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Urban Inferno · VR storytelling project · Craft

When 90% of players wanted to change how they live.

A VR experience that lets you build a city and feel its heat.

Felt immersed
100%
Test participants
10+
Usability rounds
3
Role
3D designer and animator
Team
Cross-functional design and technical teams
Timeline
MVP in 4 weeks, 3 test rounds
Tools
Blender, Unity, Miro

Urban Inferno is a VR piece about urban heat in Arizona. Participants design a “dream city” by choosing road materials, vegetation, buildings and transport, and watch a heat index respond in real time. Breeze, an AI narrator, guides them through. I modelled and animated the assets and scenes and mapped the user journey the other teams built against.

Of participants felt immersed
100%Result
Wanted to change something in their lifestyle
90%Result
Participants across three usability rounds
10+Scale

Research

Real heat data before any polygons.

The experience had to be grounded in what is actually happening in Maricopa County. We pulled NASA’s urban heat dataset, the county’s weather sensor network and heat reports, Arizona’s Heat Relief Network, ASU’s temperature visualisations and examples of cities cooling themselves with nature. Bellemont, based on a master-planned city in western Maricopa County, gave us a real place to build on.

Research board of heat sources: NASA heat dataset, Maricopa weather sensors, a heat wave map, ASU temperature visualisation, nature-based cooling and the master plan the city was based on.
Sourced heat data
Design language moodboard: a white geometric city model, simplified 3D assets, heat maps, a temperature toggle, a globe zoom, interactive props and comic storyboards.
Design language moodboard

Story

A comic first, so every team saw the same experience.

Before anything was built, we drew the whole experience as a comic. Players zoom from the globe down to empty land, then make four choices, each with two options: asphalt or concrete roads, high-rise or single-storey buildings, trees or a water body, private or public transport. A results panel then shows how those choices moved heat level, UV, urban heat and humidity.

Comic storyboard: a zoom from the globe to the city, empty land, then panels for choosing road type, buildings, vegetation and transport.
Storyboard: four choices, two options each
Comic results panel with bars for heat level, UV rays, urban heat and humidity, and Breeze reacting to the player’s choices.
The results panel

I turned the storyboard into a six-scene journey map: what players want, do and feel in each scene. Two groups compete to build the coolest city, and the winning team lifts a trophy. The design and technical teams built against this map, so a choice made in the headset always traced back to a moment in the story.

User journey map across six scenes, with goals, activities, interactivity, feelings from excited to satisfied, and expectations.
Six scenes, from curious to satisfied.

Build

From Blender to a VR stage.

  • Modelled the transport choices in Blender: a Valley Metro light rail car, a local bus, bus shelters and stop signs, sized to the city grid.
  • Dressed the low-poly city in Unity with parked cars, buses and street furniture, so each choice had a visible place on the map.
  • Built the VR stage: a fenced platform where players stand, with Breeze floating overhead to guide them.
  • Animated the opening spaceship, Breeze, a car following waypoints through the city, and the Bellemont desert scene.
Blender models of a Valley Metro light rail car, a green bus numbered 72, a bus shelter and a stop sign, plus the transit hub in Unity.
Transit models in Blender
Low-poly city blocks in Unity with parked cars, a shop, buses and a bus shelter under a warm evening sky.
City assets in Unity
Unity scene of the VR stage: a fenced dark platform with lights, an audio source and Breeze floating in a glass sphere above.
The VR stage, with Breeze overhead.
The opening: inside the spaceship
Breeze, the AI narrator
City flythrough, with a car on its waypoint path.

Learned

Honest craft notes.

  • Procedural Blender materials did not carry into Unity; the bus shipped solid purple.
  • Car rotation had to apply only at specific waypoint indexes to look natural.
  • Balancing real-time performance with immersion, without overwhelming people, was the constant trade-off.

Next project

SportsMarkers.