable like a work of art, and as unlimited and harmless as a dream. When VR becomes widely available, around the turn of the century, it will not be seen as a medium used within physical reality, but rather as an additional reality. VR opens up a new continent of ideas and possibilities. At Texpo 89 we set foot on the shore of this continent for ...

  Recreating Pandora’s Forest is a challenge in itself because of the high standard that was already set from the original film Avatar 2009. (Film) 1 Reimagining it in virtual reality, on the other hand, gives more creative freedom. But, by doing both processes, I am synthesising the sense of familiarity with the sense of new into an experience of discovery. Figure 1 Source Courtesy of Avatar: Polyphemus, James-Camerons-Avatar.fandom.com, 2009 For this project, I chose a few key elements and scenes from the film that have the most potential to induce the sense of familiarity. Their potential was determined by their uniqueness.   One of such scenes is the night sky with the massive planet that looks like Jupiter called “Polyphemus”. Figure 1 Polyphemus means “Great Eye” in the Avatar world. 2 To recreate these key elements and scenes in a VR world, I chose Unity real-time engine for setting the scenes, Blender for recreating 3D models of trees and plants, and Photoshop for...

  Figure 1 Source Courtesy of Avatar: Tree of Souls, James-Camerons-Avatar.fandom.com, 2009 This project is about reimagining the 2009 Avatar film by James Cameron to a virtual reality setup. I wanted to recreate the same feeling I experienced watching this film in a more immersive experience, where the audience can explore, interact, and experience the environment. More specifically, I was interested in the Pandora’s Forest, as the most intriguing and eye-catching environment. What if we could experience it in a virtual world? We could experience the big trees, the glowing plants, and the most iconic tree (The Tree of Souls). Figure 1 Imagine walking around the forest and interacting with nature that you’ve only seen in a film. Pandora – The World of Avatar is a theme park at Walt Disney World, Florida, USA. 1 But why do we want to create The Pandora in VR if there is already a theme park where you can physically experience the world? VR can offer some advantages compared to a p...