Sculpting VR avatars – creating your own digital character from plasticine

• Josh Harle

Zuk and Meta have no imagination when it comes to the possibilities for representing ourselves in virtual reality spaces! In this workshop we’ll be creating our own virtual digital avatars, by sculpting them out of plasticine. Feel free to get adventurous / imaginative, and we’ll 3D scan them, rig them with a skeleton, and let you pilot them in VR in front of a virtual mirror.
Virtual reality co-presence has been touted as the future of human interaction, and the way we are represented within them is extremely important. So far, Meta’s approach to avatar creation has proven totally unimaginative, trying to create banal copies of ourselves with no capacity for all the amazing potential the virtual canvas could offer. This workshop lets you explore a very different, novel creative method, free from the constraints of conventional avatar design.

Participants can play with the tangible artistry of sculpting plasticine figures, which will be scanned into 3D using an iPhone/Android photogrammetry app. The host walk through the process to automatically rig the sculpture with a digital skeleton, allowing it to be easily animated. This process will preserve the details of the sculptures.

Participants will then be invited to ‘puppet’ their avatars in virtual reality, using the headset and controllers to track their bodies and show themselves as their sculpted creations.

• The Edge, State Library of Queensland