Burnout and Reintegration
The issue that we have been asked to tackle is that of social workers in the youth sector often end up not having enough time for their own families and inadvertently burning themselves out with their job. We try to simulate this feeling for the employees to detect when its happening but also for the employers to spot when it happening to their team.
Artist Work
Motion and Facial Capture:
Managed motion capture using XSense suits and Manus gloves, plus facial capture with iPhone and LiveLink, processed for realistic VR character animations. Many hours of cleaning up animations.
Visual Effects (VFX):
Developed a hallucination portal effect using the Niagara system. Also created black smoke and flashback sequences to evoke a sense of confinement and stress.
Audio Integration:
Foley sound recording and audio cleanup. Implemented speech sounds, adjusted phone sound effects for immersion, and created an attenuation system for calls in the VR simulation.
Designer Work
Experience Design:
Focused on evoking discomfort in users through detailed textures, post-processing effects, and hectic atmospheres. Designed user interactions, keeping them minimal for realism (e.g., smartphone touch interactions).
Pipeline & Optimization:
Integrated VR performance optimization techniques like VR foveation, anti-aliasing, and reducing the long and performance heavy animations down by half to ensure high FPS for immersive experiences. This all allowed us to have great performance while making use of Unreal Engine systems, which usually would be too heavy to run for VR let alone standalone.
Engineer Work
Programming & Tooling:
Created systems for object interactions and UI, including touch-based smartphone features like emails and calendar. Integrated and optimized the outline shader for interactive elements.
Created Tool for procedually generating buildings and rooms, with custom door and window locations designed user friendly, all managed within in the editor without needing to open any blueprints.
Fashion Show
In general this project was spearheaded and in my hands, most things in the engine was purely me as the only other person assigned to this project at the company was a very talented artist with high interest in fashion, Tacniss (Art Station link).
The goal was to create a pipeline from Marvelous to Unreal Engine to be used by fashion students to inspect their designs wherever and before making them. With Unreal Engine 5.4, most of this work became somewhat obsolete as Epic Games has created more support for clothing files, circumventing the very lengthy and complicated process to make this run with 100+ FPS on VR with very high resultions.
Artist Work
Visual Effects (VFX):
Designed VFX systems, including blowing leaves, leaf tornadoes, and fish VFX, to complement the initial aesthetic of the VR fashion show. Created audio-reactive lights and could hook this up to the fish, or anything for that matter, to synchronize with music for a dynamic experience.
Dress Simulation:
Led the simulation of high-quality fabric designs using Marvelous Designer, importing complex cloth simulations into Unreal Engine, made by fashion artist.
Materials:
Created all the materials as close to real life as possible using the fabric textures given and then adjusting and fixing them in the engine creating an amazing showcase of the materials accompied by the simulation.
Designer Work
Showcase Design:
Created a slow-motion toggle and magnifying glass for users to inspect the fabrics closely. Developed an interactive dress menu to allow viewers to select between animated and static models.
Engineer Work
Optimization & Programming:
Developed a pipeline for integrating Marvelous Designer with Unreal Engine. Optimized performance by managing large 3D file sizes, improving FPS using geometry cache techniques, and ensuring smooth rendering during the show.
Bariatric Care
The client’s criteria’s and specifications guided the development process towards creating an informative and immersive virtual reality (VR) grocery store simulator. The primary objective was to develop a high-definition simulation featuring realistic textures and materials to create a visually authentic environment. The VR experience aimed to assist users who have undergone stomach reduction surgery by providing comprehensive information on nutritional values, facilitating smarter food choices.
Artist Work
Store Design:
Modeled and created textures for the virtual grocery store, optimizing product visuals for high realism in VR. Worked on arranging products for a natural, immersive shopping experience.
Designer Work
User Interaction:
Developed an experience for users recovering from stomach reduction surgery, focusing on nutritional education through food item selections and nutritional information displays.
Shelf Generation Tool:
Collaborated to create a procedural tool for placing items on shelves, adding realistic randomness in placement to mimic real-world grocery stores.
Engineer Work
Tool Development:
Engineered systems to automate shelf filling and price tag assignment in Unreal Engine, optimizing rendering for Quest Headsets and ensuring high-performance standalone VR builds.
Bug Fixing:
Solved a complex rendering issue where item stacks appeared misaligned in VR due to instanced meshes, switching to OpenGL to ensure visual consistency.
