June 2009 “Virtual archeology game”
See the demoFor this project I was looking at Interactive and Immersive Virtual Artworks.
I focused on virtual sculpting tools. Indeed I wanted to virtually reproduce the symbolic gesture of a hammer on the stone. I realized that today many artists are actually using computer for their creative artwork, using software such as Maya, Google sketchup… but those softwares are quite difficult to use. You really need to have computer skills. Another thing is that they are mostly additive: the sculptor adds material to create a mesh. Whereas, sculpting is traditionally negative : Leonardo de Vince used to say that he was just unveiling what was inside the stone.
I have found at the London Natural History Museum, kits of virtual paleontologist : the child digs and excavates the skeleton of a mysterious prehistoric animal. This is how came to me the idea of a virtual archeology game in 3D where the user would have to look for an antique vase.
As I wanted to simulate the movement of the hammer, the use of the mouse was not very convenient. So I found a way to plug-in the WII remote control on my computer. The user hold it as he would hold a hammer.
Technically I developed the game with Unity3D (with javascript scripts to read the 3 acceleration of the WII remote control) and created 3d object in Maya.