Wandering at the Exit of Deity - VR Film
Wandering at the Exit of Deity is a VR interactive film of a fiction world, environment simulated in real-time with customized compute shader effects. Stylished characters in mix of hyper-realistic and 2D. Explored non-linear story-telling and player interactivity. Made with Blender, Substance, MD, UE5. Presented at SAT Dome Montreal, Printemps numérique MTL Connect and ISEA2025.
The world consists of numerous jelly-like living units which are maintained by Deity, by transiting neural harmonizing atoms through dirac sea. In each unit lives 1 transhuman w/ a data nutrition mask. In a unit, the device was glitched, BetaE (the stand-in avatar) starts to see the hyperrealistic form of them from the past, who they chose to save in the time-space cache before they entered the harmonized unit.
Credit: Noah Sherrin sound artist.
VR preview
Project partial preview. Full version not published yet, upon request.
a 3D spatial physarum simulation realized in Niagara UE5. Algorithm inspired by 2010 paper by Jeff Jones, “Characteristics of pattern formation and evolution in approximations of Physarum transport networks.”
Debug view of physarum, 3 colored cones map to 3 sensors of per physarum agent
Adjustable parameters to change physarum simulation behavior dynamically
Overview: the physarum system.
Key algorithm part in Update Dir module. Other 2 customized simu stages iterates on 2 RT 3D. Seperate 2 stages to avoid read and write access racing problem, customize thread sizes to optimize compute kernel performance.
Right: original trail map read and write texture3D.
Left: diffused physarum trail map.
Update Dir module
Live demo at a 360-degree spherical projection screen in SAT Dome Montreal
Presentation of the project at Akousma Festival Composite#41 at Ubisoft
public vernissage at @WorldCreationStudio Gallery
Demonstration at Printemps numérique MTL Connect