We are pleased to welcome Francisco Macía Varela (Fran) to the UPF node of EMIL. Well, he actually started back in July, but we had so much other news that we never got a chance to introduce him here!
At the Full-Body Interaction Lab, Fran joined us as a Unity Engineer and Technical Artist. He is working on the gameplay, character, and level design for the experiences we are building to run on the AR Magic Lantern. He is also working on the SDK that will allow other Unity developers to build their own games for the system.
With a background in Serious Games and Virtual Reality, as well as neuropsychology, Fran is exploring and refining new modalities of gameplay and interaction that take advantage of the World-as-Support AR paradigm developed by our lab. In the short time he has been with us, he has already modelled and animated the landscape of Barcelona as it would have appeared in ancient Roman times, a scene which will be used in our collaboration with the Museum of History of Barcelona.
Fran is also a musician and has explored innovative ways to use audio in XR, so of course sound design and music are important elements of the projects he works on. With the AR Magic Lantern, he will help develop and study the use of spatial audio to guide users within a mixed reality environment. In addition, he will be working on a dialog system that will allow users to converse with digital characters using their voice.
We’re very excited to have Fran on board and look forward to seeing his creations take shape!
