Throughout the whole semester, I would have to say what I learned in this Virtual Reality course would be the most interesting, new, and unique learnings during my first semester at NYU. Not only did I learn a new tool that I can utilize in the future but I also was able to have a change in perspective with the exciting concepts of virtual reality through many of the reading materials and guest lectures during class.
Before taking this virtual reality course, I frankly had no experience with the virtual reality world and always wanted to explore more because of how much the industry has been growing and been implemented in our daily lives. (e.g AR features on our phone applications, VR therapies for PTSD, VR games — that I've never tried playing before). However, our whole class was fortunate enough to get an oculus quest on our own which opened up my eyes to the beginning of my VR. Especially with the pandemic in the world, the VR world has been a safe, socially distanced method of trying something new and different. From our week 2 article about how the coronavirus is showing humans how to live online, I could not agree more with the author emphasizing the importance of the accessibility of people wanting to stay connected online as much as possible due to the pandemic. With access from NYU, after playing around with the VR set and also building a whole environment with functionalities, I feel so much more comfortable with 3-dimensional concepts and creations and feel more connected with the 3-dimensional approach to design in general.
With our professor Carla’s helpful tutorials for the Unity environment and also Maya, I was able to get an in-depth hands-on experience with all the new different tools and I even taught myself how to use Cinema 4D! It was so much easier to learn because of how similar it was with Maya and Unity. I was able to get a quick start to using C4D to build the assets to our Calicollector game. (Furniture, Toys, Food and etc). I realized I loved making these little assets and I want to continue to use this tool in the future — In my Ideation and Prototyping class, for our looks-like prototype, I used C4D to mock up what our project would look like! Using skills learned from this class to improve and grow my skills in other classes as well.
One of the most important lessons I learned through the end of the class was collaboration within designing for VR. With some practice with our CollabVRation, being part of the cat5 group helped me to learn so much about how we could all help and use each other's strengths to create something out of nothing. One of our guests, Zander gave us crucial feedback about how collaboration is done in the industry and reassured our whole team that VR is challenging to collaborate because of the tool capabilities. We could resonate with his perspective on group work and how important it is to have clear communication and feedback. I wrote about our important learnings from Zander here about our project!
Reading back to my posts from the beginning of the class when I had almost zero knowledge of VR, I have learned valuable skills that I will definitely use in the future and also a change in perspective of how I view VR. Resources, reading materials, tutorials, and having support from my classmates, and the professor created a safe atmosphere to enhance my curiosity for the topic and I would love to continue to learn about VR and AR in thee next semesters.
