Research and Project Timeline- Developing Work

 

      In this project i will: 

  • Apply research-driven idea generation to develop a production piece related to emerging technologies.
  • Demonstrate effective project management skills in the creation of the production piece and the compilation of a portfolio.
  • Showcase software proficiency by incorporating appropriate tools and techniques in the production process.
  • Incorporate ethical values and principles in the production piece and portfolio.
  • Exhibit forward-thinking by integrating emerging technology trends and concepts into the work.

Week 1& 2 Inspirations, User Research, and Ethics 17/11/2025

My project is largely inspired by Bioluminescence.

 

When talking about the natural phenomenon of  Biolumienescence, it described a process where living things such as mushrooms and animals produce a glow, for example organisms in very deep parts of the sea exhibit this amazing glowing characteristic.

Natural History Museum states: 

 

“The light that living creatures can produce is created by a chemical reaction. For this reaction to happen a plant or animal must carry a molecule called luciferin, plus one of two enzymes called luciferase and photoprotein.

When luciferin chemically reacts with oxygen, it releases energy in the form of light..”  K. Pavid (N.D.)

 

They also state: “In this environment, the light some animals can create for themselves is fundamental to survival.” K. Pavid (N.D.)

 

Engaging in art is a light we create for ourselves; In my project, I would like to create an experience which provides a space for art and joy.

Blackreach

My first inspiration is Blackreach, which is a large subterranean bioluminescent cavern beneath Skyrim. The environment is full of blue glowing giant mushrooms and strange plants. I wanted to incorporate elements of this into my project like glowing plants and mushrooms.

I found that it is many people’s favourite place in Skyrim due to its aesthetic and its experience, as well as a user who stated:  “I couldn’t help but feel fascinated with all the colours”  And another user stated “Blackreach is one of the most amazing and innovative locations in all of gaming.” (Archius99 2020 r/Skyrim. Reddit.)

 

In addition to this, someone stated the size of the map to be a huge problem: “It’s a beautiful place, but it’s massive. I think it’s what causes a lot of people to dislike it.” (OrangePoweraid 2020 r/Skyrim. Reddit.) Therefore I think the smaller size of my 360 environment could help with this pain point, while still keeping the colours and general theme. 



Biolum

Another inspiration includes Biolum, a VR immersive underwater experience on Meta Quest. It features visuals such as glowing plants and animals, and lots of aqua blue colours which I thought would be captivating, as well as enhancing the aesthetic usability of my project.

Flora Inspirations In Subnautica

In addition to these examples, I am also inspired by all the different types of glowing and unusual alien flora found in the underwater game Subnautica, and would like to create some of my own alien plants for my VR experience, in blender. 

Cory Strader, the art director for Subnautica states on drawing inspiration for the assets in the game: 

 

“Some of the more basic flora has a closer relationship to actual earth vegetation, such as the grass, seaweed, and coral branch filler assets.” P.Warr (2017) 

 

In considering both these things, I think it will be useful to draw inspiration from the natural world, while still having the freedom to create something new and captivating that users will enjoy such as glowing ferns, improving the aesthetic usability effect. 

Racoon Lagoon

One other competitor for this project is a VR game called Racoon Lagoon. I am inspired by, and  love the ethereal and glowy nature of the landscape blended with fantasy. I also liked the stylized low poly style as this will be easier to render and a sensible way to execute my vision. 

 

One Reddit user states that “Racoon Lagoon is a wonderful cosy game”, They also state that Racoon Lagoon  “has more vibrant colours and very nice to look at in general”. Gregasy (2024) 

 

It can be noted that a similar theme of users perceiving a higher Aesthetic Usability due to these vibrant looking visuals.

Fuji Gardening Adventure

During my research for other VR experiences with bioluminescence, I found a game called Fuji Gardening Experience. This is a game where you can play as a magical gardener in an ethereal world in space, and this inspired me that it could be fun for players to be in outer space for my VR experience. 

 

User Profile

 

  • It can be seen from my user research in my first submission,  that the demographic for this experience ranges from ages: 18-54 . 
  • Pain points include  “massive maps being off putting”
  • User wants include, “vibrant and fascinating colours”. Something nice to look at. 
  • Accessibility needs include, a safe experience, and an accessible experience, which can be accessed standing or sitting.

Accessibility and Ethics Considerations

 

One UX I proposed to use is Hick’s Law, which will utilise the small space of the environment to allow people to have this VR experience, without feeling lost, or overwhelmed with choice and the size of the space. This can help with those who are Neuro Divergent, as it can be extremely tough on the senses to put on a headset and enter a new environment. It is preferable that the environment be a small experience, making it more accessible. 

