Richmond-upon-Thames College

A grant was awarded to the Design Department of Richmond-upon-Thames College for a Google 3D Virtual Reality headset and hand controller system, combined with the Google Tilt Brush app. This system is a cutting-edge creative tool for designers that enables them to paint in their own virtual studios and create 3D works of art within a virtual world, and even provides a mirror option for artists to replicate their strokes in multiple planes of symmetry.

The system makes use of Google Chrome’s V8 Javascript engine for high-performance processing power to render large volumes of data in real time. This could include point cloud data of the artist’s physical form, 3D geometry data of the artwork, and position data of the VR controllers.  It relies on Chrome’s support of WebM video and WebGL to produce the 360° representations of the artists and artwork, allowing the artist to draw over 200,000 points at 30 times a second. It also allows them to share their creations as room-scale VR or animated video clips.