As promised, I said I would write about what I worked on during the past few weeks after I was laid off. Before I get into the details, I want to thank all those that helped me during this time, you guys know who you are. It was a pleasure being able to create such an innovative prototype in a field that is just now being pioneered!
After being laid off, I didn't put out my resume right away like all my fellow colleagues did. I took my time to spin up on something that has been capturing my imagination as of late, VR & AR. Now this may seem like bandwagon hype because everyone is trying to take this niche technology and make it a viable medium. But, I just didn't want to make content for the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift. I wanted to take 2 fields that have seen some amazing growth due to technological advances and bridge them together. Welcome VR + 3D Scanning.
Luckily, I am friends with some awesome developers over at Paracosm (paracosm.io). They do 3D reconstruction from point cloud data. Which was perfect for what we wanted to tackle. The premise was simple: Allow gamers to gamify their own personal spaces!
Paracosm took the point cloud data from 3D scans and converted them into usable meshes, then handed them off to us so that we could use them inside of UE4 and add gameplay mechanics to them.
As a side note, I am a very talented tech artist or so I've been told. So jumping over to point cloud data and trying to figure out the best way to make it work with our idea was actually...very intuitive and fun! I knew quite a bit about photogrammetry and 3D scanning going in and even made one of the Dev's over at Paracosm get excited by how much I knew! The feature list I would have requested, if this project was a success, would have been awesome to track.
I just want to take a second and iterate how freaking awesome this idea is. It has many applications beyond games such as medical, law enforcement, automotive, pre-visualization, and so on! To allow a consumer to use a device, such as the Google Tango, to scan their house and then use gameplay templates to play in that world is revolutionary!
Now unlike AR where it's done in real time, this media would be cooked out and shipped as a product with modding tools, in the vein of Gary's Mod. So you have rapid world creation with simple drag and drop game mechanics. Plus, the possibility to throw VR on top. Beautiful!
I'd almost be as bold to say this was probably the fastest rapid prototyping and Kickstarter project to ever be done and I could also go into the ups and downs of trying to launch a Kickstarter...but I won't. Time and money are arch nemesis especially when bills come due. So we did what we could with the time we had while trying to retain talented Devs to work on a "hobby" project for free. Keep in mind we had a budget of $0! I am extremely proud of what we accomplished and I hope that one day people will understand what we were trying to do.
When you don't have to wake up and go to work, you still want to wake up and work on something. This was mine. It also further proved the strengths of my skills as a tech artist.
Here's the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/465844857/scanspace
If that link goes bad, you can download a PDF of the project.