SOPHIE VR | Cam Williamson

This is the official project update page for the collaborative VR experience celebrating the life, work and community of visionary electronic producer SOPHIE XEON. Here I will provide frequent public project updates, sharing the design process.

If you would like to contact me with more information my email is cameronwilliamsonmail@gmail.com and my instagram is @cam_williamson_

You can also contact me via the contact page on this website

For this project I have three core goals to achieve:

Goal One: to create a refined mix of Sophie's music that covers a range of her discography with interesting transitions, and fan-made edits. This will act as the foundation of the experience. This step is complete (hear the mix at the bottom of this page).

Goal Two: To use Unity VR workspace to design a 3D visual environment inspired by Sophie Xeon's visual language and style, as well as sonic style. I will be using a combination of existing and custom assets, shaders, and effects to achieve this. Through the use of sound analysis scripts and Unity keyframing I will animate the experience.

Goal Three*: To incorporate the fan-base, ensuring collaboration, and accessibility are core components to this project. At the end of the experience there will be a dedicated homage section to share interview snippets and any work fans want to share. The experience will be shared as an .apk but also screen recorded in 360 degrees and uploaded to YouTube for maximised accessibility.

*Due to time constraints and a narrowing focus for this project, the original goal for a multiplayer mechanic has been removed. This will allow me to spend more time ensuring quality in the most core aspects of the experience.

Project updates will be frequent on this page while the project is ongoing. For further small updates and polls I will be posting on Twitter and Instagram <3

24/02/23

A huge component of this experience is the music, just as important as the visuals, so I knew it had to be taken very seriously and approached thoughtfully. When I first pitched the idea to my friend KC (@kasu.x on Instagram), they went straight to work making the first rough mix. I was impressed by their work and ideas just from this initial version and asked them to help me throughout the sonic half of this project.

This collaboration formed itself into weeks of planning, days of organising, travelling hours to each other's houses, and eventually about 15 hours altogether to create the best mix we have both ever achieved. This was the first time we had collaboratively materialised something like this and is the result of our passion for Sophie's work.

The track list was carefully and strenuously laid out to provide a broad and purposeful exploration of Sophie's, delving into different EPs, singles, and Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, as well as collaborative and remixed work from Hayden Dunham (QT, Hyd), A.G. Cook, Charli XCX, Hannah Diamond, Sonikku, Doss, Umru, EASYFUN and Quay Dash, as well as a specially crafted break-core remix of Infatuation by Fresh Til Desu (@freshtildesu on SoundCloud). We also received a cover of immaterial by VVOLVEN and Taro, which we decided to use for the menu scene as it beautifully summarises the underlying theme of Infatuation in the experience and therefore feels like a nice gateway into it.

We ordered the track list from slowest to fastest BPM, with a few exceptions at the start and end. This was because I wanted a meaningful increase in speed to make the experience feel more cohesive. That is not to say the energy level is not consistent from track to track, with songs like 'JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE' giving refreshing breathers amongst the high intensity tracks.

After several iterations fixing audio issues and making final adjustments, we finished the mix! We are so, so proud of how it has turned out. Please feel free to have a listen below! :)

26/04/23

The ball is rolling! The next stage of this project was to begin piecing together all the components to build the visuals and experience. I had been held up by some large delays while waiting for university to supply the right programs and hardware to begin full-scale development (and I am glad to say this stage has begun, more on that soon), so as a research stage I made a series of tests to familiarise myself with the process of developing for VR in Unity.

I had made an initial program to learn the process of exporting a unity file for VR, including setting up the cameras for stereoscopic displays, checking the right settings for the best performance on the Meta Quest 2 and more, but the first major test I needed to complete was for keyframing. Keyframing is a technique many design programs use to animate, and Unity is no different. You use a timeline to place markers on where settings should change, such as transformation, material properties, mesh properties or particle settings, and they play across the timeline to create animations. I attempted to do this manually at first but the results were limited.

