For the Physical Digital Experiences module this semester (3rd year, 2nd semester), we were tasked with creating a self-directed project that incorporated the physical world in some form as well as the digital.
I’ve been interested in dipping my feet into the exciting new waters of virtual reality for a while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. As a complete beginner, I chose a fairly straightforward premise – that I would model an alternate reality form of my bedroom to be rendered in 360 degrees, preceded by a 360 photosphere of my room as it truly is – the idea being to show a picturesque contrast between the dream and reality.
Above is the 360 photosphere of the rendered ‘alternate’ bedroom – which opens onto an abstract ‘garden’ of grass and walls, dotted with trees. Below is the somewhat imperfect photosphere of the actual bedroom – the issues with it are mostly down to how it was created. I ended up having to take several panorama photos and then manually stitch them together in Photoshop, which was somewhat fiddly and imprecise. Here’s hoping I can come up with a better way of doing this in the future.
As a first foray into the world of VR, I’m pleased with the result of the project, and was very happy with how straightforward it was to create a 360 render in V-Ray. Whenever it’s practical and makes sense, I think I shall try to make a 360 render for my new projects. It would be nice to revisit some of my old projects and make 360 renders – especially those like the Nelson Thin Edge bedroom and the temple visualisation.
Stuart McInnes 