TOOLKIT – Our guide to organise Hackathons on VR
Based on the hackathons held by L.E.V. Festival, we have come up with some guidelines that can support schools to organise a similar event with your students. To share is to care!
Why a Hackathon?
A hackathon is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over short period of time. They facilitate interdisciplinary work by grouping some people with different skills in order to solve a given challenge. The goal is to provide a working product by the end of the event, being the best solution awarded with some recognition.
The objectives
Through Realities in Transition, L.E.V. festival facilitated two hackathons, once with emerging artists and once with young students, to encourage particpants to have a critical thinking on Extended Realities (XR). As facilitators, they accompanied and challenged them to test their skills with different technologies and tools, from creating a functioning prototype of several virtual scenes with A-Frame, to use an open source code library to easily create 3D spaces in a browser, from driving deeper into the state-of-the-art tools that allow more accessible ways for creators and young artists to building astonishing virtual worlds and characters.
Our guide to organise Hackathons on VR
Based on the hackathons held by L.E.V. Festival, we have come up with some guidelines that can support schools to organise a similar event with your students. To share is to care!
We hope that these materials will be useful for you, and can support and inspire you to keep a critical eye on AI, the challenges that it brings, and the solutions that we can develop to promote a more sustainable, open and inclusive XR.
If you have questions or want to exchange on the topic and/your experience, please contact Jesus Jara Lopez: jesus@levfestival.com, from LEV Festival, who designed the hackathon and facilitated it in Zagreb during the Realities in Transition XR camp in October 2023.
Hackathon #1 – RECYCLING THE AI – Presentation of the challenge
Virtual, mixed and augmented reality, are a becoming more relevant in the creative and artistic fields, helping artists to explore virtuality as an alternative domain for creativity and expression. Like any other digital work, extended realities have also being influenced in the last years by the evolution of tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Being a great tool, the AI has also gain lots of criticism when applied to the creative field. Digital artists, for example, consider an unfair competition that neural network models that have being trained using their previous work, are being used without their consent to generate new 3D models and designs automatically using text to content techniques. Recently, there has being a notorious strike of writers in the Hollywood industry to, among other things, request a regulation of the use of AI powered scripts for films and TV shows.
Considering also the amount of resources needed to generate AI digital content, and the fact that the internet is full of already existing AI images, texts, 3D models, videos and animations, it is more than reasonable to think on recycling those before beginning to think of generating new ones. The proposal for this hackathon is thus, experiment with reusing and repurposing techniques of already existing digital content to develop them into functional virtual worlds.
By learning the basics of HTML and with the use of 3D editing tools, attendants were able to design virtual environments and host them for their own use while, at the same time, help them reflect about issues like energy consumption, privacy, open culture, digital representation and accessibility. During these three consecutive days, thirty students of the School of Applied Arts and Design of Zagreb have put their skills to work to create a working prototype of several virtual scenes with A-Frame, an open source library for building 3D spaces easily on the browser.
Hackathon #1 – RECYCLING THE AI – Guidelines
The set-up
To create the better conditions for your hackathon, we recommend:
- One computer per participant.
- One facilitator for a maximum of 15 students.
- Groups should not be of more than 4 participants.
- Participants should be a minimum of 16 years old.
- No specific skill or knowledge is required to participate although some experience with html would be of help.
- Start with a round of presentation and ask their motivation to participate.
- Make everyone comfortable, there is no wrong question!
- It is important to reference all materials used for the creation of virtual spaces. Keep an eye on the licensing information of all the creative work used.
Day-by-day program
The results
The Hackathon led in October 2023 led to great results, showcased in a virtual world. This exhibition includes an embedded version of every virtual virtual world created during the hackathon. You can visit the exhibition here or see the results of the different find each of the experiments below, also accessible via a smartphone using the QR codes.
GROUP LAP01
Story by AI that was recycled: The Hellmut in the Coffee Shop –
Credits of 3d models:
- Winter Cabin: https://skfb.ly/oOTYC
- Demon: https://skfb.ly/6RSW6
- Girl: https://skfb.ly/6zGMG
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
GROUP LAP02
Story by AI that was recycled: Max, The Plant Whisperer
Credits of 3d models:
- Ferret: https://skfb.ly/o7wR6
- Boy (AI generated): https://skfb.ly/oMNY6
- Old Russian House: https://skfb.ly/oxT9s
- Trees: https://skfb.ly/oDWDI
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
GROUP LAP03
Story by AI that was recycled: The Greatest Goddam Hero I’ve Ever Known
Credits of 3d models:
- Skeleton: https://skfb.ly/oLNMN
- Desert plant and palms: 3D Builder Library.
- Bench and Fountain: 3D Builder Library
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
GROUP LAP05
Story by AI that was recycled: The Gift of a Bird’s Song
Credits of 3d models:
- Apple Tree: https://skfb.ly/6YV9B
- Bird: https://skfb.ly/ovDpS
- Castle: https://skfb.ly/6yRPw
- Knight: Unkown.
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
GROUP LAP06
Story by AI that was recycled: The Underground World Of Plant Collecting
Credits of 3d models:
- Butterfly: https://skfb.ly/oqHt9
- Desert Plants and Trees: Unkown.
- Bench, Fountain: Unkown.
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
GROUP LAP09
Story by AI that was recycled: When The Sky Turned Red
Credits of 3d models:
- Man: https://skfb.ly/QspN
Click here to enter the virtual world from Desktop
Scan this QR to enter the virtual world from a Smartphone.
Hackathon #2 – AVATAR VR SCULPTING, by METARICK – Presentation of the challenge
Supported Realities in Transition and Medialab Matadero, the creator of the awarded immersive universe Uncanny Alley, MetaRick, has guided various sessions in a hybrid format from his office and home, the Metaverse, in which he has explained different VR Sculpting techniques for building an original avatar and getting it ready to use in VRChat.
VR Sculpting is a more easy way to enter the challenging world of 3D modeling. The hackathon explored also the free-to-use tools available today.
MetaRick, who has extensive experience in world building and has been recognized internationally, is the developer of a very recognizable series of avatars for his own virtual worlds for years.
he hackathon lasted four days, both presently from LEV Matadero Festival and with some participants attending online and was oriented to creators with some introductory experience to 3D modeling and worldbuilding in Unity.
Hackathon #2 – AVATAR VR SCULPTING, by METARICK – Guidelines
Set-up
For the development of this hackathon, LEV Festival provided:
- A working space.
- Mentoring.
- A set of VR-ready computers.
- VR Headsets.
- A virtual platform to connect and share both with MetaRick and the other participants during the hackathon.
Challenge
The challenge proposed to every participant was to create a working Avatar model to be used and embodied the last day in a presentation in VRChat using VR sculpting techniques. For that challenge, 7 avatars were finally created.
Schedule
Day 1: Kick-off presentation, installation and assembly of the software to be used.
Day 2: Creation of a digital sculpture using VR Sculpting.
Day 3: Integration of the sculpture with the VRChat SDK for Unity.
Day 4: Testing and final presentation.
Tips for the development of the specific challenge
Presentation of the results
At the end of the event, the participants present during the last day of the hackathon shared their Avatar in a specific private room in VRChat prepared for that moment by MetaRick followed by an IRL (in real life) presentation of their avatar (inspirations, work in progress and final results) to the audience formed by family and friends in Madrid.
