 Hi everyone welcome and thank you so much for joining me. My name is Julie Smithson and today I'm going to be talking about the creative design process for 3D and I'm going to be using our Metaverse Engine as a demonstration tool to be showing through my presentation and I'm really excited to be able to introduce the concept of 3D as well as our Metaverse Engine to help you understand a creator tool and the creative design process for 3D. So a little bit about myself again my name is Julie Smithson and I'm the chief learning officer at Metaverse. I also co-founded XR Ignite and I'm the producer of XR Collaboration. I also am a VRA member and education student co-chair as well as an XR camp advisory member and educators and VR member so I'm very heavily involved in the education space as well as understanding how this technology works with enterprise and business organizations. A little bit about our Metaverse family we have our Metaverse company which started about four or five years ago and we started with strategy and consulting, doing projects, everything from augmented reality 360 video, virtual reality, teleportals, web AR. We kind of doubled in all of it just to make sure that we understood where this industry was going and how business was going to be interpreted and how the technology would unfold within the future of work. We also have our Metaverse Engine which I'll get into a little bit more about that. We also have XR Ignite where we actually started this company to help startups understand how to work with business organizations and through that we also built out some resources that we host on xrcollaboration.com and I'll touch base a little bit later in my presentation about that. We also have our podcast. I actually host the XR for learning podcast and it's through there that we talk about the different ways that you learn and you teach. My partner and husband also has XR for business podcast and that's where if you want to learn about what all of these big companies are doing out there with this technology, Alan really gets into the nitty gritty of understanding even more about the business applications of XR. So that's our Metaverse family. Let's get into a little bit about my story and where I came from back in 2010. My partner, husband Alan and I, we actually created the emulator. The emulator was the world's first touchscreen DJ controller back in 2010 and Dragonstone. That was kind of my pathway into technology and understanding the potential of even touchscreen and it was from there that we were introduced into the VR world and technology world where obviously I'm here today understanding the potential and use cases of how we're going to use this technology. This is my daughter and right after we had the emulator company, we actually ended up inspiring our daughter to create a shoe company and it was within this time of her life. She was nine at this time and today she's 16 years old. But for a few years, she actually produced 2000 pairs of shoes and sold them. And the idea was the love sandal that left a heart shaped hand line on the top of your foot. It was through this entrepreneurial experience that we understood how much education needed to change and change for the better. And then our personal mission, we actually started to build out the unlimited awesome account. And it's from, you know, creative problem solving and teamwork, responsibility for your finances and economics and having that social impact through sustainability of the environment, of course, perseverance. And it was through this mission that we decided we would we wanted to focus on democratizing education by 2040 in the next generation to think and act in an economically socially and environmentally sustainable way. And do that we would leverage the most advanced immersive technologies in the world. And here I am standing at the stage today in a virtual space. So just overview of the immersive technologies. You know, we have the 2D view in our smartphones. We can also look at 360 360 degrees. We also have augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed realities. All together, extended realities is where we are in this space and, you know, using them on a daily basis for starting to integrate these technologies more and more into into our lives. So let's talk about 3D enabled devices. And right now, you know, with all of these devices that are out there, the computers, tablets, smartphones, and the headsets, there are actually 7.5 billion 3D enabled devices globally out there already. And that people are using that we can start to introduce the concept of three dimensional objects and spatial objects that need to that are used inside of these technologies like virtual and augmented reality experiences that are used for different purposes. So this is kind of why we're we're talking about 3D now, you know, why XR, why now, you know, for years, we've had the personal computer and then mobile took over and, you know, as of 2020, XR is starting to take over and all of these different technologies. So right now we're in this upswing of how of the investments that are being made in this space. So it's really important that we understand how this technology will impact everything we're doing on a daily basis. A little bit of reality ever since COVID, you know, invaded our lives, it forced us apart, but this technology has made it possible for us to learn and interact with one another while remaining physically distant. And, you know, being here today on the next prize stage is certainly an example of coming together and being able to use this technology to to continue conversations and collaboration. And this quote actually came from XR collaboration in our mission to build out those resources. So a little bit of reality in this COVID acceleration and how fast things are going. Coming right from Nike, they originally targeted 35% of their sales for 2020 to be made online. And they're already reaching that 50% overall sales. And now for the