 

Medium also states “Staying too long in VR may cause social isolation or change how people see reality.” Using Hick’s Law to make a smaller and shorter experience will help with this ethical consideration, to give regular breaks to using VR headsets. 

Week 3- Mid Fidelity Sketches, Colours 1/12/2025

The colours I decided to use as a theme for my environment are based off of bioluminescence in the natural world, as well as the colours I enjoyed from my inspirations, such as the glowing aqua marine from Blackreach in Skyrim, and in Subnautica and Biolum.

The colours I decided to use as a theme for my environment are based off of bioluminescence, and the colours I enjoyed from my inspirations, such as the glowing aqua marine from Blackreach in Skyrim, Subnautica and Biolum. 

I did a couple of paintings using pro create, using mixed media, watercolour brushes, as well as oil paint brushes, and finally decided on the aqua blue colour theme for my project. As well as some rough designs for some of the trees, plants, and mushrooms. I also used this time to practice making things in blender as it had been a while since i used it.

Week Blender 4 08/12/2025 Creating The Assets & Tech Trend Considerations

 Integrating Emerging Tech Trends 

 

Medium states “A big 2025 VR trend, stretches immersion by adding real-world senses. Imagine feeling rain on your skin, smelling flowers in a virtual field, or tasting food in a digital meal.” Think Forges (2025) Medium. 

 

While I cannot incorporate real life senses, I wanted to make use of being able to format videos in a 360 format, which allows users to feel immersed in an environment, which was ideal for the concept of my project. This format allows for a feeling of escapism, with unique viewing capabilities. I used the google meta data injector to give extra data to my videos, which allowed youtube to format them as a 360 degree image. 

The Trees

 

During week four I got to work on creating the assets for my environment. 

I started with creating some blue trees by bringing in basic cylinders,extruding them to create the trunk, and then shading it smooth. After this, I used proportional editing and the snake hook sculpting tool to create tree roots.

I then brought in a sphere and put a subdivision modifier on it, to give myself more geometry to work with when shaping, using proportional editing again to shape the leaves. 

Then I began to shade the trunk using nodes. I stretched the noise values to make an elongated bark effect on the trunk, and brought in a colour ramp, in which I could pick two colours to be the light and dark shades. 

I brought in some nodes which would allow for random instances of colour variance when I duplicated the assets, so not all trees were the same colour. This was to give the environment an organic look to keep it immersive for users. . 

I then duplicated the trees, and changed the trunk shapes, heights, and leaf shapes, as well as giving one tree glowing fruits, to create an array of trees for my environment. 

Grass

 

Following this I created some grass by bringing in a plain, scaling it down, adding loop cuts, and bringing the top vertices together to form a sort of point. I shaped them to give some natural looking variance as found in nature, and then I duplicated them to make different tufts and blades. After this I shaded the grass using colours from my restricted palette to create alien grass.

Flowers 

 

During week five I started on the flowers, in which I brought in a circle and gave it a poly count of 5, which gave me a hexagon shape to work with. I scaled it down,and extruded the sides, as well as filling the middle face. I then extruded the edges for the petals. I then deleted the middle face and in-set it with a value of 0, before raising this shape on the z axis to make it look like a 3D flower. I sized down a plane to make the stem, and went into shading to set up  nodes to make duplicated instances have varying shade changes.

Glow Flowers 

 

I also created some big glow flowers, which utilised the leaves I created, as well as flower stems, but I added a sphere to the top of them and added an effusion effect in the shading work space, to make them have a bioluminescent effect, inspired by some of the plants in subnautica.

Week 6 Further Assets 22/12/2025

Plants 

 

Next I created some leafy plants and succulents for the environment using the plane mesh and adding loop cuts. These could then be tapered at the ends and curved into leaf shapes. I then duplicated them to create different varying bunches and shapes of greenery. I copied the wind animation. In the shading area I used a duplicate of the tree leave material so that any changes wouldn’t affect the tree colours. I made the shades a little darker than the tree leaves, and made the succulent material duplicate to have a bit of a shine to it.

Ferns

 

From this I used the bezier curve tool to create some glowing swirled ferns inspired by fiddle head ferns, before right clicking and converting it to mesh. I also added some glowing fruits to it to make it bioluminescent as in my sketches. I also duplicated these to make different bunches of ferns, and some giant ones as planned in my sketches for the easter egg clearing environments.

Glowing Mushrooms 

 

used a sphere mesh to create my mushroom shape by extruding it up and then out incrementally, and filling the top face. I then created seams along the outside of the mushroom to be able to use UV unwrapping to then take into the paint work space. Following this I applied an ombre shading to it in the shading work space as well as some noise to create a speckly texture. I also added a node for the mushroom glow texture, before going into paint, and painting the white dots on, which caused the mushroom to give out a light emission. 

