Even before I started my studies at Ostfalia, I had the idea of placing my painted pictures in an exhibition space that I could freely design myself. My fascination with 3D enabled me to realise exactly this vision: Blender became my playground for such ideas at no cost and with limitless possibilities. I developed a museum, which became one of the projects for my application portfolio for my current degree programme. However, at that time I still lacked the time and expertise to turn my Blender scene into an interactive museum.
DP: What was the aim of the project?
Noah Thiele: As part of the fourth and fifth semesters, I had the opportunity to give free rein to my own project idea in the so-called compulsory elective module. I was free to choose my project for this module and so I came back to the idea of combining my two passions, painting and computer graphics. However, this time I wanted to learn something new and set myself a challenge by choosing a medium that I had absolutely no prior knowledge of.
Virtual reality has always fascinated me, but I had never actually had the opportunity to put on a VR headset before my studies. What’s more, I wanted my virtual exhibition to be interactive.
I had either Unity or Unreal Engine at my disposal, neither of which I had ever even opened before. But true to the motto “There is nothing in this world that you can’t learn.” i threw myself in at the deep end and pursued my vision of a virtual reality exhibition.
DP: Did you have any recommended sources?
Noah Thiele: I thought the tutorials I found on VR for beginners in Unreal Engine were rather poor. A lot of things didn’t work for me, so I was able to get most of the functions to work through trial and error and my own findings.
DP: What data was there?
Noah Thiele: I take photos of all the pictures I have painted and document everything on my website www.noahthiele.de/art. These images are the foundation of the project and not only serve as a key to the different worlds depicted on the canvases. They were also my reference for designing and modelling these worlds.
DP: How did you pull the data into Unreal?
Noah Thiele: The photos I took of my works were edited a bit in Photoshop to place them in Blender as textures on 3D modelled canvases. These canvases stand on easels in the VR gallery and can be touched and held in the hand.
DP: The first alpha version: what worked “right away”?
Noah Thiele: Due to my non-existent knowledge of VR and Unreal Engine, the alpha version was a very important step for me to see if my ambitious project was even feasible. My goals for the alpha were extremely simple: connect a VR headset to Unreal Engine, load a custom asset to test out the right size dimensions. I also placed an image as an image plane in the scene, which was equipped with a collision box. If one of the controllers approaches the image plane, a new level is loaded.
This was the most rudimentary basis of the project. In addition, in the unlikely event that I failed to implement future features in Unreal Engine, I still had a simple but functioning application.
DP: What did the implementation time cost?
Noah Thiele: To bring more interactivity to the gallery, I decided to redesign how you enter the worlds. Instead of loading new worlds by touching the images, I created a kind of “lock and key” system. You take a picture of your choice from its place and place it on the gallery’s central computer. Once the canvas is placed on the desk, it appears in full size on the screen above it.
If you now reach for the lever next to it and pull it, you are teleported to a new environment and are now in the centre of the painted picture. Adding such interactive elements to Unreal Engine took me a long time, as the programme was very new to me and I couldn’t find any really good tutorials on VR in Unreal Engine that met my specific needs for my ideas of the functions. I had to cut a few corners and came up with new ideas and features that fit well with the project.
DP: The “animated” elements within the virtual gallery: How did you realise them?
Noah Thiele: To make the worlds appear even more alive, I incorporated some animations. I exported the VR modelled meshes from Gravity Sketch and added a rig in Blender, animated them and exported them as Alembic in Unreal Engine.
I modelled the plants and vegetation individually for the “amazonia” image and created my own foliage set in Unreal Engine and then placed it in the environment and let it blow in the wind.
In another picture, the “flower field”, I simply painted or modelled without thinking about it. Exporting individual plants and creating a foliage set was virtually impossible because the entire field was connected. The whole field of flowers consists of coarse and large strokes that are further away and detailed meshes in the foreground, which are very intermingled.
That’s why I created a material for the entire mesh in Unreal Engine, which transfers noise-induced wave-like movements to the mesh (is.gd/youtube_unreal_materials). This means that all the plants move slightly differently but still together when they are next to each other. Like a field in reality when the wind blows through it.
DP: If you could start all over again: What would you do differently?
