Mirror Worlds Project ICAT

Creative Director and Co-Principal Investigator
Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Blacksburg, VA, 2014
Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant
~Awarded tenure in spring, 2016

Mirror Worlds is an ongoing project with the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) that researches human interaction by studying behavior and emotion in both physical and virtual environments. Sensors placed around the Moss Arts Center track people in the physical space and then generate a digital version of those people at those same locations in a virtual building. People can also access the virtual model of the building online and see both online visitors and the tracked representations of real people currently in the physical building. The project hopes to create a shared space, with portals between the physical and virtual, where people can interact with each other and explore the Moss Arts Center.

My role in the project was 3D scanning of the interior of the Moss Arts Center building. The main parts of the building have been scanned, including the main auditorium. I used the scanned data to create a massive point cloud which was then converted into a mesh. My students and I retopologized the surface of the scan and prepped textures to be included into the virtual environment.

Collaborators: Doug Bowman (Computer Science, College of Engineering Virginia Tech); Nicholas Polys (Computer Science, College of Engineering Virginia Tech); Yong Cao (Computer Science, College of Engineering Virginia Tech); Ben Knapp (Computer Science, College of Engineering Virginia Tech); Dane Webster (College of Architecture & Urban Studies); Ivory (Communication, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences) and Ivaca Ico Bukvic (Music, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences)