New Shops for Diagon Alley

06 March 2020

Games Academy students using virtual reality kit
GA_DiagonAlley
Type: Text
Category: Student stories

First year Game Art students have been using the Games Academy Virtual Reality Lab to produce a virtual set of shops and create their own version of 'Diagon Alley', a fictional cobbled street in the Harry Potter series.

Students have been using industry-standard virtual reality software and equipment to create their buildings and the street. They used the latest in 3D animation tools and real-time 3D creation platforms to generate an immersive virtual world. State-of-the-art virtual reality kits then allowed the students to virtually explore the 'Diagon Alley' they created.

As well as building their technical capabilities, using a popular subject like Harry Potter helps to inspire students' creativity while providing the parameters of something they are familiar with, rather than starting completely from scratch. The project also supports working from a brief and with others, developing their collaboration skills.

Students were able to design, create, code and visualise their shops, and ultimately virtually walk down their street, visiting each other's shops. This 12 week project demonstrates students' abilities to produce Game Engine-ready content and video, of the game assets they generated, using games industry software and hardware. The aim is for their version of 'Diagon Ally' to be exhibited at a Games Expo later in the year.

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