Our Company

Banging Rocks creates Virtual Reality for a positive impact, with an emphasis on transdisciplinary arts.

A Wall Opens

A Wall Opens is the first installment in a series of 3 room puzzle game/escape room virtual reality experiences. Built-in Unity and designed for the Oculus Quest headset, the game is played in first person through a series of kinetic puzzles, letters, portals and magical objects.

Each game tells the story of generations of womxn within a “haunting house” rather than a haunted house: a place that, through its objects, is a living character in their memories. Creation of thematically and stylistically consistent objects is of vital importance.

This Riipen project centres specifically on the creation of a Python software tool, to generate mathematical drawings with transparent backgrounds, and to facilitate the conversion of existing graphical images into pngs with transparent backgrounds. These transparent pngs can then be used in sprite sheets to create novel 2D/3D animations. A portion of the Python software tool will be released in an open-source format, to allow use by other artists and to help grow the XR digital art community. Work done in this Riipen project will permit the development of a novel animation pipeline for XR art with a distinctive style, for this project and possible future projects.

The Project

This project centers on designing programmatic art and developing the technical backend of an animation pipeline straddling the 2D-3D divide. The successful applicant will work with the Art Director to write a “plug and play” simple to use standalone Python program to convert provided graphics files into the required format, with applied graphical transformations. A command-line script version of the Python code will be prepared by the applicant for release as an open-source script. The successful applicant will also produce a set of mathematically generated line art designs, for use in a novel animation style. Deliverables are limited to a simple GUI program, the open-source Python script, and one set of line art images (totaling no more than 20 images).

The Student

The student selected should have a strong background in Unity, computer graphics and Python coding. Experience generating programmatic art is a requirement. Intermediate Photoshop experience (or ability to rapidly learn) is a requirement in order to manipulate processed and provided images into sprite sheets. Access to two separate computers capable of running intensive graphical rendering programs, running Windows 10 and macOS operating systems respectively is a requirement for this position. The ideal candidate has familiarity with 2D and 3D animation. C# coding and experience integrating Python scripts directly into Unity is an asset but not a requirement.

Resources & Files

The student will have access to the Banging Rocks community, including 4 VR designers and developers.

The student will be working closely with the project’s Art Director, a veteran in the film and tv and graphic arts industries. Due to their close working relationship, opportunities will be provided to further develop technical art and animation skills, should the student wish.

Students will be added to the Banging Rocks Slack, with a dedicated support channel for the project. We will ensure any messages or emails with questions on the project are answered within 24 hours, and will provide opportunities for students to ask any questions about both the project and any other aspect of Banging Rocks’ work (from the technical to administrative to strategic) that they are interested in.

Where appropriate, we will introduce the student to members of our community that are relevant to their work.