Virtual Reality Escape Room
Was the brief of this project. In 3rd year of university myself on 5 others took on the task of creating a virtual reality short game experience. We took 10 weeks to design, build and develop this. Taking inspiration from Victorian Design as well as Steam Punk, we looked for different interior and exterior concept art pieces. Compiling them together would could start creating.
Starting with a blockout to define our shape and playable areas, we could start to scope out a story line and more of the interior design.
The work was delegated between the 6 of us, with all of us sharing responsibilities. I mainly worked as a Material and Prop Artist across this project, but also shared work into tech and environment art.
One example of my role was my responsibility for all wood materials across the scene. All of which I created within Substance Designer. The non-destructive workflow of Designer allowed me to create a base wood that I could iterate easily across the project, and change when feedback came in.
We worked really hard to try and convey the feeling that this airship belonged to someone and that it was truly lived in. Challenged with limited time, scoping this project was important, so the feeling that this project sent was very important to us. Using shape language, colour and plenty of props we spent lots of time on the details. Each book had a title. Each prop had a story. Our team fell into this storytelling and it brought passion and motivation throughout the project.
Make it feel alive
Working for Virtual Reality brought a whole new set of challenges. Both creative and technical. The creative challenges were understood much easier; we had an oculus headset hooked up to our project, meaning we could jump in an really judge our work as we progressed. The technical side was much tougher. Both lighting an environment which you walk around, and developing an interactive environment. Through both our amazing tutors and the fantastic online resources we are all very proud of what we were able to achieve.