Week 7 29/12/2025

Arranging The Scene

 

During week 7 I began arranging my assets around the circular environment by using the scatter on surface modifier to scatter each asset across the environment. I also created a data group for the plane in which I could turn the weight all the way to 0, allowing me to go into weight painting mode. I used this to create spaces for the clearing areas, in which I placed a large fern, and a giant mushroom in the other. 

Week 8 05/01/2026 Rendering & Editing

Technical Challenges 

 

I encountered a series of technical challenges when I started to place my camera and move it around. I wanted to create an animated journey where the camera would take the user around the map, showing off the clearing spaces, however when i rendered images i realised that the view was different in the output than when looking from the camera in the scene. I quickly realised that I would not be able to move the camera around with the precision or control of a regular 3D animated scene, and I had to render some of the keyframes as images to make sure the output was what I wanted it to be. 

 

I also had to apply the decimate modifier to my environment due to the amount of vertices. This was because the render times were extremely long for a single frame and were subject to the hardware limitations of my PC. To make up for lack of assets due to these limitations, I decided to incorporate some of my trees as 2D sprites.

 

I also had issues with the distortion modifier and the wind effect, as it affected the scatter on surface modifier. I had to go back and remove the modifier from all the objects in my scene and begin the rendering process again. 

I also encountered issues with youtube making my finished video very pixelated and poor quality, and this too contributed to having to go back and re-render my project, as well as increasing the resolution size to try and increase the quality in the final video. Due to this, I had significantly less frames to work with, so I decided to do still frames of focal points of the space I created as 360 videos instead.

What I Would Do Next Time

 

If I were to make improvements on my project, I would make the space more explorable and immersive, through immersive spatial sound that changes as you move around the map. I would also have liked to have added more animation to the scene such as fireflies, lanterns, plants, animals, and wind.  I also would have liked it to be the full guided immersive experience I had originally intended for this project, as well as exploring other options for hosting the video such as steam VR, which would allow the user to physically walk around in the space.

Narrated Video

360 Video

Please find below my Alien Planet 360 VR Experience, with original music made by me. You can pause the video to look around more, and there are four different view points to view, and the quality can be turned up using the cog symbol in the video. 

Short VR Animation

Harvard References

Archius99 (2020) r/Skyrim. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/g74y7u/blackreach_is_one_of_the_most_amazing_and/ [Accessed 15/01/2026]

 

Ben Lang (2019) Fuji Review- A Serene Journey Ripe With Discovery. Roadtovr. [Downloaded Image] https://www.roadtovr.com/fujii-review-oculus-quest-rift-vive-index/ [Accessed 18/01/2026]

 

Biolum (2023) Biolum on Meta Quest/ Quest VR Games. Meta. https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/biolum/6154966914541240/?srsltid=AfmBOooy78xQygCaoFdCOG1LYi11sj6YqMw1aTCtsb_gitpC4iXU8DvW [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

Biolum (N.D.) Biolum-Prefrontal Cortex. [Downloaded Image]  https://prefrontalcortex.de/en/projects/biolum/  [Accessed 26/11/2025] 

 

B Taylor (2019) Racoon Lagoon [Blog Post] Raccoon Lagoon-A Helping Hand- Big Boss Battle 14th August. https://bigbossbattle.com/raccoon-lagoon-a-helping-hand/ [Accessed 02/10/2025]

 

Deleted Account (2019). Blackreach is such a beautiful area, and I’m yet to fully explore it. r/Skryim Reddit. [Downloaded Image]  https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/ez0lvs/blackreach_is_such_a_beautiful_area_and_ive_yet/  [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

 Deleted Account (2023) Is there any explanation for… Blackreach? Reddit  r/Skyrim  https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/15grjwd/is_there_any_explanation_for_blackreach/ [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

Global Rescue (2025) The Science, Safety and Spectacle of Earth’s Bioluminescent Beaches [Blog] [Downloaded Image] https://www.globalrescue.com/common/blog/detail/bioluminescent-beaches-travel-safety-guide/                           

[Accessed 30/11/2025] 

 

Gregasy (2024) Do not sleep on Raccoon Lagoon (recently updated). r/Occulus Quest. Reddit. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1f3z1sg/do_not_sleep_on_raccoon_lagoon_recently_updated/ [Accessed 04/12/2025]

 

 GrimborX (2022) r/virtualreality. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/r7enr1/it_took_6_years_to_get_here_but_my_vr_project_is/ [Accessed 15/01/2026]



Gsilent (2021) Skyrim Blackreach Epic Mushroom Home [X-Box] Bethesda [Downloaded Image]

https://creations.bethesda.net/ja/skyrim/details/226314cd-4e0d-4f29-8aa8-2c049875af7f/Blackreach_Epic_Mushroom_Home__Xbox_ [Accessed 25/11/2025] 

