MIT Reality Hack 2022 Semifinalist
2.5 days of team development
Team: Iason Paterakis , Nefeli Manoudaki , Dillan Hoyos , and me!
Our MIT hack VR art piece “ETHO” (ἔθω) is an attempt to raise awareness about the disastrous outcomes of war and conflict by inviting you into a meaningful VR Cosmos composed of war-related procedural geometries, animations, ML generated artworks, and spatially arranged audio cues.
- My primary roles:
- Hand-drawn animations in Photoshop
- Ideation and team management
Made using Unreal Engine 4 and Blender for VR using the HTC Vive Pro 2.
- Challenges included the lack of an Unreal Engine developer on our team
- Staying organized and focused on the same vision with the 2.5 day deadline
- Our original idea included use of a Vive Tracker as a trackable artifact
- We had to scrap that idea and swapped the Vive Controllers for an Xbox controller last minute to enable locomotion
Learnings included gaining more experience working on a team and solidifying a scope and vision. A mentor helped our team with this, which I am incredibly grateful for.
I learned that it is the job of the designers to design wireframes and prototypes for the engineers to understand. Once the designs are decided on by designers, the team can regroup and solidify a common vision using a framework like the 4 W’s (Who, Why, What, When, Where.)
Engineers often want to get a say during the initial design process, but this tends to create confusion. Only when everyone is 100% on the same page can a team move forward.
I was also able to get a feel for Unreal Engine. Prior, I’d only used Unity.
