Building Virtual Worlds class prepares projects for next month's annual show

About two miles from the CMU campus, in the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) building, students are working to build interactive virtual worlds.

Building Virtual Worlds (BVW), a twelve-unit class offered by the ETC, is likely the only course at CMU that motivates undergraduate students enough to take a bus two miles to get to class, and sometimes spend over 40 hours a week in their “home away from home.”

In the class, groups of students from different majors create virtual reality environments in five two-week-long projects. The typical group has a programmer, modeler, painter, and designer or producer. This semester’s class has 50 students, about half of them undergraduates and half ETC master’s students.

The class is taught by Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science. Pausch and Don Marinelli, a professor of drama, are the co-directors of the ETC. BVW has a reputation for being fun, yet time-intensive.

“Some people work here 40 hours a week,” said Kyle Gray, an ETC master’s student.

“Towards the end, some people will just sleep here,” he said.

Regarding other courses, ETC master’s student Brad Stokan said, “Everything else gets prioritized to the bottom of the list.”

The course is unusual for its very diverse teams — students from art, design, computer science, mechanical engineering, music, and other majors all work together on virtual worlds.

“I’m in design, and we usually don’t get to work with really nerdy kids,” said senior Sam Hart.

Robert Gordon, an ETC master’s student, felt that the course is challenging because it involves so many different fields.

“You have to deal with artistic constraints, technical constraints, and other people’s time constraints,” said Gordon.

“Historically, many of the students in this course go on to work at places like Electronic Arts, Disney Imagineering, Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and other high-profile companies,” wrote Pausch in an e-mail to The Tartan.

Each year, the class holds an end of the year show, which has traditionally had enough attendees to fill McConomy Auditorium. This year’s show will be held on December 10 at 7 pm in McConomy. Students in the course will demonstrate their creations by donning a virtual reality helmet that will put them inside their 3D virtual world. All worlds are interactive, so the student wearing the helmet will make decisions and affect outcomes within the world.

The student’s virtual reality display will be duplicated to a large projection screen for the audience to see.

“It all comes down to 90 seconds, and you’re like, ‘Oh god, please work,’” said John Bellinger, a mechanical engineering senior in the BVW class. Since the human interaction with the virtual world is not pre-scripted, there is potential for mistakes or unexpected results during the show.

According to Pausch, about 15 projects will be presented during the show.

He also hopes to have some of the student worlds available for guests to try before and after the exhibition.

In early December, a jury will judge the projects submitted for consideration and select those to be presented in the show. Most groups submit their final project for consideration, and some also submit projects that were done earlier in the course.

Jesse Schell, a professor of entertainment technology, was on the selection board last year and will be on the jury again this year.

“The most important thing is, is it entertaining?” said Schell. BVW stresses that each project should impress the audience in some way and make them say “wow.”

“Sometimes people overreach so far that they can’t possibly succeed,” said Schell. If a group attempted something very difficult, but were not able to get it to work as hoped, they may receive the “Best Failure Award.”

One project in the running for this award constructed a robotic arm that was intended to fight with a sword. According to Bellinger, the project almost worked but broke during the demonstration.

“The integration between the robot and the [virtual] world broke,” said Bellinger.

One of the groups likely to be selected for the final exhibition is creating a satirical documentary on virtual reality.

“We’re showing all the things people think is wonderful with virtual reality and then showing they’re not that wonderful,” said group member Ellen Juhlin, a senior in drama.

Another group is building an orbitron, a device made of three large steel rings that rotate with a human riding inside the rings. They plan to use the orbitron with their simulation of a “mecha” world in which human-operated robots battle each other.

In the past, Building Virtual Worlds classes have used ALICE, a drag-and-drop simulation design program, to create the virtual worlds. ALICE is also used as a training tool for teaching middle school students how to program. This year’s class began using a new program — called Panda3D — which was developed by the Walt Disney Imagineering Studio.

“The big improvement over ALICE is that you can import animations directly from Maya and 3D Studio MAX,” said Schell.

Students in the course expressed a preference for Panda3D, saying it is a more professional program.