Developing Urban Planning Awareness Through Urban Inferno (Virtual Reality Experience)
An immersive VR storytelling experience where users design their dream city from provided choices and witness the environmental impact of their choices in real time. Through interactive scenarios and dynamic outcomes, this project blends creativity, technology, and sustainability to inspire thoughtful urban planning.
Role
3D Designer and Animator
Design Question
The direction took was to see how can the team can create a virtual reality experience that effectively simulates the long-term impacts of climate change on a city or a world, and engages participants in making sustainable decisions about options to safeguard the city's future? It aims in giving a educational awareness that they could take away in their real life and make them be aware of the climate change and it’s drastic effects.
Results
In our quest to address urban heat challenges in Belmont, Arizona, our Team showcased a fusion of creativity, technical proficiency, and collaborative synergy. Despite initial hurdles, our dedication to crafting a meaningful and engaging experience remained unwavering.
Key components like heat index calculation and hand-to-button interactions were developed to enhance user engagement, while Breeze's (AI narrator) narrative guidance added depth to the experience.
Our collaborative approach underpinned our success, with each team member contributing their expertise to overcome challenges and deliver a compelling final product.
Reflecting on our journey, we take pride in the immersive experience we've crafted and its potential to raise awareness about urban heat challenges. Moving forward, we remain committed to innovation and collaborative exploration in immersive technology and storytelling.
100%
Users felt immersed in the experience
90%
Wanted to make changes in their lifestyle
30%
Wanted to experience for the second time
Storyboarding
We started with some goals for our team, and then we spent awhile brainstorming together about what we wanted our adventure story to be. It was difficult not knowing what the talents and capabilities of the other teams were.
During the next week, we sourced data sets, came up with conceptualizations, made a summary of the data sets, quantified the data, described the data sets, found references, and made an initial storyboard layout. We tracked everything in Miro.
Sourced Datas
Story Definition/Conceptualization
Concept Iteration
The team then sorted out the visual changes that would occur when selections are made during the experience. This turned out to be a lot simpler than we came up with in order to meet the deadline and optimize our resource utilization
User Journey Mapping
Throughout the project we discussed the techincal feasibility of the story and design ideas with the design team and the technical team. This user journey map we made was used by the rest of the teams as a reference for emotions, stages, and goals.
Visual Moodboard
After discussions on the design language, we created a visual language moodboard to gather feedback from the entire team on our approach. This collaborative process helped us align on a direction, ultimately shaping the final moodboard.
Design Storyboarding
This storyboard visually represents the interactive decision-making process in the Urban Inferno XR experience, highlighting how users' choices—such as road materials, vegetation, buildings, and transportation—directly impact urban heat levels. It effectively communicates to the team the core mechanics of user interaction, the importance of visual feedback (heat index indicators), and the need for a clear cause-and-effect relationship in the simulation. This serves as a foundation for further development, guiding improvements in user engagement, environmental responsiveness, and narrative integration to ensure a seamless and educational experience.
Asset Modeling
These assets were 3D modeled in Blender for the Public transportation Grid of the Cityscape
After modelling the assets on Blender, it was resized according to the scale of the grid and placed as two options: private parking space or public transport stands. As you can see from the previous slide that I had some problems with the materials which were procedurally created in blender for the bus model although materials where UV mapped I couldn’t get the same look in the unity, so that’s why the bus in all solid purple.
Added the car asset and wrote the script to make it go on the look and the same for the life ring on the pool to make the scene more interactive and was passed onto the tech team for further enhancements. The script was made with a waypoints system where waypoints where empty gameobjects that the car would follow and the challenge was to make the car rotate for only particular index of the array
Modeled and Animated Breeze, the AI narrator that guides the participants through the experience.
Modeled the spaceship interior and Animated the cut-away scene in equirectangular panoramic format to support the VR experience
The Scene 3(Desert of Bellemont) of the experience was rendered in equirectangular panoramic format to support the VR experience, and lighting was set with a orangish-yellow shade to make sure the participant feel the heat of the environment visually while they are in the experience.
Snapshots of Technical Development
Conclusion
In our quest to address urban heat challenges in Belmont, Arizona, my role as a 3D Designer was pivotal in shaping the immersive world of Urban Inferno. From conceptualizing the environment to refining interactive assets, my focus was on ensuring visual coherence, realism, and user engagement.
Transitioning to a table-sized view within the Dreamscape Grid was a turning point. This approach allowed users to engage with the city in a tangible, intuitive manner, making urban planning and disaster response more accessible and interactive. Every building, street, and environmental effect was meticulously crafted to enhance spatial awareness and decision-making within the VR space.
The success of Urban Inferno was deeply rooted in our collaborative approach. As a 3D Designer, my work intertwined with technical development, UI/UX design, and storytelling, requiring constant iteration and problem-solving. Challenges like ensuring optimization for real-time rendering, refining user interactions, and maintaining immersion without overwhelming the user pushed me to explore creative.