Psyop launched its first wholly-owned VR experience today, “Kismet.”
Powered by a deck of 22 hand-painted Tarot cards and an accurate real-time map of the solar system, Kismet is meant to be experienced daily, with unique outcomes every calendar day that are directly tied to not only the cards that you choose, but your individual birth date and the actual alignment of celestial bodies at the time of your reading.
Kismet is a collection of three activities, including a past-present-future Tarot Card reading (“The Cards”), daily Astrology and Horoscope session (“The Stars”), and ancient board game Ur (“A Game of Wit”).
Going all in with real-time VR
Targeted at higher end VR systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, “Kismet” is a real-time VR experience that leverages Psyop’s long-standing reputation for building beautiful worlds and engaging characters while showing off its newer chops in interactive development.
Building the scene in Unreal
To create Kismet, the team utilized tools including Autodesk’s Maya, Pixologic’s Zbrush, and Unreal Engine 4. Additional effects were created in SideFX’s Houdini.
Animating in Maya
Sculpting in ZBrush
The “Kismet” State Machine
“I’ve been obsessed with mechanical fortune telling machines ever since I was a child,” says David Chontos, Writer and Director.
“Virtual reality has given me a platform to not only create one of those machines entirely from my own imagination, but to step inside of it, and to invite the rest of the world inside with me.”
How to get “Kismet”
Kismet is now available for $6.99 on SteamVR for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It will be on sale for $4.99 on SteamVR for the first week. Coming Soon to the Oculus Home.
Screen captures
