The education of Architecture and Virtual Production is well-suited to the Metaverse. This project harnessed the power of Unreal Engine to produce a prototype of a virtual, immersive, multi-user educational environment for the fields of architecture and virtual production (which is an evolved pipeline of film production). The project is a cross-disciplinary project that involved Research Leads, Dr. Eva Ziemsen and Elizabeth Fenuta, OAA, M.Arch, with the help of an industry Software Engineer, Aditya Dutta, to supervise work-study students, James Del Pilar (Game Programming), Ariel Quinteros (Game Programming), Elijah Alejandro (Interior Design) at Humber College to program and design this PC-based application.

The platform used was Unreal Engine and other programs used included Twinmotion and Revit. Our project enables users to enter a digital twin portion of Humber College's campus (the Barrett Centre for Technology Innovation) where they can meet, communicate, ideate, collaborate and explore architectural aspects of the virtual space that don't exist in the real world. From there, they can go through a portal to enter a Virtual Production LED Volume, which is a simulated replica of a professional volume that enables participants to have a POV of the studio, to start to learn about this new pipeline.

However, unique to this virtual setting, the project will allow you to 'teleport' to the real-time UE environment displayed on the screen. This allows students to learn about the concept of frustums involved in VP and even for writers to use at the ideation stage alone, enabling them to 'be immersed' in an environment/story world. The project has capacity for future iteration using nDisplay training functions using a vCAM. The project is currently at a Phase 1, and is entering Phase 2 in January 2023, where we will be working with an industry partner to add to the project.

Written by Eva Ziemsen & Elizabeth Fenuta