 

Harryisamazing (2020) Blackreach- one of my favourite places in Skyrim. Reddit. [Downloaded Image] https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/kecmgm/blackreach_one_of_my_favorite_places_in_skyrim/  [Accessed 25/11/2025]



Jimbo2312 (2025) Biolum on Meta Quest/ Quest VR Games. Meta. https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/biolum/6154966914541240/?srsltid=AfmBOooy78xQygCaoFdCOG1LYi11sj6YqMw1aTCtsb_gitpC4iXU8DvW [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

  1. Pavid (N.D.) Bioluminescence: light in the dark. Natural History Museum. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-bioluminescence.html?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=grants&gad_source=1 [Accessed 26/11/2025]



L.L Richmond, L. K. Burnett (2022) Semantic Memory- an overview. Science Direct https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/semantic-memory [Accessed 26/11/2025] 

 

Mr.Lecher (2025)  Biolum on Meta Quest/ Quest VR Games. Meta. https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/biolum/6154966914541240/?srsltid=AfmBOooy78xQygCaoFdCOG1LYi11sj6YqMw1aTCtsb_gitpC4iXU8DvW [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

Namu Wiki (2025) Subnautica/Biological/Flora-Namu Wiki [Downloaded Image]https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EC%84%9C%EB%B8%8C%EB%85%B8%ED%8B%B0%EC%B9%B4/%EC%83%9D%EB%AC%BC/%EC%8B%9D%EB%AC%BC%EA%B5%B0  [Accessed 26/11/2025] 



P Jones (2019) Racoon Lagoon [Blog Post] The VR GRID 22nd August. https://www.thevrgrid.com/raccoon-lagoon/ [Accessed 04/12/2025]



P.Warr (2017) Subnautica: The art of flora. Rock Paper Shotgun. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/subnautica-flora-artwork [Accessed 26/11/2025] 



  1. Katzman (2018) What Is Bioluminescence? TIME for kids. [Downloaded Image] https://www.timeforkids.com/g56/bioluminescence-3/ [Accessed 30/11/2025] 

 

  1. N. Rossier (N.D.) The Glow Below: Bioluminescence in the Sea. Dive Training. [Downloaded Image] https://dtmag.com/thelibrary/bioluminescence-in-the-sea/ [Accessed 30/11/2025] 

 

Robyn.Len (2025)  Biolum on Meta Quest/ Quest VR Games. Meta. https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/biolum/6154966914541240/?srsltid=AfmBOooy78xQygCaoFdCOG1LYi11sj6YqMw1aTCtsb_gitpC4iXU8DvW [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

  1. Lee, H. Madrigal, B. Graeber (2016) Blackreach-The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim Guide. IGN. [Downloaded Image]  https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim/blackreach    [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

Talynn (2025) Online:L Blackreach: Greymore Caverns. UESP Wiki [Downloaded Image] 

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Blackreach:_Greymoor_Caverns [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

The Doctor By Design (N.D) Cast Iron Fence. BlenderKit. [Used 3D Asset] https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/4abacf63-5bbb-405c-9ae6-194c92c3d7ca/?query=category_subtree:fence+order:-bookmarks [Accessed 13/01/2026]



Think Forges (2025) Future of VR 2025: Key Trends and Practical Uses. Medium. https://medium.com/@thinkforges.us/future-of-vr-2025-key-trends-and-practical-uses-188d014f593b [Accessed 02/02/2026]

 

TMA Solutions (2025) Virtual Reality Trends 2025: What’s Next in VR Tech. TMA Solutions. https://www.tmasolutions.com/insights/virtual-reality-trends [Accessed 16/01/2026]

 

 T.Ozawa, PhD, J.Yu, PhD (2025) Bioluminescence. Scientific Reports. [Downloaded Image] https://www.nature.com/collections/ibjjbjahef [Accessed 30/11/2025] 

 

The Elder Scrolls Wiki (N.D.) Blackreach (Skyrim) Elder Scrolls Wiki. [Downloaded Image] https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Blackreach_(Skyrim) [Accessed 25/11/2025]

 

T.Vena (2021) German-French VR experience Biolum presented at this year’s SXSW. Cineuropa [Downloaded Image] https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/399213/                                             [Accessed 26/11/2025] 

 

VR Voyaging (2024) Biolum- VR Voyaging.  https://www.vrvoyaging.com/review/biolum/                                     [Accessed 26/11/2025] 

 

Waylon (2012) The Midnight Rant: The Eerie Beauty of Blackreach. The Midnight Rant [Downloaded Images] 

 https://midnight-rant.blogspot.com/2012/05/eerie-beauty-of-blackreach.html  [Accessed 25/11/2025]