Steve Anderson’s brand new Media Arts Lab is located in Melnitz Hall, room 1470. The room is spacious, and comes equipped with seven powerful workstations, each equipped with a VR headset. Both Oculus and Vive equipment can be found.
The lab is just 2-weeks old, and is still awaiting the installation of a state-of-the-art 7.1 surround sound system. The most prominent feature of the space is a large green screen wall, complete with powerful green lights that help create a shadowless, monochrome background to make it much easier for software to key out the background.
…the greenscreen wall becomes much more evenly lit. White lights would then be used on the subject being filmed/captured. Motion capture made easy!
This greenscreen area will be used for in part for motion capture. Additionally, on either side of the green screen wall is where the Vive base stations are set up.
In addition to the VR and greenscreen equipment, Steve also has several 360 cameras on hand for students to use. Including this monstrosity, the Google Odyssey, which is an array of 16 GoPros to capture beautiful, hi-def stereoscopic video.
By and large the space is shaping up to be an incredibly flexible and useful lab for motion capture, projection mapping, and VR work. Steve is eager to explore as many use-cases as possible, and is happy to speak to other faculty about bringing their students/classes in to work on some VR projects.
The Media Arts Lab is open to visitors on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the rest of the quarter from 11a-1p. Various VR films and environments will be on display for visitors to experience.