foreseeable future will be made online. So already the trend of purchasing online and digitally interacting to purchase items like Nike are taking place. And, and this is actually, you know, a pivotal move in in how humans are behaving with this technology and how how trustworthy they are in even their purchase decisions. So a little bit about the ROI on on the investment in this space, and we're already seeing everything between commerce marketing and training, the numbers of sales conversions going up, marketing click through rates are going up, the increase of retention rates are already going up. And through all of those number changes, Robbie companies are obviously saving money and resources. So already the benefits are starting to play out in how it's implemented into the business world. The many use cases of immersive technology can be used from retail and marketing, of course, with face filters and e commerce transactions, but also through education and product design, out of visualization, education and training from healthcare and medical, industrial design and training manuals are are starting to be implemented and use using augmented reality. And then of course, entertainment always plays a big part in actually being as much as immersed as possible through all the sensory through all the sensory avenues to to immerse you into those experiences. So immersive technology is already playing a part in many different industries. And through mixed reality, they're also solving big, huge enterprise problems like remote assistance and collaborative visualization and access to to certain data that businesses make decisions moving forward. So all of these different companies and enterprises already starting to use this technology, which is really important. And companies like IKEA placing furniture in your space or modifies using AR for face filters, companies, restaurants are using their menus to augment what those meals look like and, you know, placing activities within the menus and restaurants, being able to see some of these retail items through your devices and being able to interact with them obviously leads you down that purchasing decision a lot quicker. GPS tracking through stores to help you find things and interaction with characters from certain TV shows, using AR, all of these play out into a maze to interact with others and that engaging experience to understand whether it's the product or or the situation better. And the best business and education and training applications are really the ones that are expensive or rare, impossible, that they're really dangerous or even counterproductive, you know, everything from body swapping and time travel, taking field trips to places where, you know, you really can have access to, or you don't even have the money to go there. You know, being able to put students inside these experiences and having them go wherever they need to go or, you know, studying what the behaviors of others are like, this technology allows all of these different possibilities to to become real and for us to experience them. And it does take the development side to be able to create these things. So I guess, first of all, I'd like to just acknowledge the stage that we're on here today with X Prize. And, you know, we have an environment and we also have a lot of different things going on. You know, we have animations above us and different signs. You know, there's cabling ribbon through the floors or through. So all of these things obviously design process to create environment that we're here in today. So, you know, what does that look like for XR and really the creative design process build XR requires you to think spatially and in dimensions. So for us to walk around the stage, we obviously know that there's something above us, below us, each side behind us. There's so many different things. I have this podium here and I can look around it and I can actually move around it as well. I can move all around this room and it's because I understand that we are in the spatial room, this 360 degree space where our entire our entire being is inspired by all of these different assets that are in our environment. So thinking spatially, thinking the ability that things are around you is the first step designing in 3D. So 3D actually stimulates the real thing. It builds connections and it invites interactivity. It sparks curiosity and it makes learning fun. We have access to over 7 billion devices. So it's really that next step to understanding why and how we need to build an augmented reality virtual and the mixed realities. It's that stepping stone. Understanding three dimensions and understanding things spatially is where things all begin. So last year I did a talk or I did a I wrote an article on 3D learning and how to, you know, introduce and it's really introducing and thinking more in voxels now instead of pixels. We're moving from 2D into 3D. So how do we start to think spatially? Start to think in voxels and how we build things and that spaceship on the back there of the stage is a perfect example of, you know, just building blocks and how you need to start to think in a spatial way. So this feeds us to degrees of freedom, which is used in a virtual setting when you have a headset on. Being able to see things in a three degree of freedom, just looking around and seeing your space. But six degrees of freedom obviously allows you to interact and move within your space. And that's where the immersive really steps into it and, you know, being able to go sideways up and down and forward and pitch and move around allows you to interact and become more immersed into the scene that you're in. So this is kind of the definition of the degrees of freedom inside the space. So the first step in designing in 3D is really just understanding more about depth and dimension and that spatial understanding of multiple different perspectives. And when you're considering building XR, you have to think of a lot of different things. You