In the summer of 2008, Fraser Anderson and I supervised a WISEST student, Melissa Hall, in the AMMI lab. We decided to create a project for Melissa that would make use of her amazing artistic skills, whilst not requiring a huge amount of programming. As I was just finished the Caribbean Resort Project, we asked her to make us a large, detailed virtual environment that could be used for some of the spatial navigation research that I was working on for my thesis.

At the end of her 6 week internship, Melissa created a wonderful underwater environment, a la Finding Nemo / Little Mermaid. She used Maya 2008 for 3D object creation and Virtools 4.1 for character behaviors and environment deployment. The environment has a number of character behaviors and contains a vast array of ocean-esque elements such as tankers, a sunken ship, kelp, shells, fish, sharks, etc. The ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys can be used to swim upwards and downwards, the ‘W’, ‘A’, ‘S’. and ‘D’ keys are used to swim forwards, backwards, left, and right, and the arrow keys are used to look around. The Spacebar can also be used to turn a flashlight on and off.

We commonly show visitors to the AMMI lab her environment in our CAVE or on a monitor or HMD. If you have been to the AMMI lab in the few years for a demo, then you have most certainly seen her virtual environment! For those of you who haven’t seen the underwater world, you can see below.