3D artist Graham Rust has a Valve Index VR headset and some skills with modelling, so decided for fun that he’d take Half-Life: Alyx and bring some of its action inside his own house.
Rust has recreated his living room perfectly within the game, which as we saw last week can be appealing enough, but this recreation isn’t just for looking, it’s for blasting as well, as the room is actually here for a shootout with the forces of the Combine.
Here’s the video, showing just how well he was able to replicate the space, down to the racing setup and curtains:
If you’re wondering how he was able to put this together, Rust says that measuring the space out was easy, since scale represents 1:1 in a VR space, and that when it came to his furniture they were crafted in Maya and Photoshop while skimming some stuff like textures from online images (his Ikea chair, for example):
I take a tape measure/ruler/caliper and measure the object, then use that to create a 3D model in Autodesk Maya and textures in Adobe Substance/Photoshop. I also create a simplified version of the model to use for physics. Finally I import those into the Half Life: Alyx mod editor and use their visual programming system to interact with the world.
As for how long it took, it’s been a slow, gradual process. Rust first modelled his work desk all the way back in 2015, but when he decided to begin this project he started building roughly one model a day, an output which doubled as his way of learning how to use Maya.
With his living room done, Rust is now looking towards the future. He’s installed an “elevator” in the virtual version of his room, which he’s going to use to create, like a kind of arcade, “multiple floors that look completely different but are still walkable within my living room”.