know, you can start to think about security and logins and that sort of thing. And that's all very important. And that's part of that process when you're building an XR. But there's also, you know, understanding the natural interactions and being contextually aware about the things that are around you. And if you have an avatar beside you that you're speaking to, that you understand their space or you understand where the podium is in your world, there's a lot of other things like collaborating in real time and managing your assets inside of the space or even just in the designer mode of the digital assets. Being able to manage all of these things is part of building an XR. But we're going to get back to 3D and how we can use that to creatively design for XR. And a little bit about the Metaverse Engine because I'm going to be using this to show you examples and give you instruction on how the design process works. Our Metaverse Engine, we just recently released at AWE in June. We're really excited that we could pull forward our development a lot sooner than planned. We were expected to release at CES in 2021. And due to COVID, we pulled up our delivery date and we're really excited that we're able to launch 3D for the web and AR as well, based on our one app solution. And we're working towards building out the virtual and the virtual support for our system. So that'll be delivered in Q4. But let's take it back to 3D and that stepping stone that we need to take in order to understand more about immersive technologies. 3D, remember, represents, can represent content and data visually. And you can also use it to interact and learn and collaborate, presenting a story, a timeline or a visualization. And it can be used for marketing, commerce, training, and education. So let's talk about 3D for a moment and what it takes to become an asset. And once you have your object that you would like to place in this space, it basically starts off with a layer of mesh. And this mesh comes with polygons and these polygons all really start to invite the different perspective and the customization of the object itself. So when we talk about mesh and we talk about polygons, each asset has its own package of how it needs to be entered into a system, augmented or virtual reality, just like these items here in this space, they were an asset that was dropped into this virtual world. So throughout my presentation, if you do see a QR code like this one, you're welcome to take a screenshot of it or if you're on a desktop, you can actually pull out your smartphone. The QR code will take you to some of our live experiences that you can also take a look at on our metaverse.com page page. And these are some examples of 3D, which unfortunately I can't show you the live animated version here in this space, but I hope you do go and try them out. This is an example of our shoe configurator where you can go in and design your own pair of shoes. And the shoes show up in your space, whether they be augmented or just in 3D in your device. And you're able to interact with that shoe and change the colors, the tongue, the laces, the sole, you're able to change all of it. And it's through our engine that you can simply make this experience and build the configurator out to be able to look at the different perspectives. To give you an example of spatial design again, Lowe's has it right with using a device to be able to show the layout of the architecture of the space that you're willing to build. And that's the same thing when it comes back to 3D models and 3D assets being able to visualize your space. So when you're creating 3D models, you always have to create your own assets. Sometimes they're already made for you. But just so you know where to go to be able to make your 3D models, these are some of the softwares that are out there where you can build out the models to your liking, you can use photogrammetry or upload CAD files and that sort of thing. And these are some of the softwares that support that. So once you've created your model and if you get it at one of these stores, CD Traders, Skeptfab, Turgalose, these locations, they all have a library of 3D assets where some of them have 3D models and some of them are actually you have to pay for depending on the intricacy or the amount of detail that are in the actual asset itself. So there's a lot of places that you can go to get your 3D models and they do come in different formats. And these are the most common ones. Our engine automatically uses OBJ and FBX. And then within the next four weeks, we're releasing the support for USEZ and GLTF. So we're starting to support a lot of CAD files as well that can be uploaded into our engine for access to be able to manipulate and work with them. A little bit about our engine in comparison with Lydian Real and Unreal, the two other engines that are out there. Metaverse was built to be that introductory 3D engine for anybody to use. It really does take the relief of coding off of anybody who is wishing to design in 3D. Our engine is actually low code and no code. And we use JavaScript on the back end too. And you're actually able to enter any JavaScript in our system to add further animations or environments and that sort of thing. But we did build out code snippets that allow you to drag and drop certain things that make it easy like a configurator or adding a button to your an interactive button to your scene. This is where the code snippets come in. The average learning curve for engine is actually two to four weeks compared to some of the other longer times in Unity and Unreal. Last week, I proved myself in the fact that I did a presentation in the same day that I fully learned our engine and was able to present it to others. It really took me six hours to gain the understanding of our engine. And then I sent it to 180 university students the same presentation and was able to have that confidence to understand everything about the engine. The development time to be able to