Internship VR Learning Lab

VR Internship VRLL 2018

When I started this internship at VR Learning Lab in 2018, I mainly wanted to find out how to make and use Motion Capture in a VR experience and how to bring across a certain message, using some sort of storyline. I also wanted to get more experience working with Unity, C# and Blender.

My Intership Supervisor and I combined the things I wanted to learn with a cool project, which the company (VRLL) was already working on. VRLL wanted to make an application which demonstrates and explains what VR can mean for eduction. The android application was already made by another intern. My job was to build a VR experience into the existing android application, with the goal to demonstrate what the educational purpose of VR can be.

The user begins in the VRLL classroom, where a 3D Hologram character which represents Robin (Founder of VRLL) is telling you what VR can mean for education. After that the classroom walls dissapear and the user is standing in a winter mountain environment. From there on the 3d Hologram takes you to different places around the planet (and even beyond that), each with a different educational purpose. For example a scene where the user can take a look into the Dinosaur era and can learn stuff about the prehistory, while seeing real life size Dinosaurs walking right next to them!

During the project, I did a lot of research on the Motion Capture principle. Because VRLL learning lab is a startup, the company can't afford expensive setups like the OptiTrack. So I tried to get a prototype working with the items I had to my disposal. After some research I chose to give the Xbox kinect v2 a try (that VRLL happened to have laying around in the office). I got it working in combination with Blender. I could record and see live movements to a rig in Blender. I eventually got it working on a 3D model I created in Blender. The result was okay but not that great, because the recordings were really stuttery. I didn't think it was good enough so I decided (together with my intern supervisor) to go in another direction. I made a new prototype in which I animated the character myself (while I used the movements of the recorded motion capture as reference material). This worked so good that we decided to use the newly created workflow for all the other scenes.

I learned a lot from this internship, I became better at programming in C#; I got more experience working with Unity; I Learned the basic principles of Motion Capture and how to make it with limited material; I learned more about 3D modelling; I learned more about VR Story Telling; I got the chance to improve my professional working attitude and a lot more.

Why don't you take a look at the VR Experience yourself, down here?