This winter I had the amazing opportunity to participate in New York Institute of Technology’s Winter Fusion program. NYIT provided me with a Meta Quest 2 to explore how VR can be utilized for 3D design in an educational setting. Over the course of several weeks, I worked with guidance from Ms. Buvaneshwari Sundar from NYIT, as well as a fellow student from SUNY WCC, to develop 3D models on the Quest 2. We designed within Gravity Sketch, a 3D design platform available on the Meta Store.
I decided to base my model on this project that I made a while back in Blender. While I didn’t have quite enough time to polish my design and felt limited in the features available in Gravity Sketch, I think that it still captured the charming feel of the original. We started off simply getting acquainted with the Quest 2 hardware and the user inputs within the context of Gravity Sketch. We explored the capabilities and limitations of Gravity Sketch while keeping in mind the potential for its educational and professional use. While it does lack several features that we have come to take for granted in other software such as Maya or Blender, it provides an intuitive user experience and simple interface that is welcoming to those getting into basic 3D modeling.
This was an incredibly beneficial learning experience and I see a bright future for VR as a design tool. Special thanks to Ms. Buvaneshwari Sundar, Professor Deborah Krikun, and Professor Kevin Park for providing me with this opportunity.