develop anything can be as little as an hour to hours to one to two weeks, depending on the complexity of the program or the experience that you're building compared to months of development time in the other engines. Now, the other engines, they obviously have their purposes. They're, you know, a lot more detailed especially in the gaming or more intricate in experiences. And you do need that those engines to be able to create graphics detail that's required for them. But they are applications and you need an app to be able to access them and download that. Metaverse Engine, we are web enabled, and it's released automatically and published automatically right to the options of iOS or Android or QR code or an embed code for your website. And we've made it extremely easy. I'd love to introduce you to our metaverse engine video intro. You can take a look at it on our website. There's the QR code that'll take you right there. So a little bit about the metaverse engine and the benefits of it. The rapid prototyping is really key, especially during this time of rapid innovation and the need for our for enterprise and business to be able to quickly solve the problems that they need to in their business or organization. So already we're seeing design time reduction when it comes to rapid prototyping. And I think this is really key in our engine today is just trying to figure out what to do, what to use and be able to quickly flip that over into something that can be presented or decided, you know, quickly, whether the the actual object is going to work or or not, where the process is going to work. So the engine also, as I said before with the shoe, being able to design your preference and, you know, have what to, you know, use it in your marketing campaigns, being able to custom design things obviously increases your sales conversion. And we're already seeing that in some of the examples that we're building. The product configuration of being able to see whether you like a car one way or one color or another, the interior design, being able to see if you see your driveway and it in a parking spot or a parking garage. That obviously closes the sale of these these products a lot faster. And that's that's one of the benefits about our engine and designing in 3D. Products showcasing things in three dimensions is really important. Try before you buy, place it in your space before you before you decide to buy that and have it moved in and shuffling the furniture. This can also be applied to virtual events or to to any kind of new design framework and being able to design it to see if it works before you actually physically make all of the changes to your household or space that you're working with. Virtual showrooms, same thing if you could see what the bathtub could look like in your new in your new bathroom or vanity sink which marble color you like being able to visualize that space before you actually implement it is possible and being able to see it in three dimensions and alternate between those different colors or styles is really important to to be able to have that user immersed in that experience to see what it would really like if it was this way or from this different perspective. Remote training and education this is I think one of the biggest potentials for our engine and being able to explain things being able to place images in in the space to be able to show the user what it something is really like or explain something. This experience here we have on our website is about the solar system. And when you go in and you take a look at your the solar system you can actually see all of the planets moving in real time and in the pace that they're moving around the sun. You can place this in your space in an augmented way so you can see the the planets in you know in a field and you between them and how you know what the distance is you can even just have it on your phone and play around with it in 3D taking a look at the earth's inner core comparing the the planets Mercury to Saturn and how big they are this type of interaction and being able to showcase this to another user where they can be immersed into that experience and learn for themselves. You know taking a closer look up to the sun or where those rings you know the rings around Saturn just to see what you know what they look up like up close. So this is just one example of how education and training can reduce that training time and increase the retention rates and the interest level of just being able to learn about that subject. 3D instructions and manuals this is where I believe there is a massive potential and actually one of those first steps to how education and business will start to introduce 3D or augmented reality into into their workplace or their learning space. It really using 3D technology is already bringing 97% less time to gain that information gain access to that information. So this still photo here of our of a blood machine is something that we worked on to build a user manual being placed in augmented reality right over top of the blood machine itself. So what we did is we took a CAD drawing a CAD diagram drawing of the blood machine itself and you can physically place that blood machine in front of you with the user manual overlaid on top to understand how to insert the syringe of blood where to push the buttons on the screen and you know going into the back end you know changing out the spark plugs or replacing certain cartridges the entire 32 page and 32 step manual on how this product can be modeled was then built into our engine and distributed through one link published that anybody could access from their team and they could do that remotely thus by pulling it up on their device and placing that blood machine in their space or beside the blood machine itself. So it really has shown that impact of how 3D manuals and instruction manuals play a huge part of usability and accessibility being remote and not having to use paper anymore. And if you think about