This fall, Vermont Digital Arts co-founder, Elliott Mitchell, traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to attend and speak at Unity’sUnite 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!
PAX East is a gigantic consumer facing video game conference that descends on Boston, MA each spring. Pax East attendance is estimated to be greater than 100k over the traditionally 3 day event; this year Pax East organizers threw in a 4th day to expand their offerings to the exuberant gaming communities. Vermont Digital Arts wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity to attend such a monumental gaming event, yet we opted out of demoing Waggle Words in a traditional expo booth for four days (right after spending a week at GDC). We accessed a great alternative for demoing at the conference: MassDiGI’s Made In MA at PAX East 2018 Party!
Elliott Mitchell (Co-Founder of Vermont Digital Arts) traveled to Boston’s District Hall for the Made In MA Party to demo Waggle Words on iOS and to demo an alpha build of Waggle Words VR in development for Valve’s Steam PC platform. Waggle Words VR leverages the HTC Vive Virtual Reality system (HMD, controllers and lighthouses) to deliver an immersive and extremely comfortable VR experience. Waggle Words VR also currently supports the Oculus HMD and Touch controllers in Steam as well.
Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Vermont Digital Arts] demoing Waggle Words, – Photo courtesy of Luke Hollis
Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Vermont Digital Arts] demoing Waggle Words, – Photo courtesy of Luke Hollis
After a great night at the Made in MA Party, Elliott put on his Boston Unity Group (BUG) organizer hat and spoke with other Boston game dev community leaders on a panel entitled, “We Created Game Dev Communities – And You Can Too!” The panel discussed the different focuses that game dev events can have, how to find external support, the ins-and-outs of creating a welcoming environment, and much more.
Adri Mills [Organizer, WIG Boston],Craig Herndon [CEO, BostonVR],Oleg Brodskiy [COO, BostonFIG], Caroline Murphy [CEO/Founder, BostonFIG], Seth Alter [Organizer, Boston Indies] & Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Boston Unity Group], – Photo courtesy of Rydia Vielehr.
If you are looking for smaller events within the 100k people of PAX East, attending talks and finding concurrent events like the Made in Ma Party are great ways to connect and network with your community.
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.
Guided and supported by Scatter, each artist was commissioned to conjure a unique dystopian VR portal into the not so distant future. The impetus for each of the artist’s resulting VR worlds were prompted by snippets of text judiciously selected by each of the artists from a collaborative writing project commissioned by DIS. Subsequently, each VR world is a unique, beautiful, and slightly unsettling experience, yet all share decontextualized threads torn from the fabric of the original source text. The interrelated VR pieces are not passive experiences; the worlds require the viewer to physically move within the VR space to completely unwrap hidden meanings, mechanics, and messages. The four near future VR worlds are connected by a timeless, VR, fire lit cave. The cave functions as gateway of sorts from which the participant gently enters and exits the separate artists’ realities and acts as an interstitial respite between the dystopian VR words.
Vermont Digital Arts‘, Elliott Mitchell, had the good fortune to work with the cutting edge innovators at Scatter and DIS, as well as the four talented fine artists on this ambitious VR art project. Having roots in the fine arts as well as game development, Elliott contributed to Styles and Customs of the 2020s in the role of Technical Director and Lead Developer.
Styles and Customs of the 2020s opened March 16th and will run until September 4th at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh where you can experience the exhibit in person. Not wanting to spoil the joy of discovery for those of you who have yet to visit the museum, we have been intentionally vague in our descriptions of the artist’s VR worlds. After the exhibit concludes, we will post an update with more detailed images, videos and descriptions covering the breadth of the exhibit. If you wish to read more about the exhibit now, take a look here.
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).
Musical pioneer and artist extraordinaire, Björk, has been diving head first into Virtual Reality with her traveling art exhibit Björk Digital. The VR exhibit is a work in progress which features four VR music experiences from Björk’s “Vulnicura” album. Our resident artist, Elliott Mitchell, was fortunate enough to have had a small role working with environment art on one of the VR pieces. Checkout this video clip from Björk’s Instagram account which includes some of Elliott’s handy work!
