Undergraduate Research Accomplishments Accomplishments: Contributions of Animation & Game Arts Major to a NEH-Funded Research

James Ristaino is a student majoring in Animation & Game Arts at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMassD. In the past couple of years he has been a member of an interdisciplinary research team of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students on a virtual reality (VR) educational game, which the team likes to call VR “serious game.” This team, which is consisted of a variety of experts from science, arts, humanities, and computer science, focuses on creating an immersive VR environment for Hoover Dam (https://vrhooverdam.com). The immersive environment tells the story of the dam’s construction from the viewpoint of photographer Winthrop A. Davis, who moved to Las Vegas in the early 1930s to capture the dam’s construction process. A “serious” educational game, the project is focused on the history of the construction of what my group believes to be “one of the most iconic structures in the world.” The team combined cutting edge-technologies with scholarship in the field of history to create what my group describes as “an interactive, 4-dimensional game that takes place within the landscape of the 1930s Black Canyon site where Hoover Dam was built.” The project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and was headed by lead researcher and UMassd Professor of English & Communication, Dr. Anthony Arrigo, as well as Professor Scott Ahrens from UMassD’s Art & Design, Dr. Shakhnoza Kayumova from UMassD’s STEM Education, and Dr. Michelle Turk from the Department of History at UNLV. There were also students in the team, including Matthew Cormier, a Ph.D. Candidate in Mathematics, Mya Ramirez, an Undergraduate Student in Animation & Game Arts, and James Ristaino. Ristaino was given historic images as reference and was asked to replicate them in 3D. This process consisted of importing references into the workspace, selecting a basic shape to begin with(like a cube, cylinder, or sphere), and working simply for as long as possible. Once the model was complete, then it needed to be UV mapped, which means creating a surface mesh for the textures to be placed. The models were then brought into programs like Substance painter and materials were assigned to those UV maps to achieve the desired texture. An example of Ristaino's work is the 1930’s Sixty Dozer, with 3 different texture options so that they don’t all look the same throughout the Canyon. He also worked on the Rope and Chair Hoisting system that the High-Scalers used during construction of the dam, the Wrench that the workers used, and also the employment badge. He used a combination of materials on these models, like rust or metal, and photos to make the items look realistic, like the employment badge. For this project, Ristaino delved into the history of the construction industries in early 20th-century America. It's the research aspect of this project that Ristaino takes the most pride in.