Noah Thiele: If I could start all over again, I would change the modelling software. Unfortunately, I only found out about the VR software Quill far too late. At that point, 90% of the modelling tasks had already been completed. Quill makes it possible to animate in VR. I used it to create test animations for effects that should appear as soon as you enter a world. Individual colour particles and brushstrokes should fly out of the selected image and blur in front of your eyes until you find yourself in the newly loaded environment. Unfortunately, I had to cancel this feature due to time constraints.
There are also a large number of images that I would have liked to integrate into the gallery. However, when I presented my project during the annual media design exhibition at my university, it turned out that the number of images in the gallery was sufficient.
Some visitors to the exhibition spent less time with the VR headset than would have been necessary to explore all the worlds. This is because wearing VR glasses is still uncomfortable and unpleasant for many people, in rare cases even causing slight balance problems and dizziness.
DP: What “lab equipment” was provided by the university?
Noah Thiele: Throughout the project work, I was provided with various VR headsets by my university.
I worked a lot with the Meta Quest 2, which I was able to borrow from the university – and I did a lot of the modelling tasks with it. Later on in the project, my university ordered two Meta Quest 3 models, one of which I was allowed to borrow and use for the rest of my work. During this phase, I almost exclusively created and finalised the worlds in Unreal Engine and modelled the last assets.
Switching from Meta Quest 2 to 3 made my work much easier and much more enjoyable thanks to the improved comfort and higher frame rate and resolution.
After one or two hours, it became very uncomfortable to continue using the VR headset, so my work was often interrupted by headaches and continued the next day. The higher resolution and frame rate that I was able to enjoy by upgrading to the Quest 3 gave me a little more freedom.
DP: Which courses/seminars were particularly helpful for the project?
Noah Thiele: I didn’t take any courses or seminars on VR, but had very helpful discussions and assistance from my professor Melanie Beisswenger, other professors and staff at the university.
DP: Where can we see the finished product?
Noah Thiele: At the annual end-of-semester presentation, my project was exhibited in the university’s media design exhibition. You can also see videos and more about the project on my website at noahthiele.de/v-art/.
DP: What are your next steps?
Noah Thiele: I’m currently doing my internship at Woodblock in Berlin and starting to prepare for my Bachelor film. I’m planning a 3D animated music video and am considering integrating one or two VR workflows or styles into my bachelor’s thesis. I’ve also discovered Gravity Sketch as a helpful pre-visualisation tool for me, as it allows me to quickly capture interesting perspectives in 3D scenes and gives me new ideas in the conception phase.’ ei
The Ostfalia
With around 12,500 students, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences is one of the largest universities of applied sciences in Lower Saxony. It offers more than 90 degree programmes in the fields of law, business, social and health care as well as engineering and computer science at 4 locations. Practical relevance and interdisciplinarity take centre stage here. The Faculty of Transport, Sport, Tourism and Media in Salzgitter has around 2000 students. Ostfalia University is a state university, so there are no tuition fees (except for long-term tuition fees if the student account is exhausted). A re-registration fee of currently approx. 330 euros is payable per semester, which also includes the semester ticket for local public transport.
The Media Design degree programme in Salzgitter is offered with a Bachelor’s (6 semesters) or Master’s degree (4 semesters). Students can specialise in animation, VFX, games, interactive media, film or communication design.
In the field of animation, students are taught to work with a variety of techniques, starting with stop motion and 2D animation through to motion design, 3D animation and character animation. In addition to technical skills, the focus is on conception and visual development, and in particular working on your own ideas, projects and films. Excursions to conferences and festivals such as the ITFS, the Festival of Animation Berlin, Gamescom and DOK Leipzig bring our students into contact with the industry.
Ostfalia is equipped with all kinds of state-of-the-art technology: Motion capture system from Rokoko, large film studio with blue/green screen, professional camera and lighting equipment, 3D printer, VR & AR headsets (Quest 3, Apple Vision Pro, Hololens, HTC Vive Pro), several computer pools that can also be used for rendering, photo studio and a games club with corresponding community and equipment.
What are the requirements for the programme? The application with the artistic portfolio and passing the aptitude test are the prerequisites for admission to the Media Design (BA) programme. Prospective Master’s students with BA degrees in design do not need a portfolio to apply.
