Vader Immortal
A Star Wars VR Series
Vader Immortal
A Star Wars VR Series
Vader Immortal is a three-part episodic VR series set in the Star Wars Universe and is a release title for the new Oculus Quest headset coming in 2019. More details on the project can be found on the official press release here: https://www.ilmxlab.com/news/vader-immortal-a-star-wars-vr-series-episode-i/
I was working on Vader Immortal as a VFX technical artist prior to leaving ILMxLAB. Unfortunately, I can’t disclose exactly what I was working on for the project, but below are a few screenshots for an idea of what the project looks like! Stay tuned to https://www.ilmxlab.com/ for more details as they become available.
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire
A Hyper-Reality Experience
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire
A Hyper-Reality Experience
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire is a "hyper-reality" experience created in collaboration with The VOID. It sends teams of four people to the lava planet of Mustafar on a mission to recover Imperial intelligence vital to the rebellion's survival.
The VOID is a whole-body, fully-immersive real-time virtual reality experience. It is location-based, which means one must visit a participating location to enjoy the experience. Secrets of the Empire opens this winter outside of both Disneyland and Disney World. Read the press release here: http://www.starwars.com/news/ilmxlab-the-void-star-wars-secrets-of-the-empire-trailer-and-details-revealed
I was part of a very small team of VFX artists working on the lava, atmospherics, and interactive effects for this project.
Darth Vader VR
Untitled Darth Vader Experience
Darth Vader VR
Untitled Darth Vader Experience
I can't say much about the Untitled Darth Vader Experience but I've been involved with it from the very beginning and I did all of the lighting and effects work for the teaser, which was revealed at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016.
The same scene from the teaser was subsequently modified by Epic Games to showcase Unreal 4's VR Mode running on Apple's Metal 2 and new VR-ready iMacs during WWDC 2017.
Stay tuned to www.starwars.com for future news on this project.
Teaser reveal at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016.
Unreal 4 demo at WWDC 2017.
Nothing to see here...
The Holo-Cinema
Sundance Film Festival 2016
The Holo-Cinema
Sundance Film Festival 2016
After finishing work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I had the opportunity to work with ILM's Virtual Production department on a project which would eventually lead to my transfer to ILMxLAB to work on real-time graphics in the context of virtual- and augmented-reality.
Our project, The Holo-Cinema, debuted at the New Frontier exhibition of the Sundance Film Festival 2016 (https://www.sundance.org/projects/the-holo-cinema). The Holo-Cinema is an exploration into how one might consume stories in the future. The viewer wears a pair of stereoscopic glasses which are tracked in real-time by a motion capture system. The viewer's head position is then used as a camera into the virtual world and their custom viewpoint is projected onto the walls and floor around the viewer to create an illusion of presence in the virtual scene. This technology is more commonly known by the recursive acronym "CAVE," short for "cave automatic virtual environment." Being inside a CAVE is like being inside of a hologram, as seen to the right in the video of BB-8 rolling around.
The Holo-Cinema team setting up.
I was responsible for the lighting and scene assembly for our Jakku scene, as well as helping set up and tear down the various infrared cameras, computers, and projectors which were used for the capture, rendering, and playback of the experience. I was also on-site for the duration of the Sundance Film Festival as an operator for our exhibit and helped usher thousands of people through our experience over he course of the festival.
The image to the left is a behind-the-scenes view of our team setting up the experience. To the right of frame you can see our portable compute system and at the top of frame you could see the various cameras and projectors in the ceiling. Finally, you could see how the final projected image looks from an outsider's point of view.