Interview with Salena: Part 3
Part of the "VR is Alive" Spotlight Series, Season Two
ArmaniXR: For this interview, I am fortunate to join Salena in Artifice and Tenebrous 3, some of their interactive and cinematic worlds in VRChat!
Feel free to watch the shorter video if you have less time, or listen to the full audio track below to know more about Salena and/or hear her advice directly.
Full Audio Track (74 minutes, Part 3 at 45:27-end):
: What’s your advice to not just newer world creators, but intermediate world builders?
Salena: The first thing I say is to look at the many free assets available that you can use for the worlds you want to create. A good majority of them, such as the one behind you (pointing behind ArmaniXR in Artifice), are free assets. It’s more about being creative with them rather than using them as they are. You can scale them to make the thing whatever you want it to be without being constrained by what it is. There are plenty of times where an asset, like a vending machine, might look a certain way, but you can change the material and put it on something else, attaching various parts to make it look different. You can use UV mapping and different textures. In the Tenebrous series, I had a light switch attached to basic cubes to create a station with a light on top, as there were no assets like that available.
I was able to put things together to make something I needed. It’s similar to kitbashing. I would use prefabs made for the floor and put them on the wall. Don’t be limited by what it is exactly and use it where you want. It’s really cool to play with the theme and let the world tell you how it wants to be built as much as you want to build it out. It’s like a Lego set where you can follow the instructions on where each block should go, but you can use those blocks somewhere else to make what you want. You’re not constrained on how you use one.
What programs do you use in the creation process? And how do you optimize in your workflow?
The major one I use is Unity. I’ve started making my own models in Blender and editing them. You can use the assets again however you want. I would do things in Unity, and if I need something specific, I’ll try to go to Blender to make it. If I have an asset that’s really similar to what I want but has something else attached to it, I’ll take it to Blender and remove it. I also use Affinity Photo, which is kind of like Photoshop. I use that for textures, all my thumbnails, the photos I post, and just a majority of textures and text credits.
I’m specifically curious about optimizing in that workflow for file sizes too. I remember you mentioning being proud of the file size for one of your worlds. Which program affects the file size the most, and how do you optimize with that one?
The majority of the memory loads to the file sizes for VRChat are mostly made up of textures. The more you can limit texture usage, the smaller the file will be. That’s why texture atlassing or reusing materials that can tile and go on different objects is really beneficial. I believe that rock texture on the Artifact out there in the distance, is the exact same that I use on these rocks onshore. Just being able to drop the material and it still be what I want it to be is really beneficial instead of having my own 4k texture that adds 8 megabytes just for one object.
Because I build my worlds for PC, if the world is popular enough, I’ll try to do a Quest version. The Quest version suffers the most in graphics and quality because the world was made with PC originally in mind. Without removing things, I won’t be able to give the same experience. So I completely destroy the textures. If you’ve ever been on Tenebrous 3 for the standalone, everything is just blurry, but Quest users still get the full 100% experience.
With worlds and experiences as intricate as yours, how do you determine or reach a point where you are satisfied with what you have created and you don’t feel the need to make updates?
It’s kind of rough because I think, just on a personal level, I’m never really satisfied with the worlds I make. That’s why I just keep working on the next thing I started creating. Since I love detailing, whenever I start making a world, I try to detail each room I do pretty much to the max and then go to the next one. I pretty much just progress without having to go back again. So for me, once I reach the ending, I’m pretty much done. It’s kind of a personal goal since it’s also the players actual goal. When I reach the ending design, then it exists to other players who can then reach it too. But shortly after, the euphoria just kind of goes away, and then I start working on something else again.
We had this conversation earlier, and I wanted to make sure you mentioned it because I thought it was pretty inspirational. Can you describe that story about how you persevered through obstacles with the world jams and competitions? I don’t want to say it’s competitive world building, but it’s almost like world building in a competition.
Submitting the original Reverie Serenade for the first Space Jam was basically the first competitive world making thing I’ve been a part of. It was a pivotal moment in my world building career. The experience in time constraints gave me foresight on what things I should focus on and what I want to focus on. The main thing I wanted to do was tell the story. The original one had the story and the environment I tried to make within the time frame. As I talked about before, I make worlds by knowing the beginning and end and then going in between. Moving in that kind of structure is difficult with a time constraint. I have all these ideas of areas that could be cool or places they can go, but like a week goes by and sooner than later, I have to decide which area to focus on. I learned to focus on areas that help progress my story the most. After many nights of staying awake, the incredible feeling of submitting it was something I can’t think I’ll ever experience again.
The reception was nice, but it didn’t win Space Jam 1. I was really distraught with that. Going back to the question of whether I was satisfied with my worlds, I think this was the first one I wasn’t really satisfied with because there were so many things I couldn’t do, and even the story itself wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be. When I finished it and after the results came out, I was pretty much going to put it on the shelf and not work on it ever again. A year went by, and I ended up working on some other projects that were working out for me. Then I saw one of my Reverie scenes and thought about how maybe I could redo it. How could I redo it to make it the way I wanted it to be and tell the story how I wanted it to be told? I started, and coincidentally, they announced Space Jam 2. It was incredibly coincidental that I wanted to restart this one and then they announced the competition. The difference between this jam and the last one is I already had everything done, like the story I wanted to tell, the sections, and basically the backlog of everything I wanted to fix and add. Everything just kept rolling. As soon as it was okay to start, I just went, and I was able to basically do it all. When I finally released it, it was the first world I was really satisfied with.
What would you want to see from VRChat creators that you haven’t seen enough or much of?
I would really like to see more adventure worlds or just worlds that tell a story. As I was saying before, there’s that whole story within The Devouring, but there’s nothing else after. They said they had a whole universe planned, but nothing happened there yet. Hidden in that story there are so many other franchises I could see. I could just go on and on with other authors I would like to see worlds from. Because there’s even a whole different departure with the one that just released. The storytelling and environment are all just a big inspiration. Being able to see other creators put out these big worlds is really uplifting.
What’s your advice to anyone who is brand new to social VR? Let’s say they’re coming from Beat Saber or playing single-player games for a while. What’s your advice to them as they begin to meet new people here?
I would just say go world hopping. In order to experience the magic of VRChat, start world hopping to different worlds. Don’t stay in one place for too long because being able to see the different worlds that people make adds to the social ability. You can converse with someone about the world, and it’s always something new.
Lastly, can you tell our audience about any future projects you’re working on? How can our audience stay updated on that?
My current project is actually another remaster of one of my worlds! I’m remastering Tenebrous: ReGrowth, which was of course Tenebrous 1 and 2 together. It’s going to be from the ground up. All the environments are new, but they’re still the same layout as the old ones because I don’t want to differentiate from them too much. Every room is remade from scratch to fit the new style I want to go for. To keep up with the things I do, I have a group called Faceman’s Domain. I also have some social media: There’s my X account @salenavrc and if you’d like to support me, I have a Patreon and Ko-Fi.