A week at PHORIA through the eyes of a teen.
We had the pleasure of hosting a young man at PHORIA HQ for the week. Alex had the opportunity to join us as a part of a mini work placement during his holidays. He had an keen interest in our interactive hologram “Holi” and Augmented Reality.
What better way than to put him to the test, than to see if he could build an AR application that brought our hologram to life, with the ability to showcase a new feature of projected AR.
Enough from me, below is the short article that Alex pulled together to summarise his time with us…
“In this past week, I have been given the opportunity to do my work experience at PHORIA, the immersive media startup company based in Melbourne. Throughout my time here, I have learnt about the world of AR, VR and XR, as well as the processes of creating, animating, and implementing 3D objects in Augmented and Virtual Reality.
After researching the various methods of developing AR software and new developments made in the space, Trent (CEO of PHORIA) assigned me the task of creating a 3D model of the giant prism hologram PHORIA created last year in Autodesk’s 123D software.
This was to be used as a part of a pitch to reserve a device called “Lightform”, which is mounted onto a projector and then uses a build in camera and computer to project real time augmented reality.
I took extensive measurements of the model using an AR measurement app because we thought that’d be pretty meta, before I got to work recreating the hologram appropriately named “Holi”. I was then asked to recreate 4 lightform devices and 4 laser projectors in the 3D design software, as well 4 robotic arms to maneuver the projectors with 6-degrees of freedom. I then worked alongside PHORIA’s animators in Maya to show how the robotic arms would maneuver the projectors so that they could project images onto every wall in a space.
I then worked with a Junior Developer to create an AR app wherein the 3D Holi is superimposed onto a physical picture through Marker based AR. We developed the simple app in a period of time roughly accumulating to 6 hours in the Unity Game engine with Vuforia, before exporting to IOS through Xcode.
Overall, I learnt a lot, experience the startup environment, had heaps of fun, and found the experience overwhelmingly positive. Thanks again to PHORIA for allowing me to do my work experience here, as well as being a great inspiration.”
Amazing, in under a week with little to no experience, Alex had managed to build out an animated interactive AR experience. What an incredible time to be alive!
Thanks Alex for your time, enthusiasm and interest. Best of luck with your next adventure!
If you want to hear more of what Team PHORIA get up to and our upcoming projects like check out our socials for all the weirdness:
// YouTube
You can also go across to our website, or drop a line to our CEO directly: trent@phoria.com.au
