Cardboard Paradise - How to Build a Real Digital World with VRChat
This is an artist page by Lauren Schroeder. This project was part of the Fantastic Arcade x CATS+ 2024 cohort.
Overview
Cardboard Paradise is a social VR world that explores concepts of artificial scarcity and status through a virtual town built using real-world cardboard artifacts. The cardboard citizens in Cardboard Paradise, heavily influenced by billboards and slogans, dream of one day getting upgraded to Gold World. The world is hosted on VRChat and supports multiplayer interaction, fort-building, and dialog. We brought this world to Fantastic Arcade by setting up an installation at the event with a few VR and Desktop stations for people to enter the virtual world together and wander around. In this article, I give an overview of the project and provide information on how to create worlds for VRChat.
The Team
Lauren Schroeder: VR developer Goldie Nourian: Narrative lead Karen Tsang: 3D Art & Scanning, Fantastic Arcade Set Design Jillian Nicole McCann: Fantastic Arcade Set Design
Designing a World for Virtual Reality
We started the world-building process by designing a simple map for the town. The map changed a lot throughout the building process, but it gave an idea of where things might be positioned.
One thing that I significantly changed during the development process was the scale of the town. I started by working with a huge plot of land with roads and different areas to explore. But the more time I spent in the world, the more I realized that long periods of walking aren’t fun in VR. Motion sickness becomes more of a problem, and it simply takes forever to see everything. Every time I iterated on the world, I moved buildings a little closer to each other.
Throughout the process, I tried to avoid using typical 3D models. Instead, I opted for physical cardboard assets that were later digitized. Karen used Polycam to scan some cardboard pieces to pull into the VR world as 3D objects. This method worked best for objects picked up or observed from all angles. I created 2D cardboard pieces to photograph and pull into Unity as transparent PNGs. This method allowed me to build the landscape and environment more quickly than by 3D scanning every object.
How to Build a VRChat World
I chose to host this world in VRChat because it’s currently the most popular social VR platform. At Fantastic Arcade, I spoke about the current state of social VR and my own experiences. The VRChat app is currently free for both VR and Windows, making it a good way to showcase immersive art and experiences. The VRChat tools make it easier to start building in VR by abstracting many interactions, platform requirements (both VR and Windows), and multiplayer functionality. This helps increase access.
A VRChat world is built in Unity, along with a companion VRChat application that handles building and uploading updates to the world. Building out the environment mainly utilizes Unity features. Shaders, interaction, and lighting have specific VRChat limitations.
Adding functionality to the world requires using VRChat’s language, Udon, which is similar to C# but with VRChat-specific functionality. There is also a node editor version of Udon, which can handle most types of basic interaction logic, making development more accessible for beginners. I used Udon to let people dip cardboard into flowers to change the color of the cardboard. This is an example of an Udon script that animates an object and plays a sound whenever a specific type of object touches it.
Presenting Cardboard Paradise at Fantastic Arcade
As someone who primarily works with digital technology, I enjoy collaborating with people to build real-world sets for experiences that can often feel hidden behind the VR headset. During the event, Jillian McCann and Karen Tsang built cardboard flowers to create a set in a large closet. Having a Desktop station and these visual cues helped to introduce people to our cardboard world without them having to wear a headset. Even if there hadn’t been a Desktop version of the experience, I still would have streamed the VR experience to a monitor for people to watch.
The Future of Cardboard Paradise
We plan to continue to add to this world. I’m also interested in building out Gold World - even though several people have already found the hole in the fence and trekked to the Gold World seen in the distance! Please reach out if you’d like to contribute or make a virtual visit.
