VR Shopping
Software used: Unity, Photoshop, Maya, Perforce, Premiere Pro
Programming language used: C#
Immediately when this project was pitched, the possibility of participating in making a project to help others was what drew me in. You can find more information about the VR Shopping project here.
For the first time, I took on a teamlead role within a project. I made sure everyone had their priorities straight and helped both the artists and developers with tedious but simple tasks to ease their workload. Additionally I kept track of administration and deadlines, communicated with everyone that was involved in the project and attended most meetings and playtest sessions to keep track of feedback.
In collaboration with XRehab and HitLab, our group of six was able to create a solid prototype for the VR Shopping project, ready to connect to a dashboard and then off to test. The other students that worked on this project are Elian David, Jarne Wieme, Jonas Bruylandt, Nicolas Hendriks en TomTom Van Der Heijden.
Thesis
Software used: Unity, Premiere Pro
Programming language used: C#
The VR Shopping project really sparked my interest in VR, so I wanted to explore it further by making my thesis about something to do with VR as well. Therefore I chose the topic 'Limitations of Hand Tracking When Used for Rehabilitation' as the topic for my thesis.
I made a small application in Unity with three different exercises that are actively being used for rehabilitation of fine hand motoric in hospitals like UZ Ghent. For some of the exercises to work in VR, I had to adapt them slightly: Putting donuts on a stick was adapted from putting beads on a string. Building a tower of loose blocks becomes difficult after stacking more than four, so I made the blocks snap onto one another. In the package I used only the pointer finger can interact with buttons, so a typing exercise became Simon Says.
Thanks to Sarah Vercaemer, who is a parttime occupational therapist at UZ Ghent and parttime researcher / occupational therapist for Smartspace UZ Ghent and XRehab, I was able to test my application with patients that suffer from acquired brain injury. The playtest sessions uncovered that menu navigation was the biggest difficulty for the patients that tested the applicatian, rather than any of the variants of the exercises.
This was the first project I made in VR on my own, which made it logical for me to choose Unity packages that had a lot of documentation and video tutorials that could help me. Midway through my project, the packages I opted to use became deprecated in favor of the new Meta packages.
As a personal project I'd like to remake my application with other Unity packages to be able to compare the packages with one another.
If you would like to read my thesis, you can download it here.
Dig Through History
Software used: Maya, Photoshop, Unity, Premiere Pro
Programming language used: C#
For this project we had to create an educational game for children that could be played on a visit in a museum. Our starting point was the client their request: Include Mexican history and meet the "IDEA" requirements (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access), from which we went through the whole game production process with our group of five.
Besides me, the group I was part of consisted of Dave Van Verdegem, Vital Van Hollebeke, Rufus Steels, and Hannes De Wispelaere. Through discussing what roles we all would like to take on, I became one of two main artists of the group, alongside Rufus. My main tasks were unwrapping and texturing, but I also made some of the 3D models and 2D drawings, as well as the trailer.
We definitely went through some ups and downs with this project, but in the end we were able to deliver a satisfying end result both the team and our client were happy with.
The main hiccup we went through during the project was slow communication. It took a group effort of drawing out clear thumbnails of the game stages and writing up a detailed Game Design Document for us to get on the same page again.
If you would like to play the game, go to this website. Then click 'Excavando a través de la Historia(2022)' and click the image to download a .zip file. Unpack the .zip file and double-click the .exe file to play.
Portfolio Website
Coding languages used: HTML, CSS
When I was trying to make a portfolio website using one of the many available website creator tools, I felt like I had to put in a lot of effort in order to make the website look the way I wanted it to look, for it to then not even look exactly like I wanteded it to look. So I decided I might as well spend the same amount of time figuring out how to write code for a website over which I have full control.
It took only about three days to refresh my memory on how to create a responsive website using HTML and CSS (and a tiny bit of JavaScript to make the hamburger menu for mobile version of the website). It then took me about two days to add all of the content and to make sure little details, like spacing around the different boxes, were just right.
I expect this website will be a project I keep working on. Both because there are always little things that can be changed for the better but also just to learn more about making websites. So far I hardly used any JavaScript, but it definitely is something I want to look into.
Chinese Lantern Builder
Software used: Maya, Photoshop
This little house was made as a school assignment. The instructions had us choose one of five ancient civilizations for which we had to make a small building that had a clear function. We had to keep the building low in polygons and all of the textures had to be hand-painted. All of the textures for the building had to fit on one texture space, but for the ground and foliage we could use a separate texture space. If we wanted to add emission or transparency, we were allowed to use a third texture space.
The ancient civilization I chose was Ancient China and I decided to make a lantern builder.
Flying Circus
Software used: Maya, Photoshop
Another project that involved a low-poly mdel and handpainted textures was our 'Flying Circus' assignment. We had to create a stylized version of a plane from the time period around World War II. Which plane we wanted to model was completely up to us and we had to change its proporions to create a stylized version. Once again, we were only allowed to use one texture for the whole plane and all of the textures had to be hand painted.
The plane I decided to tackle is called 'Sopwith Triplane'. To achieve the proportions of my version of the plane, I shortened the original vesion, made the tail and front larger, the wheels smaller and the wings narrower, but increased their depth.
Hexen
Software used: Unity
Programming language used: C#
From this project I learned a lot about C# programming. We went through programming a classic chess game in an overkill-for-chess kind of complicated and optimized way to illustrate good practices, including separating model and view, through programming a game everyone knows the rules of.
During the semester we were expected to use what we had learned to make a game with a hexagonal grid as a playing field and playing cards you have to drag and drop onto the playing field as the moves the player can perform.
An important thing I learned from this was to separate a big task into smaller ones that are easier to manage. I figured out how to make the cards with the drag and drop system first, then tried to add functionality for the least complicated move until it worked perfectly before trying to add the cards with more complex moves.
For the base game we had to make four cards with different moves: The teleport card that allowed the player to move to any empty space on the board. The slash card that destroys enemies in a straight line that starts from the player and ends where the grid ends. A swipe card that removes enemies from the board on three of the tiles adjacent to the player. A pushback card that pushed enemies back one tile on three of the tiles adjacent to the player. If an enemy stands at the edge of the grid and gets pushed off the edge, it is removed instead.