'Just a Room?' is a project that questions and seeks to explore the emotional impact of virtual space on individuals. It can be described as an interactive Virtual Reality walkthrough of a 3D gallery that exhibits different emotions as spatial installations. It serves as a study on how the mood of a room can be changed depending on how it is populated and fully harnesses the power of VR to create an experience that cannot be obtained in reality. It is accompanied by a simple website that provides information and enables users to reflect upon their impressions. The app was built for the Oculus Quest 2 using Maya, Substance Painter, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, and Unreal Engine 4.26.
Video walkthrough of app and website
The general layout of the VR environment is based on the valence arousal scale of emotion. The space consists of a hexagonal lobby from which six geometrically identical rooms can be accessed. Each room is populated to represent a particular emotion while being open to interpretation.
The rooms were populated with several assets. The 3D models were created in Maya and were textured to add detail. Texture assets including alphas and decals were created in Substance Painter, Photoshop, and directly in UE4.
Many of the technical aspects were created using Blueprints in UE4. This included player navigation, animations and interactions. The rooms were developed after researching the emotions they represented and more information on this was explained on the website. Specific shaders in UE4 were created as Master Materials that were used to apply and control the textures through Material Instances. Complex shaders with animated effects such as dripping water, panning reflective water, and a reactive floor with concentric circles were also developed.
In addition to textures, importance was given to colour, geometry, scale, weight, particle effects, mechanics, materials, and lighting. Practical and theoretical considerations of psychology with regard to space were kept in mind. Theories referenced in the study of psychotherapy through VR were considered. This includes concepts of immersion, perception, interactivity, narrative, and presence.
The renders below show the lobby and then the six different rooms. The emotions the rooms were meant to emulate are Anger, Fear, Sadness, Awe, Serenity, and Joy.
The responsive website was developed to be informative and serves as a means by which people can look at the work online and give feedback. Feedback was given through an embedded survey created on Typeform. The range of responses confirmed that the emotional meaning behind each room was obvious to most users, but that personal subjectivity plays a large role in perception. The answers can be seen on https://v70fsqo6xt9.typeform.com/report/adUcdBej/ut5ORDg2nHt0mM8Z. The user responses were collated into Wordclouds that are displayed on the website with the original design ideas.
