The Morrígan
The Morrígan or “Phantom Queen”. A central character in the story and environment being developed as part of this project (a demonstration of spoken word storytelling techniques in VR using Unity).
She was “Both a single deity and a triple goddess, made up of Ireland’s most powerful goddesses” and some consider her to be the origin of Morgan le Fay / Morganna from Arthurian legend.
Voice: Deep Faking It
Two central and related questions I will be addressing as part of this VR Experience are:
1) How one can move a typically non-diegetic element (the narrator) to a diegetic element in a VR.
2) Whether one can effectively employ mechanisms such as voice cloning / text to speech APIs for the voice of the Storyteller (and perhaps other characters).
The advantage of such an approach (Voice Cloning / Text to Speech) would be that the story script can be adapted, and new audio generated dynamically without the need for re-recording voice talent. Together with AI elements (voice interaction by the user and responses / actions / intents) decoupling these elements from the core environment built (in the case of this project in Unity means the story and AI can enhanced over time without having to rebuild and rerelease the experience as a whole.
A river runs through it
A small video and some screenshots of the first forest scene dressed in Unity. In addition to the images presented in the mood board, I drew upon influences such as Gnomes and Goblins VR and the Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter. Plus, a bunch of other stuff including Excalibur (1981) and Merlin (2008 to 2012).
Yes, there are some post processing effects in there and I may need to dial back on the Chromatic aberration, bloom and field of view effects in VR as these will increase the latency significantly and may also make the user throw-up, but I suppose that is the basis of some kind of emotional connection to the content. 😀
Setting the Scene
A quick draft dressing in Maya for one of two scenes required for the VR experience. This is just a rough version of the forest and castle…
Every story has a beginning
IRISH MYTHS, LEGENDS, & FOLKLORE Every story has a beginning, but in Irish mythology there are many beginnings, middle bits and ends. The Ulster cycle of mythology…