Presenter: Brittany Hebert Undergraduate Student Involvement: Bradley Jouty Faculty Advisor: Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira Industry Supervisor: Donald Gremillion

Engineering Research Apprenticeship Program at UL An undergraduate scholarship that provides hands-on, collaborative research experience with professors. Each student is assigned to work under a professor based on an interest form the student filled out. To continue in program, each student must maintain a 3.5 GPA and give one presentation a year or have research published. My assignment: UL office at LITE (Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise)

What is our project?  To create an interactive mobile application of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s campus. *Including current campus and future additions through the Master Plan (25 year plan for remodels and additions at UL).  Project audience: Students of UL and prospective students wishing to tour campus

Take This…

And Make It This!

AND Even This!

Overall Progress  Modeled the campus buildings using computer aided design software Autodesk Maya  Implemented into Unity (the game engine which the app runs)  Added interactive features

Creating the Campus Buildings  Goal: Model and texture each building using the least number of polygons possible  Began with “heavy” architectural models. Original architectural model of Our Lady of Wisdom

Remodeled for lowest polygon count while still retaining overall look To create this elliptical dome, a cylinder with 20 divisions was rotated and scaled to match the shape of the original model but without as many faces.

The President’s House architectural

Remodeled President’s House: Original face count-69,865 Remodeled face count-28,810 Original vertices count-100,668 Remodeled vertices count-44,009 President’s House: Original face count-69,865 Remodeled face count-28,810 Original vertices count-100,668 Remodeled vertices count-44,009

Texturing Technique: UV Mapping UV mapping is the 3D modeling process of making a 2D image representation of a 3D model.

Maxim Doucet Take this and assign to each face of a polygon then scale to realistic size.

Edith Garland Dupre Library

Implementing into Unity  Unity is a tool for video game development, architectural visualizations, and interactive media installations.  The layout of the campus in the game engine matches exactly to the physical layout of the university.  Research Park-Contains buildings in app that do not physically exist yet.

Overview of the Quad

University Commons-A future residence and commercial shopping center of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Interactive Features

Graphical user interface which can detect taps on a touchscreen device.

Pause Menu

Future Project Plans  Add more aesthitcs including greenery, cars, students, the swamp, etc.  GPS capabilities with quickest route to class option  Goal: Make as realistic as possible.  Entertainment Plans: Create games with campus -Ex: Cajun Pepper Run: Navigate through campus as a student trying to collect as many peppers as possible. -Ex: Hide and Seek with a baby alligator

What is augmented Reality? Virtual reality replaces the world with a simulated one, but augmented reality supplements real-world environments with computer-generated sensory. Camera and sensors in a smartphone or tablet allow augmented reality to add layers of digital information directly on top of items in the world around. A mobile application by IKEA

How does this apply to our project? We paired the game engine Unity with the augmented reality software platform Vuforia. The software platform Vuforia, specifically for Android and IOS, allows mobile applications to recognize images from a Vuforia target database. We chose a detailed picture to upload to the Vuforia database. Vuforia uses algorithms to detect and track features that are found in the image. Simplistically, a pixel map of the image is created. In Unity, this image was set as our target, and all virtual content was placed on top of it. When the image target is recognized by the iPad camera and sensors, the app supplements the real world image with the added computer generated content based on the pixel map.

Choosing a Target Image Image targets are images that Vuforia can detect and track. The target must be rich in detail, have good contrast, and cannot have any repetitive patterns. Otherwise, the camera and sensors of the iPad would not be able to distinguish from different parts of the pixel map. Poor image choice due to repetitive patterns

Example of a Good Image Target An image uploaded to the Vuforia Target Database. Same image showing natural features that Vuforia uses to detect the image target.

3D Poster Demonstration