MacInnes
Studios
UNREAL CHARACTER
2016-2020
GRACE
In 2016 I self-funded a couple of VR demos. One would evolve into Chain of Command, the other was Grace. I needed something simple and effective to prove the value of using real-time photorealistic characters in VR. A music experience would be impactful without relying heavily on facial animation. I wanted to introduce a character to my audience that couldn’t exist in reality and yet was human enough to illicit an emotional response - otherworldly yet vulnerably human. People would be able to freely move around the virtual space so it made sense to limit the character to a single spot. Making Grace an android solved a number of issues - all hard surfaces and no cloth simulations - while being aesthetically stunning. I cast championship pole dancer Grace Holiday and worked with her on the performance and named the character to honor her work.
Grace first went on show at VRLA that summer and was used by Nvidia, AMD and HTC around the world to showcase 6DOF VR. It’s remarkable that this was all done in UE 4.11 on an Nvidia 1080 GPU but laid the ground for my subsequent work on Virtual David Bowie.
Grace was resurrected in 2020 when I launched the Real-Time Shorts Challenge. I made the source files available for Grace and other assets to Challenge participants and the character was then feature in half of the shorts that were produced.