VR Test file 1 with particle effects

Test file 2 with keyframed animations and a more complex environment. Music I Can't Tell - Flume

Keyframing by hand was very tedious however, and I wanted something that was a bit more reactive to the music, so I looked for different scripts that would allow me to do this and found this script by Surfknasen on Gumroad. With this script I could choose different frequencies of sound, and animate a range of objects with lots of different settings. From this I made another test to try it out.

Song: Dreamer - Charli XCX, Raye, Starrah

Hand tracking was the next step for me to create enhanced immersion in the experience. I wanted this because, unlike some VR experiences such as high intensity or accuracy VR games, something like a music experience didn't need them, and having to find and put on controllers to open and experience the game could break the immersion and become annoying.

Luckily, introducing hand tracking into a unity file is straight forward with the Meta SDK Meta provides, and the tutorials to go alongside however this didn't stop me from facing issues...

Monster hands accidentally created by mixing the wrong hand meshes with the wrong hands.

The final test combining hand tracking and the earlier keyframing test. The visuals are inspired by a recent Mugler campaign featuring the same song.

Main project development begins!

06/06/23

For my university final major project, the last hurdle was starting the development of the Sophie Experience. I cut down the mix into 13 key parts that I could focus on, enabling me to work iteratively and carefully along the entirety of the mix. I also set up two main Unity workspaces, one for designing and keyframing ‘scenes’ and the main file for combining these designs and aligning them with the music. I chose to do it this way because I needed everything to work seamlessly without breaks for loading scenes, so I needed it all to load and move as one, with animated transitions instead of hard cuts.

Over several weeks I worked on getting a good chunk of the experience done in a rough form. I see these as more of visual ‘sketches’ at the moment, where there is a lot of room for polish and refinement and added detail and optimisation. But to me it’s important to lay down everything I need as a Alpha version so I can come back and refine the project as a whole and build on top of the base project in the future. This is how most game and software development processes work.

15 minutes in total have been designed, covering songs like Hey QT, Faceshopping and Girls Night Out.

Below is a video I put together showcasing snippets from the experience so-far. <3

1) It's Okay To Cry (Nick Trap Requiem edit) - SOPHIE, @Nicktrapani
2) Is It Cold in the Water? - Flume, Eprom
3) Ponyboy - SOPHIE
4) Faceshopping - SOPHIE
5) Queen of this Shit - Quay Dash, SOPHIE
6) Hey QT + extended intro - A.G.Cook, SOPHIE, QT
7) Girls Night Out - Charli XCX, SOPHIE
8) So Clear (umru corrosion) - Hyd, Umru, SOPHIE, EASYFUN
9) Sweat (SOPHIE remix) - Sonikku, Liz, SOPHIE
10) Bitch I'm Madonna x Lightning Lipgloss Life - Nicki Minaj, Madonna, SOPHIE, Diplo, Life Sim
11) Whole New World (SOPHIE & Doss Remix) - SOPHIE, Doss
12) JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE - SOPHIE
13) UNISIL - SOPHIE
14) Paradise - Charli XCX, Hannah Diamond, SOPHIE
15) Moteur Action (A.G.Cook & SOPHIE remix) [Nightcore edit] x Vroom Vroom Crash Tour live intro x L.O.V.E - Yelle, A.G.Cook, SOPHIE, Charli XCX
16)Infatuation - SOPHIE
17)Infatuation (@freshtildesu breakcore remix) - SOPHIE, freshtildesu
18) Infatuation - The Abyss - SOPHIE
19) Infatuation - The Trenches - SOPHIE

All contributions will be credited (so provide a name and/or social link(s), however if you wish to remain anonymous let me know.

Fan art (drawings, sculptures, photography and edits etc.) may be included within the experience and is welcome.
Song recommendations are welcome! Please be aware that the final mix will be made mid-January so after then we cannot take new recommendations. Also be aware that the project will not include leaked or unreleased material.
3D assets: a fantastic way to contribute is through 3D assets, that I can incorporate into the experiences.
Advice and support: all and any advice is welcome! This is my first VR project so I will be grateful for any help and constructive criticism I can get! :)