Ciara Tamay Del Grosso Bates

Ciara Tamay Del Grosso Bates

XR Designer and Developer

I'm a UX designer and developer with love for all things VR, AR and immersive.

More about me

The projects shown here are primarily hobby / personal projects.

Carlow Arts Festival Altspace worldRead more

Designed and built the virtual campus for the Carlow Arts Festival in Altspace. Featuring short films, spatial audio installations, images and 360 video content and the venue for 10 days of virtual talks and meet ups.

Pictured: spatial audio installation in front of carlow college. Pictured, hover/tap: Users trying on custom made wings at the launch party

launch party

Dollface posterRead more

Dollface is a virtual reality dollhouse experience / sandbox game world based around exploration, toy experiences, and solid, physical interaction.

I built it solo using Unity and C#, and made most of the 3D models using Blender. This project involved designing many of my own interactions from the ground up as well as adapting the SteamVR SDK. I created systems for customisation of the environment including painting, breaking objects, redecorating, cooking, burning and creating new objects, recording original music, photography and more...

Dollface room with keyboardRead more

Dollface - I modelled the keyboard in Blender after a Casio keyboard I had as a child, which allowed you to play with 100 different instruments, from the classic piano to a ringing phone.

I built on the features of the original, responding to user feedback to allow recording compositions to create in-game physical casettes to play back or layer to create multi-track recordings, and also allowing the user to swap in different clips which are then pitch-shifted to be played on the different keys.
Players can also record their own voice clips as samples to play pitch-shifted across the keyboard

Building prototype image of houseRead more

Modular Home design software – prototype. I was commissioned to create a prototype for a client selling custom modular homes, which would allow their customers to easily design homes using real-world parts, receive an estimate of the cost, decorate and change the configuration, and share and export their buildings for use in other software as well as allowing them to order the house they had built.

Augmented reality business card with singing fishRead more

Billy the Big Mouth Business Card, a simple AR demo made using Unity and Vuforia. I made the fish and animated it in Blender.

Dollface - kitchen in dollhouseRead more

The kitchen is my favourite room in the dollhouse.
It was a sandbox where I explored and experimented with SteamVR, with interaction styles and physics, learning the quirks of VR through bugs like "asparagus stuck to hands" and "mushrooms fall through pan when pan is grabbed." It was a great testing area for tweaks to physics which might not be as noticable somewhere else.

There were so many physics based objects in the room by design - before I had a plan for the dollhouse, my main idea was that it should be rich and full of so much stuff to do and interact with that the player felt free to explore or ignore what they liked and have different experiences to each other.

Augmented reality business card showing animation with swimming pool on business card. Read more

AR business cards – something I played with as a way to learn to use Vuforia and AR. I was interested in making my AR projects more believable looking by adding light estimation to the virtual objects, which would copy the real world lighting and make the objects blend in more.

Below: trailer for my VR experience, Dollface.

Go to VR page to read more about Dollface
Jurassic House screenshot of dinosaur in garden.Read more

Jurassic House is a prototype for an AR game / pet simulator made in Unity with ARCore to experiment with the SDK. The user can name their dinosaur, place it in their home, and then place plants and balloons for the dinosaur to eat and play with to increase its happiness. You can also shout at the dinosaur to make it unhappy, if you're made of stone.

Building prototype screenshot of a building.Read more

Modular Home design software – prototype. This project was for an architectural / modular home client.

I was commissioned to create a prototype for a piece of software that would allow their customers to easily design homes using real-world parts, receive an estimate of the cost, decorate and change the configuration, and share and export their buildings for use in other software as well as allowing them to order the house they had built directly.

I created this software using Unity, with the HDRP and targeting desktop Pcs.

screenshot from mobile game Hyperboy, underwater level.Read more

Hyperboy is a mobile game based on classic Mario gameplay, which I co-created and released to Google Play store.

Laptop in dollhouseRead more

Dollface VR – the laptop was one of the many things I made for this project at a time when the landscape of VR equipment was changing – at the time, everyone was using a fairly clunky controller that didn't allow individual finger movement, so I had not seen a real pc or in-game buttons of this kind anywhere.

I used Steam VR and set the user's index fingers pointed when approaching the laptop or keyboard, allowing them to use their index fingers to type on the real QWERTY keyboard. This worked well although it's dated now with hand tracking and more precise controllers.

Dollface screenshots showing lots of objects and toys. Read more

Dollface is a love letter to feature creep.
To manage everything, I made modular components so that I could quickly add new items or tweak settings and apply them to all items with the same components. I tracked the player's activities to reward them with trophies, money, and unlocking rewards.

gif of battling system in Animballs go AR game.Read more

Animballs GO – an AR game that scanned logos of real-world items which could initiate random encounters with an associated creature. I built some modular components to allow adding new creatures quickly, so players can scan common (in Ireland!) household products which can be battled against one another using a basic rpg battle system.

Above: A user testing the hoover in Dollface.

Dollface: Click to read more
Gif of user building a house using my software.Read more

Modular Home design software – prototype. This project was for an architectural / modular home client.

I was commissioned to create a prototype for a piece of software that would allow their customers to easily design homes using real-world parts, receive an estimate of the cost, decorate and change the configuration, and share and export their buildings for use in other software as well as allowing them to order the house they had built directly.

I created this software using Unity, with the HDRP and targeting desktop Pcs.

Screenshot from 2d game animballs.Read more

Animballs is a (vertical slice of a) browser-based 2D rpg in the style of rpgs like Pokemon, but with a tongue in cheek approach to the idea of capturing animals to make them fight each other.

Screenshot from alien orchestra VR game.Read more

Alien Orchestra was a game made and submitted for a game jam in 2020. I worked with a sound engineer to create a VR game based on the idea of repairing alien instruments to restore their sound.

screenshot from Hyperboy mobile game, Miami level.Read more

Hyperboy is a mobile game I co-created in GameSalad, a simple game engine. Released it to the Google Play store.

Keyboard being played in VR with hand trackingRead more

Built for PCVR originally, with controllers, adapted for Oculus Quest hand tracking. Allows users to record their creations to WAV files.

Above: Photography in Dollface.

Photography in Dollface: Click to read more