Altspace VR Concept Art and Design
Altspace VR is a virtual reality social space where users can create an avatar and interact with users from around the world, play interactive games and attend free events in a variety of social spaces and environments.
Design Challenges
- Create and explore a variety of avatars concepts ranging from humanoid, robotic, elemental, animalistic, cartoony, etc. The original model designs worked fine but they were simple and we wanted to offer more avatar customization.
- The realistic human avatars were stuck in “the uncanny valley.” This means that they looked realistic but something was “off” about their appearance and the way they moved. When a person looks realistic but moves un-naturally, blinks strangely or looks too perfect it’s uncomfortable for users, especially in VR. The human brain is amazing at noticing when something is somewhat “off” about another person.
- Virtual reality technology is still in it’s early stages. This means that while we were developing the avatar models it placed limitations on how much detail we could implement into the models, so we needed to design models that we could implement immediately and down the road.
Robotic Avatar Silhouettes and Sketches
Execution: Design
At the beginning stages we were trying to figure out general shapes and ideas to develop further. The initial designs were robotic in nature to build on the standard avatar that Altspace VR was using at the time.
Body Shapes / Silhouette Concepts – Lighting matters!
Humanoid Head Concept Sketches
We explored a variety of humanoid models to see what direction we might want to go with our designs on the avatars.
Hover Shoes and Leg Design Concepts
Leg and foot design was something we spent a lot of time considering and researching during the course of the project. We were aware that most of the users were seated while using Altspace VR – we were concerned that a walking animation would break the immersion for some of our users since they would be seated in real life but could look down and see a pair of legs walking beneath them as they moved around in VR. At the same time, hovering has it’s own immersion problems since that’s not a natural way to move at all. We played with a variety of designs, some that hovered and others that walked and tested with our users to get a feel for which ones they preferred. Ultimately, we stayed with the hovering for the time being but modeled the model’s base to more closely resemble actual legs.
Avatar Arm Designs
During the project we explored arm and hand designs to figure out how to construct the joints in a way that fit the avatars but also allowed for user customization and room to improve on the designs over time.Â
Surreal Avatar Concepts
Throughout the project we explored a variety of designs ranging from ‘realistic’ to ‘strange and surreal’ just to explore whether we want to implement these designs in VR and to test if the users were interested in using ‘surreal’ avatars. Ultimately, we didn’t wind up developing these avatars in Unity but it was still worth exploring the designs if only to shake things up.
Sam Cossman
“In December 2014, with a cross disciplinary team of experts, Sam Cossman journeyed to the depths of one of the world’s most active volcanoes. In an unprecedented exploratory application of drone technology, and in partnership with DJI and Pix4D, he and his team successfully generated the first of it’s kind 3d model of a volcanic lava lake.”
In 2015, Sam Cossman teamed up with Altspace to give a lecture about his achievement from the ledge of a 3d volcano in virtual reality. These are a few designs that we were exploring to give him a custom VR avatar.
Eye Concepts / designs
During the project we explored a variety of eye design choices – both humanoid and robotic but overall goal was to figure out how to design eyes that could convey emotion and could blink without looking strange. The humanoid models at this point became more ‘cartoonish’ because we could build them within the pixel restrictions and because these avatars looked better in VR.
‘trio of humanoid avatars’ sketches and concept art
Dungeons and Dragons in Altspace VR
Environment concept art for a ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ minigame that could be played in Altspace VR. We created tables for a variety of environments so that the ‘Dungeon Master’ could choose a tabletop theme for the session that was more fitting than a plain wooden tabletop. These are some examples of tabletop designs that we played with for this side project.
First Person view
One of the ideas for D&D in Altspace VR was to view the tabletop/battlefield from the perspective of the miniatures – hence the tables modeled to look like different enviroments.
