Art Asset Creation and Implementation Tips for Max Performance on XR and Mobile – Unite Copenhagen

by Elliott Mitchell | Nov 23, 2019 | 3D, AR, Art, Unite, Unity3D, VR

This fall, Vermont Digital Arts co-founder, Elliott Mitchell, traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to attend and speak at Unity’s Unite conference. Much of the Unite conference focused around Unity’s new and upcoming features, but Elliott wanted to focus on basic art and Unity editor tips that may be useful to developers and artists today. Please enjoy Elliott’s 25 minute presentation Art Asset Creation and Implementation Tips for Max Performance on XR and Mobile – Unite Copenhagen!

Waggle Words, The Augmented Reality Strategic Word Game, Lands on the Apple App Store Thursday, September 28, 2017!

by Elliott Mitchell | Sep 26, 2017 | 3D, AR, ARKit, Games, Uncategorized, Unity3D, Waggle Words

Waggle Words

A Strategic Word Game

Vermont Digital Arts is excited to announce that our Augmented Reality enhanced strategic Word Game, Waggle Words, is landing on the Apple App Store this Thursday, September 28, 2017!

We’ve launched a new landing webpage dedicated to Waggle Words for iOS!

Waggle Words is loaded with fun and useful features!

Are you unsure about AR or don’t have a device that supports AR?

Waggle Words is just as fun to play in Standard Mode (meaning not in AR)!

Standard Mode is supported on all devices running iOS 11; AR mode is only supported on devices with an A9 chip or higher.

We’ll be adding an additional webpage for Waggle Words game rules and tips! Check back soon!

Waggle Words iOS with ARKit Enhanced AR Mode – iPhone Teaser Trailer

by Elliott Mitchell | Sep 12, 2017 | 3D, AR, ARKit, Games, News & Events, Unity3D, Waggle Words, Works In Progress

With all the excitement around Apple’s much anticipated announcements today, we thought it’s a perfect time to unveil Vermont Digital Art’s Waggle Words iPhone teaser trailer (featuring ARKit enhancements for iOS 11).

Besides conveying Waggle Words being a lively game with lot’s of character, We want to communicate that Waggle Words for iOS will run on devices that support AR, as well as devices that don’t support AR. Players may choose to play in whatever mode suits their fancy (and hardware)!

Subscribe to our Vermont Digital Arts YouTube Channel for more Waggle Words trailers, tutorials, game play and platform announcements!

More exciting Waggle Words announcements to come later this week!

Waggle Words with AR Mode for iOS 11 Development Update

by Elliott Mitchell | Sep 7, 2017 | 3D, AR, ARKit, Games, Unity3D, Waggle Words, Works In Progress

Waggle Words continues with a few more updates as we get ready to launch! Thank you all for your overwhelmingly positive feedback on our last post. Your positivity has given us that extra momentum to work on suggestions from designer, developers and play testers to make our UI even more slick and intuitive. We’re honing our tutorial to make it playable as well as instructable. We are definitely feeling the 90-90 rule.

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
— Tom Cargill, Bell Labs

We are hope all of you are as excited for the release of iOS11 and ARKit as we are. Waggle Words AR is pretty cool as we play it with the Vermont fauna and flora in the background and we think it will be fun you city slickers too.

Follow Waggle Words on Twitter: @WaggleWords
Follow Vermont Digital Arts on Twitter: @VTDigitalArts

Waggle Words iOS Beta Now Leveraging ARKit for a New Augmented Reality Mode

by Elliott Mitchell | Aug 26, 2017 | AR, Games, News & Events, Unity3D, VR, Waggle Words, Works In Progress

We’ve been talking about both iOS and SteamVR versions of Waggle Words for well over a year; today we’re announcing Waggle Words for iOS now features an Augmented Reality mode for supported devices!

Since we are very close to releasing Waggle Words for both SteamVR and iOS, and given the advent of Apple’s upcoming iOS 11 release (which introduces ARKit for Augmented Reality), we thought we’d apply our accumulated knowledge of working in both VR and iOS and try our hand at Augmented Reality. We have been thinking about AR all throughout Waggle Words development and have intentionally architected our project in Unity to take into account future platforms and modes of play.

Waggle Words AR Mode is still a work in progress. We’re continually iterating our design to be intuitive and fun. We plan on continuing playtesting and implementing UI/UX revisions up until we launch Waggle Words. We’ve included some recent previews of Waggle Words for iOS with both AR and normal modes of play in this post. These samples are already a little out of date, but we thought we’d share our process nonetheless.

[fancy_images width=”180″ height=”240″]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_iPad_Main_Menu_01_600x800.png[/image]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_Beta_iPad_01_600x800.png[/image]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_AR_Beta_iPad_01_600x800.png[/image]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_Beta_iPad_Word_List_600x800.png[/image]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_Beta_iPad_Current_Stats_00_600x800.png[/image]
[image]https://vermontdigitalarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Vermont_Digital_Arts_Waggle_Words_Beta_iPad_All_Time_Stats_00_600x800.png[/image]
[/fancy_images]

We have some TestFlight slots available for serious people in the press, and video streamers, who are interested in Augmented Reality and ARKit.

Stay Tuned!

More to come shortly!

Unite 2016 – VR Technical Solutions and How They Influence Design

by Elliott Mitchell | Dec 1, 2016 | 3D, Unite, Unity3D, VR, Waggle Words

Graeme Borland, Anton Hand, Julie Heyde, Kayla Kinnunen and Elliott Mitchell at Unite ’16 Los Angeles

One day into Unity’s flagship Conference, Unite 2016 (Los Angeles, CA), Vermont Digital Arts’ Elliott Mitchell was unexpectedly invited to speak on a panel, VR Technical Solutions and How They Influence Design. Of course, Elliott gratefully obliged!

Watch the video below to hear some entertaining VR war stories from a group of VR pioneers including: Graeme Borland (Owlchemy Labs), Anton Hand (RUST LTD), Julie Heyde (VR Unicorns) and Kayla Kinnunen (Independent).