MST3K: A VR Project

A currently ongoing project I’m working on that recreates the set of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plan is to create the two puppets Tom Servo and Crow T Robot that can be puppeteer-ed by the player(s). For now, the plan is to create this experience on the Steam VR platform so that anyone can freely experience the environment and puppets. Implementation here has been done in Source 2 Engine.

Later on, I would like to expand on this experience that allows players to access the theatre that will play out one license free movie to re-enact the experience of riffing to B-movies.

This is still being worked on

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Puppets

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Creating VR puppets in Source 2 is not a straight forward experience. Especially for an artist. To create the puppet, I had to create a Lua file and rig the model to allow the operation of the mouth. I have some understanding of what programming is and thankfully that helped me learned the scripting. Which thankfully is easy too. Just took some time to figure out how to translate and trigger rotation to the head and mouth.

Also took me some time to figure out the VR api that Valve created and some help from the Steam Community in order to figure out a solution for the wiggling arms. That took me all sorts of places to figure that one out. I’m really surprised I was able to get what I wanted. Basically it combine a simple matrix animation set and boob physics from a Unity tutorial. Odd yes, but it worked!

Did a test on the materials and the lighting. Still figuring out which generation of MST3K to replicate. But first, I decided to replicate the Joel Hodgeson era of the set lighting.

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Created a simple cutout of Mike T Nelson. Shadow casting of the light is pretty clear!