This week, I was introduced to Unity, Polycam and C++, all of which I had never encountered before. Although I had heard a lot about C++, I was excited to finally start learning how to write in it.

We started by making a cube in Unity and writing a C++ script to move it around using WASD keys, which I found surprisingly easy to do. As Unity is a game engine, and I play a lot of games, it was interesting to see what the ‘backend’ can look like. However, opening Unity was quite intimidating, as it has quite a full and busy user interface. Hopefully, I’ll get used to this as I use it more. After that I started the VR project by following Unity Learn’s Create with VR tutorial. Again, it was quite intimidating, but I had fun building and furnishing my own virtual room.

Polycam’s app was impressively simple to use and it shocked me at how much detail it could record, without much effort. We were challenged to scan the most interesting item and I went into a play park to scan some of the equipment. In one of my scans of a spring whale, I unexpectedly captured some water droplets that were on the seat in good detail, an unintentional but pleasing result.

It was inspiring to see how easy to use and accurate Polycam’s software is. Although I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do with these scans or any future scans, they have made me curious about how 3D scanning could fit into my work at university or in my career in the future.