Building Virtual Worlds

Round 0

This exercise is intended to allow you to learn the basics of the tools you’ll be using in BVW and demonstrate that you have the necessary skills to take responsibility for one or more specific team roles.  You are expected to start early, and finish early, as we have constrained resources. The sound designer assingment is to choose one short movie trailer and create a soundscape (including sound effects and ambience) and a soundtrack to match the visuals.

Round 1

This assingment is to create a highly interactive world where the guest, or guests (remember, we have “guests,” not “users”) must help character A, who is afraid of character B. Remember that you are building an interactive world, not a movie – think hard about that. Your final version should make the class say “Wow.” That’s what a lot of your grade will be based on. There are lots of ways to make somebody say “wow.”

Round 2

The assingment is to create a consistent, highly interactive, and engaging experience that lets guests feel like they have a lot of freedom in the choices they make. Despite this feeling of freedom, you must also ensure they have a very enjoyable time in the brief experience you provide for them. You may find that indirect control (discussed in class last Thursday) is a very useful way to make your world seem larger and richer than it really is. It is not necessary that the experience continues to be engaging after multiple play-throughs. (But if it is, all the better!)

Round 3

On the last assignment, many groups did a fantastic job. And most groups “built a lot.” On this assignment (where you only have one week – okay, 11 days – , although it counts as much as the other assignments), the key is to have a good idea, preferably one that can be implemented simply. Your assignment is to create a world that has something fun for the guest to do. Your experience may be tested with naive guests, especially if we believe you have not done enough guest testing. A large portion of your grade will be based on, Does the guest have fun doing your activity? Does the guest want to keep doing it?

Round 4

Human beings have told stories for millennia. Your assignment is to tell a story where the guest has some ability to control the events during the story. The story was told without using pixels (screens or projections), instead it used DMX, Phidgets, and Ineractive Audio to tell the story. The lighting rig and props were all made from scrap materials found around the ETC.

Round 5

Your end-of-semester show is the only place we know where we author for the medium of “vicarious virtual experiences.” Basically, this means that a large (~500 person) audience is watching a guest in an HMD/Playmotion/whatever have a synthetic experience. You are free to make whatever you think will evoke the best and strongest response in that audience (although the “no shooting games or pornography” rule is still in effect).

Make an activity, build a game, tell a story, make a piece of interactive art, do performance art, involve live action and/or physical effects, build a networked world, do something that’s never even been thought of before! Any and all of the above are fair game.

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them think, make them go WOW. But whatever you do, do it well. There is no tomorrow. There is no “next round.”

 

Building Virtual Worlds'

goal is to take students with varying talents, backgrounds, and perspectives and put them together to do what they couldn't do alone. The key thing is that there are no "idea people" in the course; everyone must share in the mechanical creation of the worlds.

Students use 3D modeling software (Maya), painting software (Photoshop), sound editing software (Adobe Audition & Pro Tools), and Panda3D, a programming library originally developed by Walt Disney Imagineering's Virtual Reality studio, to display our virtual reality worlds.

The course uses unique platforms such as the Head-Mounted Display and Trackers, the Jam-O-Drum, the TrackBox, the Playmotion, camera-based audience interaction techniques, Quasi the robot, and others.