DAKOTA
SAGER-Leonard
Game Developer &
Graphic Designer
Japanese Shrine VR
JAPANESE CULTURE IMMERSION
EXPERIENCE
The purpose of the project was to create a way for people to experience culture, VR allowed for an immersive way to do this while also allowing for almost hands on activities. The project was also going to focus on visuals and research to make it accurate to what would be seen at a real Japanese shrine, while making it a manageable walking space.
Project size: Individual
The project was created in Unreal Engine 4 over the course of a couple of months. I made most of the models and all of the programming. I did use some of the free unreal assets for most of the foliage and the temple building.
To help promote the immersive experience I created a fluid movement system and also set in place a collision that better sit to the precision of the objects instead of using a navigation map. In addition it was imperative to put in place interactive objects that reflected activities you would do in the real world environment.
The project focuses on many of the visuals and landscape of a traditional shrine. The layout of the shrine is indicative of the corresponding one would be with two gates that lead to the temple which many times also sits at a higher location and is also many times backed by a cliff. It was also to include different shrine elements such as pond, torii gates, koi fish, sakura blossoms, temizuya, and omamori.
Research was done to fully understand the cultural meaning behind objects and implement those with visuals and interactions to the player.
Interactions were chosen that would reflect these cultural meanings, as well as ones that would be enjoyable to the player.
Proposal
