3D HPU

HPU 3D is a demo dormitory viewer developed by High Point University Communication and Game Design students using the Unreal Engine.

Goal: Develop a dormitory simulation for prospective students that will show them dorm rooms while showcasing what it is like to be an HPU student through interactive components and pop-up alerts. While serving to reveal University life to prospective students, the pop-up alerts will also bridge the social divide by introducing community members and events.

CREDITS

Kayla Baylock: User-Research
Hannah Brubaker: Strategic Planning
Chance Coelho: Materials and texture artist
Zack Foy: World Builder
Payton Grady: Engineering
Jay Handwerk: Engineering
Anna Harris: User-Research
Spencer Hazen: User-Interface Design
Christian Hsieh: 3D Modeling
Jonathan Jackson: Audio Composer
James Last: Creative Direction
Ferris Lewis: Materials and Texture Artist
Julia Oliver: World Builder
Matt Reynolds: Project Management
Kendrick Tran: UI Designer
Kathy Xiao: 3D Modeling and Curating
Brian Heagney: Faculty Advisor

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In order to appreciate the work that the students did, I want to take a moment to highlight some of the achievements.

Game Development Skills: before this course, very few of the students (including the Game Design students) had ever worked with Unreal Engine (UE4). In fact, few of them had ever used any digital game development software before. UE4 is an extremely complicated software that can take years to master, and these students developed a working demo in a very short matter of time with very little experience.

Collaborative Software: Not only did the students learn UE4 for this project, but all students learned how to use Github Desktop, which allowed every single student to work on one project at the same time. 

In terms of Premiere, it would be like having 12 students all working on the exact same Premiere Project where one student works on developing lower thirds, another works on marking up audio interviews, another edits subclips, etc. In game design, this is a fairly complicated topic, yet each student maintained their own part of the project, and we ultimately were able to implement most of everyone's work into the one final project.

User-Experience: Our Strat COM students worked hard to drive the game design half by looking to real data. Early on the students developed and circulated surveys for their feelings of dorm rooms which we then used to help us pick which dorm rooms to model.

Additionally, some students learned how to run the Beacon Lab's eye-tracking software to analyze our UI designs.

Campus Chronicle: James Last contacted the Campus Chronicle to pitch a story and ultimately wrote up a wonderful article about the work we were doing. Link here: 
https://www.campus-chronicle.com/2020/10/28/student-developers-create-interactiv...

DISCLAIMER

The students in this course planned, designed, and developed most of this work. I, as the faculty advisor, did take on some responsibilities to put some of the more complicated components together, which I'll list here:

Animations: I programmed the animation for the desk, but the model was fully developed and prepared by students. Additionally, I did animate the phone and the cupboard door.

Highlights: While students did initial research for highlighting objects, I did finish the programming because it was very advanced.

Pop-up Programming: While students developed and programmed the animation for the user interface components, I personally programmed a second part of the system, which tells the game which user-interface topic to implement based on the clicked object.

PITCH DECK

The following pitch deck was developed by the students in the course to pitch this simulation. (Right-click and open in a new tab if you would like to view larger images.)

(link to Google Drive version of this pitch deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kAsG1OQr-_0a3qSIIDFZrs9ZnWBEbNgx60WgZC8z...)