The D I G I T A L D I A G is a virtual reconstruction of the University of Michigan's campus. During the 2021 Winter Semester I became a University of Michigan XR Fellow. The project I began working on was a digital reconstruction of specific, celebrated parts of the UMich campus, in order to turn them into VR environments for classes, tours, and virtual events. This included remodeling the relevant buildings, landscape, campus features, textures, and other assets in Rhino and Blender. Then using Unity in order to assemble the virtual world, giving focus to lighting, atmosphere/volumetrics, environment, and stylistic choices. My role in constructing the Digital Diag was primarily focused on reconstructing the architecture of the Diag. The primary process used to model the buildings on campus was to reconstruct these buildings from available information and then use deductive logic derived from general knowledge of construction and building practices to fill in the gaps where information was unavailable or outdated.
Project Prompt: Digital Reconstruction of University of Michigan Campus for use in VR, AR, and MR Applications
Classification: Game / XR Design, Architecture, Experience Design
Methods: Rhino, Grasshopper, Blender, Unity, Quixel
This project was created in collaboration with George Castle (https://voxlap.github.io/) under the guidance of Jeremy Nelson (XR Initiative Director) at the University of Michigan, Center for Academic Innovation.
XR Summit Blog Post: https://ai.umich.edu/blog/xr-at-michigan-summit-2021-recap/
Below are a few of the many buildings modeled. Starting with the top right you can see the Bob & Betty Beyster Building (CSE) + The Dow (Engineering), West Hall (LSA), Hatcher Library, and Shapiro Library. Our aim with the XR Initiative was to set a foundation for future students to continue on with, with the end goal of having the first high fidelity model of an entire college campus.