how we use it in a blood machine manual imagine what we could do for textbooks and schools being able to overlay more instructions or insert assets into a storyline that could help the user understand more about that topic or subject. So our engine also does connect with IoT sensors and I think this was one of the biggest surprises about our engine that we were not really sure that it would work but it actually did and we have a use case out there from Sikhar Keda from Oracle Oracle's XR Lab where they took our engine and then connected the engine with one of their monitoring stations with a sensor and pulled out data and put it into a presentation model in 3D within our engine. And this was a huge stepping stone to be able to understand how our engine could work with IoT sensors and I think this is a huge benefit in building out solutions for innovation whether it be both business or education or innovating a global solution that could be connected to an environmental problem being able to monitor soil erosion or monitoring equipment in their performance or even just reporting back the conversion rates in design. So being able to report back real-time analytics use cases and the choices of the user or the monitoring of that system and being able to display that in a direct and relevant manner for that's very simplified to use is one of the greatest benefits I think of our engine and being able to introduce the reporting of 3D. So our engine is and browser agnostic and we wanted to make sure that our engine was accessible for everyone on every single device and making things as easy as possible just like adding code snippets which you can actually break it out and code yourself in JavaScript but the code snippets allow you to drag and drop those more complicated coding sections that provide a little bit more intricacy to the experience of health like nations and configurations. This is a picture of our dashboard and it really is very similar to some of the other development engines out there but it is all drag and drop and being able to quickly access all of the different features of the mesh in the mesh inspector just on the right-hand side and having your assets right within your framework. So let's go back to a little bit of the spatial design and the design process and the first thing I want to address is the world or a scene and just like you're in this space here the world and the scene that we're in has a background and there's a stage. This is our world and this is part of how you need to build and think about what the background looks like in these virtual worlds and the metaverse editor actually provides grid lines around your assets so you can understand the XY access and what position it is located in within the space that you're building and this thing right in the middle here is called the give and you're able to manipulate and use that to move it up down or to the side and position it within the world itself and when you are adding something to your world or your scene it's also called the skybox and as an example here this cube that I built in our engine I added a skybox from Toronto that you can see here and it really does provide an environment around the space that already experienced building. Spatial design also includes textures and this is really important and something that we've never really learned before is that everything that is inside of a 3D space we're using 3D is textures to make it look as real as possible and that's the goal is the realism and what does that look like so that it looks like it is as real as it is in the virtual world as it is in the real one. So the first thing that I wanna take a look at the albedo textures which is the base color and this is where you can replace something and make it green or blue or red but you can also add a texture as an image maybe it's a logo or maybe there's we've just added the feature of adding video so you can actually add a video to a cube or to a sign that's in that 3D space. Textures that are emissive provide shine and light to something so if you think something should be a little bit shiny or have a little bit of light on a certain edge this is where you would adjust your emissive textures. Roughness on something, is something made of sandpaper or is it the sidewalk or maybe smooth and there is no roughness on your 3D object and your assets. So this is where you would adjust that reflection on the occlusion is really important when it comes to lighting and shadows and understanding how things that are within a shadow are not seen or they have a different type of reflection. Understanding where things are placed within a spatial environment and what shadows over something or replaces something is really important to understand that more about the 3D object. The metalness texture is also really important is raspy and dull or does it have a shiny metalness to it and this is where you can adjust those different levels. Normal kind of that last addition onto a 3D object and you would really understand what that looked like until you actually added it and it really just gives it that little bit of depth and dimension and surface texture to an object that makes it look as real as possible. For me when I'm creating now in my engine I really use those normals in that last moment to just give it that touch of realism. Spatial design also includes lighting and it can come from everywhere especially when you're in a 360 degree space. You can actually have lights in front of you, behind you to the back, left, right, up, bottom and you can change the color of lights. So when you're in a 360 degree environment or you have a 3D object and you wish that object had a little bit of red tinge to it and you can change your lighting on the right-hand side to red and have that object reflect the new lighting. Spatial design can also include configurator options and that means choices and perspectives and this is where you can add that difference or perspective to your 3D model