VR Factory - Event Experience

Use your mouse, or move your phone, to look around in the video.

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Would you take on a client in an industry that is entirely foreign to you?

I find it one of the most exciting things about my work, doing these deep dives into industries and translating the information clearly and engagingly.

First Contact

For this project, it started with a message from Dave, who works as the Chief Product Officer over at REIN4CED.

The brief was quite simple: the company's CEO has been a fan of one of my older works I made for Airborne and asked if we could create something like that but in Virtual Reality.

The directed camera version, used for static presentations.

Understanding the process

The first step in a project is gathering information about the company and its processes and building a concept.

What REIN4CED does is twofold: they have created a new carbon-like material.

REIN4CED is automating the production process, which in turn makes them able to compete with the Chinese on a price point and have the unique selling point of better carbon material.

The breakdown of the cell steps as a quick viewport renders made for external feedback.

Breaking down the steps

Seeing that a 360-degree VR experience was the goal, I had to figure out a format that would fit the production process and not make people feel motion sick while amazed by the experience.

Guests will enjoy the VR experience at a live event, where they will see the new facility, and most guests will experience VR for the first time.

So the best way to approach this is to have the viewer standing still and dived the space in quarters where every 90 degrees would be one production cell.

A low-resolution preview gives the client a good idea of the overall look and feel.

Creating the Visuals

After the initial breakdown, I started making sketches of the cells and divided the different parts of the production process into production cells.

I started by creating some stylesheets to give the customer an idea of the look I was going for in the Virtual Reality video.

After that, I created the animatic to get a good feeling for the timing of the video.

Learning about 360 audio design

As I was wrapping up things, I asked if they wanted some 360 audio played on top.

It was my first time working with 360 audio, a technology stack still so infantile.

I needed to stitch together a couple of plugins made by Facebook in the audio software Reapers and, from there, build a soundscape.

I did the 3D sound edit in Reaper with many plugins.

Overcoming the Challenges & Loving the results

I created my first fully VR explainer experience in this project and made a 360 soundscape while working under a tight deadline.

Working with Dave and REIN4CED was enjoyable, and seeing a client being blown away with the results is always delightful.

The opening event we made this for was a success; visitors loved the experience.

To complement the work, I added a non-interactive version for future presentations.