YCP Virtual Teacher

Title Image

Inspiration

I was inspired to create this project through my love for 3D graphics and Unity. I wanted to create something that would make people laugh and be like, "wowzers! that is something!". I wanted to make something "unique".

What it does

It is a presentation tool that teachers can use to teach students. They can create and delete a list of slide objects that are presented by a 3D modeled teacher, with full animations and audio to boot! There is also a dedicated and trademarked* "Griddy" and "Babcock" button to engage the students in learning. Students can watch and cycle through all the created slides.

How we built it

The base of the project is made in Unity. All the models were created inside Unity or Blender. Most of the textures were created by an AI called ERNIE-ViLG. Some of the modeled were textured inside of blender and edited inside of photoshop. All animations were created inside Unity's animator. A library for windows file explorer was implemented into the Unity program. The slide system was created using a list of slide objects; these objects contain the Texture2D files and text information. These objects are combined into a list and read on presentation.

Challenges we ran into

Accidently deleted most of the scene data and had to recreate the scene(twice!) due to Unity crashes (should've saved more often). The file system was a pain and had very few resources.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I think it looks pretty rad! I'm proud that I could get the file system working and that I added the edit system, which was not originally part of the plan. I'm also proud of how great the griddy turned out.

What we learned

I learned that Unity's animator is actually terrible for animation with 3D rigged models and will instead work with Blender for that. I learned how to use a file system in Unity which is pretty nice and could come in handy for the future.

What's next for YCP Virtual Teacher

A dedicated "Upload your Face!" button that allows the person to create their own teacher avatar! A reorganize the slides option that I didn't have time to finish! More student interactions, like blowing up the computers!