With some of the Futurus team working remotely full time, it is easy to feel a lack of connectedness without a shared physical space. Futurus was looking for a way to bring together the entire team in a virtual environment that gave people a sense of presence. The idea was that there would be two virtual reality environments both modeled after the Futurus office in Atlanta. One environment would be an accurate representation of the office while the other would be a Pirate Island, called Futurus Bay, following the same layout. These office spaces would then be accessible to users through virtual reality.
Futurus artists, David Macias and Stephanie Owens took on the challenge of creating a virtual environment based on a real place that they have little if any experience in. One of the biggest challenges of creating this space was not being able to simply look around the office when in need of reference points. It made it difficult to find orientation. On top of that, David and Stephanie work remotely from each other, which meant that effective communication was key during this process.
For the artists to begin the process, reference material needed to be sent over from individuals in the office. This material included a diagram of the office layout, images from a 360° camera, and a video walkthrough. The 360° images really helped in understanding the office layout as well as capturing smaller details, and the video proved useful in displaying how each room connected to the next.
After receiving the reference materials and brainstorming with Stephanie, David created a basic 4k, 16 tile texture atlas to work from. He imported the images of the office layout into Unity and used tiles with snapping to create the floor with a grid of planes. Next, he did the same thing for the walls and assigned them a place on the texture map. It was important that everything tiled perfectly and lined up. This also allowed the artists to use one material for the whole environment. After, he saved a new scene, a basic sand island that fit the simple layout that would be the base for Futurus Bay. David then continued building out major forms of the office environment, focusing on props and structures. As he added more detail, he had to revise and correct scaling and placement of items in the office. Once the office was at a good enough place to be brought into AltspaceVR, he began tweaking, correcting, and placing props. AltspaceVR provided packs for games and props that helped fill in some decoration. Their effects were nice as well allowing him to even to create a sunbeam through a window. He created a decent lighting setup and then iterated as he went along so that everything was well-lit and cohesive.
While David was working on the office space, Stephanie was building out Futurus Bay. After gathering assets and some initial ideation from David, Stephanie used his office blockout and basic island as an initial guide for the structure and brainstormed ways to use island props to build out “rooms” resembling the real office. She decided to add a couple of smaller islands to represent their remote work locations as well as a volcano island to add more visual interest.
She created a blockout in Blender first and exported the islands and water to Unity before building the rest of the scene there. Before export, she vertex painted the islands and water. She created a shader for the islands that utilized the vertex paint to create a wet sand effect near the water and patches of grass amongst the sand. She also created a shader for the ocean water that made it appear animated and used the vertex colors along the edges to resemble foam. Then, she optimized the assets, which included removing complex animated shaders from the foliage and adding textures to the main texture atlas. After uploading the environment to AltspaceVR, she added props, animals, and interactable objects such as fireworks, cornhole, and throwable coconuts.
Upon AltspaceVR’s shutdown in March, the virtual office environments were transferred over to Spatial. Spatial has a similar workflow to AltspaceVR. It also has an uploader specifically for Unity, so they were able to easily take what was made for AltspaceVR and port it to Spatial with a few modifications and some world-building to fill in the gaps left by AltspaceVR content. The avatar creation process in Spatial is also fairly easy and allows users to import their Ready Player Me avatars. Spatial supports a variety of material types, animations, skyboxes, and interactivity that can be added on the Unity side, and it is still being developed further. There is also a web version that even allows users to screen share. Since Spatial is an actively developing platform, there could still be more to come.
The next step was allowing other Futurus employees to enter the space for their first meeting in the virtual office. The overall consensus from Futurus employees was that the environments were wonderfully made and had great accuracy when compared to the real office. For the artists, experiencing admiration from their coworkers was a nice way to wrap up the building process. Futurus Bay was a kept secret from most of the team, so it was great to surprise them with such a fun experience.
After receiving such positive reactions from the team, holding meetings in the virtual office became a monthly routine. Not only does it create more of a feeling of togetherness, but it also encourages us all to explore and think about how we interact with people in the virtual world that can’t be replicated over a video call. As we continue to hold meetings in virtual reality, we continue to learn more about the technology and about each other.
I really like meeting in AltspaceVR and Spatial because of the chance to see a different side of everyone that I don't normally get to see in the office. It feels more lighthearted and playful, and I am able to create an avatar that allows me to express myself a bit more easily. It is super cool to see everyone join in on our meetings and to see the different ways they chose to portray themselves in VR. - Jordan Eggleston
One funny story about our virtual office: It actually got my days of the week mixed up. Since we typically have our virtual team meetings on Mondays and we are physically in office on Wednesdays, after a long team meeting in the virtual office on a Monday I was convinced the rest of the day was Thursday. The switch was ``flipped`` in my brain that I had spent a few hours in the office like a typical Wednesday. - Jake Lance
