My project is to use augmented reality in combination with Lego to work on a mixed reality interaction between the two to explore new ways to play in both a physical and virtual space.
The inspiration for this project came from a couple of places for me. When I was younger I originally wanted to work at lego as a designer. Legos were one of my favorite things to play with growing up because with Lego the only real limitations you have is your imagination and the number of bricks you have at your disposal. With Lego, you can build all sorts of things and they provide limitless possibilities. However as I grew older I thought that that was an unrealistic aspiration and decided to turn my efforts towards game design and animation. Legos would still play a role in a lot of my work towards this goal surprisingly. When I was in community college I used Legos as a way to prototype puzzles for some of my projects for classes. In one of my classes at TCNJ, I was introduced to the idea of mixed reality with Lego with the “Hidden Sides” sets when professor Buckleitner brought it up in one of his classes. It was such a surprise to me but at the same time it seemed like a natural progression. However, I still had not come to this idea for my thesis until early on in this semester. During an exercise we did in class, we were asked what jobs/ careers we wanted to pursue when we were younger (middle school and younger I believe we were looking at) and I remembered that I was interested in Lego. shortly after it dawned on me that I could still work with Lego while using the skills I have learned in game design and animation at the same time.
One of my goals in life is to be able to work on things that I as well as others will be able to enjoy. This project both works as a passion project as well as a learning opportunity and a chance to see what I am able to produce. This project allows me to combine both animation and game design with one of my favorite childhood toys, Lego.
One of the reasons I am interested in the project is because it is still a very new advancement in the realm of Lego and it has potential for many different kinds of interactions and play possibilities and still has lots of potential to develop further. Imagine being able to scan a lego car that you built and be able to race it around with others in a digital race track. Or possibly using the internet to have friends with the same set be able to play together online using their own physical version of the set mixed with their friends lego minifigures. This combination of tech and physical toy can revitalize many of Lego’s catalog of themes with new play possibilities and innovations. Ideally with this project I would like to be able to have people be able to experience it together and share that experience with others.
In terms of Implementing this project, there are some software that I am currently looking into for use for this project. Some of the software I will be using would be Maya, for the 3D models; Unity, for games and potentially for AR; I have started to look into ARKit which is a software used for working with augmented reality, and lastly for the designing of the lego I plan to use a program called Brickstud.io, which is a program that is a digital workspace for building with lego that contains a catalog that has all of the current types of lego pieces and the ability to create instructions and build a list of all of the pieces needed to build the lego set and I believe it can also link you to where to buy the required pieces. In terms of style im not quite sure what theme I want to work with currently. I was thinking of doing either Pirates, or Castles, or maybe just a general how playset or something similar, whichever I choose to go with should be able to support different kinds of play features. So for the pirate example, I’m thinking of maybe either a tavern with pirates inside hanging out and playing music or games or some form of cannon game where you can shoot at ships in the distance or an interactive jail with pirates locked up moving around and plotting their escape. I want the features to work well with the theme and feel like a natural progression and a way to accent the physical set.