Korovayny Final Assignment

Here is my final project - Panotour of the High Line Public Park in the New York City! http://www.vrstorytelling.org/Files/HighlinePanotour/HighlinePanotour.html The park itself is a great example of renovating and creating public spaces using old industrial constructions. Videos are pretty good, light is nice, but at the same time - no voiceover and storytelling. Let me tell you why. First of all, I decided to make an ordinary 360 video with the voiceover of park staff and local activists and park stuff. Staff and activists appeared extremely unresponsible. At then I...

Want to take VRStorytelling, but can’t get in? There’s hope!

To current Syracuse University juniors, seniors and grad students you know who are interested in virtual and augmented reality: As in past semesters, the fall offering of my Virtual Reality Storytelling class has been filled. We are looking into the possibility of opening a second section that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-12:20 pm. But to do that we need enough students to sign up. The new section is now open in MySlice with these course numbers: Undergrads: NEW 400, course number 20722 Grads: NEW 600, course number 20723 If...

Open-source SteamVR Unity Toolkit

One of the great things about this class is that your professor is learning right along with you. I try as much as possible to stay two steps ahead, but with new developments and discoveries popping up by the week I find it more effective to simply share my recent finds with you just as I ask you to do with the rest of the class. Here's the latest. This weekend I discovered the SteamVR Unity Toolkit plugin, which works alongside the officially-supported SteamVR plugin. It's a very straightforward way...

When Should You Take the Red Pill?

One afternoon one of my brightest students walked into my office hours with a big smile on his face. “Good morning, Professor Pacheco,” he said with glee. “Have you heard about the 9/11 virtual reality game? I was wondering if we could install it in the innovation lab. It sounds really cool. I want to try it!” I can’t even fully describe my initial gut reaction, but if what the student saw on my face could be translated into sounds it would probably be of a old fashioned record player...

Mo Cap, Unity, and Me – A Study in Low-Budget Motion Capture

Every good story needs characters. No matter what medium you're using to tell a story, people latch on to anyone they can relate to or feel for. And if that story happens to be in virtual reality, they can latch on all the more tightly. They share a space with the character. They inhabit its world. They empathize with it, no matter how obviously CGI it is. Case and point: Kiya Notice the way these people move. It's never stiff or robotic. They gesture fluidly to each other. They naturally...

3D Print Your Own 360 Camera Rig

In January, we used the SU Makerspace to 3D print eight 360 camera rigs like the one in this photo. It was a herculean 24-hour effort, and at one point we'd turned the Innovation Lab into a Santa's Workshop of GoPro's. Here's what you need to make your own. GoPro Cameras Get six GoPro Hero 4 Black cameras ($500 each). Silver will also work, but don’t mix silver and black models because the settings may be slightly different, and every camera needs to be recording with the same settings. 3D Print...

VR Session at 2016 Journalism Interactive

Hello, J/interactive attendees! I'm excited to be here today to show you a few things about creating CGI scenes in Unit and shooting and publishing 360 videos. Here's a short version of the slides I showed. VR Journalism Workshop at Journalism Interactive from JournovationSU But first, I want to showcase some of the amazing work our VRStorytelling students have done at the Newhouse school. Now in its third semester, VRStorytelling is on track to having over 50 students graduate in May with hands-on experience producing content for VR headsets. Here...

About the ‘VR at Newhouse’ Blog

Hello! If you're reading this blog, you're probably either a member of the S.I. Newhouse School's VR Storytelling class; a member of the faculty, staff or alumni of the school; someone in the VR industry; or just someone who's interested in what we're doing in VR. No matter what brought you here, we want to welcome you! This blog will be posted to (hopefully) regularly by myself, Dan Pacheco, or my partner in crime, Ken Harper. We're professors at the S.I. Newhouse School, and while we focus on different areas, we're both...