Immersion VR

Immersion VR is an interactive building inside which the user can move around, change materials and use a lift. An important aspect of this project was to build an intuitive user experience.

Creating a pleasant experience

When designing the controls, I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and the paper Visual Design Methods for Virtual Reality by Mike Alger. Both proved to be very helpful in the beginning phase of designing the controls.

Observing people who had never used a VR headset before try out the application was also very insightful. These tests helped me see things that were unintuitive and provided ideas on how to improve them.

Creating the building

Sketching

To come up with ideas for the building, I did a lot of collecting reference photos and inspiration, sketching concepts on paper and then blocking them out in Blender.

3D Modeling

3D Modeling was done using Blender. Blender's great viewport options allowed to quickly see how the foyer looks with lights shining through the windows and some basic materials applied.

Baking

For a lot of the models in the scene, I created a high poly version and a low poly version. The normals of the high poly version were then baked in Substance Painter and applied to the low poly version to create a highly detailed look while having an efficient 3D model.

Renderings

Development

Development was done using Unreal Engine 4 and C++. I had no prior experience working with C++ and almost none using Unreal Engine 4, so this was the most time-consuming part.

Further information

This project was done as my "Maturitätsarbeit" (kind of a final thesis or project) at the school I was going to.

Credits

• Voice Acting: Selma Schwager (german), Liv Weiss (english)
• Supervision: Hanspeter Siegfried, Deborah Signer
• Hand 3D model created by SuperDasil
• Chair and table 3D models are based on models from Vitra.
• Sink and toilets 3D models are from Kohler.