Building VIrtual Worlds is a course at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. It is an intense project based course where 4 member interdisciplinary teams of students work for 2 weeks at a time creating virtual worlds for a variety of platforms such as virtual reality, play motion, and the Jam-o-drum (a 4 player dynamic input device).

The focus of the course is team dynamics and learning to work with people of different backgrounds under intense deadlines. Every 2 weeks the teams are randomly shuffled and a new round begins.

Rounds 1,3,4, and 5 worlds below were all featured in the 2005 BVW show

Neon nibblers is a 1-4 player competitive game for the jam-o-drum. Each guest controls a worm and fights for the randomly appearing leaves on the table in order to grow in size. Colliding with another worm causes the guest to start over at their original size as well as give up some of their points to the enemy. The trance sound track, rhythmic movement of the worms, and neon color pallet all came together to make this a highly addictive experience that has become a favorite of students and visitors to the ETC.

modeler - auxiliary painter

Hang-em-High is a virtual reality Wild West experience.  For this project I had the chance to design and build a particularly unique input device, and full size hobbyhorse (name Rita). The challenges in building this device were many, but in the end it was able to support a dynamic load of over 400 lbs, track up and down movement and translate it into speed in the VR world, and track steering through pulling of the reigns.

The game itself is a classic case of mistaken identity where the guest is mistaken as the “Red Hat Kid” by the town sheriff. The guest must then gallop out of town from his or her pursuers dodging rockslides, fields of cacti, and eventually jumping over a speeding train!

producer - modeler - animator - construction

Ghost Busters “savin’ the day” was a ONE WEEK! Bvw project. For this project I was responsible for all of the modeling and animation, including the city, blaster, and of course… The Stay Puft marshmallow man. I also had the chance to design and build the input devices, a full-scale replica proton blaster (with lights, and working switches for VR input) as well as a fully functional ghost trap.

modeler - animator

Blackout was a horror genre performance world. The guest played a security guard cooped up in the video room with monitors displaying various areas of a biological weapon complex. Radio conversation with another guard initiates until there is a disturbance and screams from one of the labs.  The complex locks down as you watch, through the monitors, your friend try and fail to fight of an unknown evil. Eventually a creature breaches your security room during the blackout and all that’s between the guard and the mysterious creature in the darkness… is a flashlight.

For this world I had the chance to model the room and its contents, as well as rig and animate all of the non-creature items in the space. I also was able to work with filming, video editing for all of the 5 monitor feeds. I was also responsible majority of the ambient sound and effects in the world.  This was the first bvw world to feature real time shadows thanks to one of my team mates Bei Yang.

producer - modeler - sound - filming

In Colossus a horse rider wielding a bow and arrow crosses a wasteland. In the distance a massive city sized creature is en route to destroy his people, he alone knows the secret to stop it, and he alone must destroy it… at any cost.

Colossus is a performance virtual reality world designed to pay homage to the game “shadow of the colossus” released in fall of 2005. Working with some very talented teammates we were confident we could recreate the look and feel of the original ps2 game using our skills and the panda 3d engine.

This world also featured HDR rendering, real time soft shadows, and an amazing on the fly dynamic camera control system that allows us to do live video editing during the performance. I was responsible for the horse and bow input device, the modeling, normal mapping, rigging, animation, and texturing of the horse and rider, as well as the physical performance of the world.

modeler - animator - painter