other worldly - a creative intro to unity for vr
Hello World! The School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe is an organisation dedicated to the imaginative exploration of art, technology, design, and human connection. We learn and play with tools that make our brains and our dreams come to life! Wanna join us?
This class focuses on tools to allow you to create your own virtual reality (VR) experiences. VR is a medium that compels us to explore artistic creation, storytelling, and interactivity. The technologies needed to create and view VR content are now available to everyone.
We'll walk you through the basics of using Unity software to create your own virtual reality applications that can be experienced and viewed on a Vive headset.
No previous experience necessary!
COURSE DESCRIPTION
While the main goal of this course is to get you familiar with how to code and to use that code in a series of creative art experiments, on the first eve we'll spend time getting to know each other through playful exercises as a way to familiarise ourselves with the teaching methodologies of the school.
Once we've bonded, made some friends*, and come to a deeper understanding of what we'll be doing together in the coming week, we'll move on to the more technical aspects of the course!
Virtual reality is a shiny new medium with huge potential as a vehicle for delivering unique, profound and beautiful experiences to the world.
The primary focus of this course will be Unity, currently the most popular and versatile game engine available. While it's primarily designed for making video games, it has a range of uses as a creative medium for building virtual reality experiences.
One of Unity's strengths is the ease with which it can build applications for pretty much every operating system and device you can think of.
In this course, you'll learn the basic concepts of VR, as well as how to use models, materials, sounds, and animation, and how to script with C# to allow you to code interactivity into your applications. Don't know what any of that means? No worries, we'll explain everything!
All the software we'll be using in this course is free, although you're free to spend money on buying additional assets if you so choose.
DATES
Mon. Sept. 9, 7pm - 10pm Tues. Sept. 10, 7pm - 10pm Wed. Sept. 11, 7pm - 10pm Thurs. Sept. 12, 7pm - 10pm Fri. Sept. 13, 7pm - 10pm
WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?
Tools to turn your artwork into VR experiences.
The basic concepts of working with code, in particular with C#.
The basics of the Unity interface and scripting frameworks.
How to make your work interactive and import and animate assets.
How to deploy and view an experience on a Vive headset.
Knowledge to continue expanding your understanding of programming.
WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?
You do not need any programming experience to get started and you will learn the programming skills you need as we progress, so this course is perfect for designers, artists, musicians, storytellers, animators and anyone else who wants to get familiar with Unity and take their work into virtual reality.
ABOUT PARTICIPATION
Participants should bring their laptops
No prior experience necessary.
Small class, up to 10 attendees.
Women and persons from LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented communities in the tech field highly encouraged to attend.
FEES
Students €135
Freelancer €155
Professional €175
Spaces are limited. Grab your ticket today! For alternative payment methods, message us at: info[at]schoolofma.org
About the Instructor
Meredith Thomas
Meredith is an artist and creative technologist based in Berlin. He studied biomedical engineering and science communication at Imperial College London. After moving to Berlin he became interested in creative uses of technology. His work now focuses on intersections between artistic tradition and practice and new technology. He has worked on a number of creative VR projects.
*you don't have to make friends. But coding together with others can be a nicer experience if you do!
Workshop image courtesy of Rita Eperjesi.