to see what does something look like? Do you prefer the gold one or the blue one? You know, and being able to innovate and design and think of different things that could happen to a particular object or an animation if you prefer it to go to the left or the right or does the architecture or the innovation of an engine happen to work this way or that way and this is where configurators really offer that different perspective to make a decision quickly and that is adding a configurator in our space. So going back to our dashboard and having this cube in the middle, once you publish the cube itself it's that you've built, you come to a published page that looks like this and you can actually take this URL in the published space and drop that into a particular experience or show somebody if you want to. You can actually show them experience through the QR code or you can actually enter in the code for Android and pull up the code for Android, iOS or the web and it'll give you the embed code for you to implement that into your site or into an app that you're working with. Really it's being able to publish and see your 3D object as soon as possible and immediately so that you can make a decision whether you like it or not and you can also share these with anybody around the world and they can pull up the same 3D object in their space and in real time and take a look at it. So building 3D for business and education, where to start, what are your ideas to make change? Really adding grid models, a digital hybrid model to current systems is the best way to start to engage in 3D and take those 3D steps. So taking a look at manuals or textbooks and adding 3D onto them, whether it be like a user manual or adding a tiger to a page and having a 3D object of a tiger sitting right beside you in that textbook. This is where our engine makes it possible or 3D makes it possible for that impraction of learning to be more immersive. Placing 3D models into your space to learn about them is one of the best ways of this technology to be able to introduce new ways of education and using different design perspectives with configurators and being able to change out different models is also a great way to engage in 3D and immersive applications into business and education. Visualizations data, for example, bringing in information from IoT sensors or simply just using visualizations from math or sciences is where the engine can provide and 3D can display a more immersive experience. So your takeaway today, what problem in the world could be better understood with 3D? And how does 3D offer solutions for business and education? And this is where the next generation, you could help us come up with some of these solutions using 3D to solve some of the world's biggest problems or maybe it's some of the community's problems or maybe your backyard problem, your school problem. We want to inspire innovation and using 3D to start to use that in immersive experiences for explanations, for lessons, for operations, for procedures. 3D is really that gateway into all of the technologies that are out there to become more immersed and to utilize and have a spatial understanding of how those objects reflect in the space. So will you create? I would love for everybody to take a look at our website and take a look at these different experiences. You can actually go to our showcase page, metaverse.com slash showcase and put that couch in your space and see what it looks like and then think about how 3D objects into your space. What could you do? What problem could you solve? And learning as much as you can right now about how these applications work within the space and the different business models and industries and how they're using it. Here's a list of resources. I've put our podcast right at the top there. The XR for Business podcast by Alan Smithson really provides a foundational understanding of every single industry out there and how you're using it in their space. And the XR for Learning podcast, I'm addressing all the different ways that we're teaching and learning differently and using 3D to immerse those experiences. So a little bit just to close off in collaboration tools that are out there and the reasons why this circle here represents a directory of over 70 different collaboration platforms that are out there that are hosting meetings and classrooms and places of learning, interaction and communication and collaboration engaged today as we are here. They are representing this space of being able to promote a place of collaboration to remotely learn and work and encourage you to take a look in our directory where you can go through the search filters and figure out what kind of assets and configurations do you need in your space to be able to collaboratively work with your team or your class. And the directory provides you with a narrowed down version of some of the companies that are out there. And the reason why I'm showing you this is because there are so many opportunities out there to become involved in the XR space and so many jobs and skill sets that are starting to evolve from designing all of these things. Everything from a 3D modeler to a creative technologist, data, cyber security, there's so many opportunities out there to become involved and to learn and understand all of these roles and how they'll play a role in the future of work for and of stand learning. So, you know, learn as much as you can, but remember that your most powerful skill is the unique ability to be creative and using technology like 3D to engage in any kind of experiences is really where it's at and the key is you. The key is you to create these solutions and to come up with innovative designs. So we look forward to seeing what you create and I thank you so much from the XPRIZE stage here and engage on the creative design process. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And we look forward to seeing how you become involved in this 3D immersive world of ours. Thank you very much.