EZ3D

EZ3D Room is a tutorial space that teaches users how to create realistic 3D models of rooms, fashion items, accessories, furniture objects and more to facilitate conversations of meaningful friendships.

The Final Room Design

Here is an overview of the tutorial room and the museum that contained the models made by people on the internet

Tutorial Room

Museum

User Research

Feedback

Walkthrough

The Goal

Facilitate conversation by enabling users to make attractive rooms, furniture, clothing, etc. to have a more realistic appeal without the need for any 3D modeling expertise. We want to make the authorship as accessible as possible while keeping the fidelity of the output high as well.

How?

Beauty in the imperfection is our room’s ethos. The future generation of IMVU users, Gen Z are all about self expression.

The thing about self expression is that it’s not ‘one-size-fits-all.’ Having a distinct and different voice is rewarded and celebrated.

Looking a certain way that doesn’t necessarily align with what we see in advertisements or pop culture is okay. It’s better than okay, it’s fantastic.

Observations

Conversation Starters

Users Love to Personalize

Most people prefer to buy things off of the shop in IMVU Store and then customize them with textures made by themselves.

Pop Culture Dictates The Items

Even though IMVU has a strict policy against the use of brands on IMVU products, people somehow find their workaround for bringing in Pop Culture and Street fashion brands into their rooms.

Hyperrealistic Items Are Sought After

There is a huge respect for people in the IMVU world who possess items that look as close to real world expensive items.

What is Photogrammetry?

The use of photography in surveying and mapping to measure distances between objects. It helps create 3D assets of real life objects.

How?

Using just a camera phone, 3D software and the creator tool in IMVU anyone can create their own photogrammetry items.

We started with narrowing down the process to 19 steps. Then we designed an interactive space around those steps.

By doing this we offer an easy way for the IMVU users to learn while in character, subtracting the need for a third party tutorial.

Play Video

METHOD

Trial and Error

Instagram Posts

We crowdsourced posted images from different users on Instagram to create an image data set. The issue with this is that the photos lacked depth/ perspective so all of our models came out flat.

YouTube Videos

We also tried YouTube as a source by downloading videos and exporting them as frames to make an image data set. Some of these models worked but the lack depth/ perspective also presented a challenge. Sometimes the 3D software didn’t know where to focus

Retail Website Media

Videos from famous retailers was our next place to test. We collected image data sets mainly from 360 degree product videos. This proved to be relatively more successful when the product had heavy contrast in color.

Real Life Objects

Lastly we attempted the image data set process in real-time and this method yielded the most results. We could capture more detail and depth because we were in charge of the setting, the number of photos and the range.