Forager
A VR film following the lifecycle of a mushroom, from spore to decay. Official website can be found here.
The soil of old growth forests holds the key to human survival. Its fungi help us breathe, keep us fed, let us heal, and keep critical carbon in the ground. But these forests are disappearing - putting at risk mycelial life and human life. Forager is a VR experience that invites you to lie down and watch the lifecycle of a mushroom, from spore to decay. It is a meditation on the interconnectedness of all life and the importance of preserving our forests.
Forager is an immersive VR experience from New Reality company where participants go through the lifecycle of a mushroom, from spore to decay. I served as the primary in-person engineer for much of the project's development. The film premiered at Sundance 2023 and has also been featured at Tribeca and other new media festivals!
The project was built in Unreal Engine for use with Meta's Quest 2 headset. The project also utilized a completely unique device to record mushrooms as they are growing and subsequently render them as a point cloud in Unreal Engine.
After recording the growth and decay cycle of a number of different species of mushrooms, we were able to import the data into Unreal and set up a custom workflow within the sequencer to animate them growing and dispersing as part of the film.
Including the mushroom point clouds, the film cycles through four phases of mushroom development: spore, mycelium, fruiting body, and decay. The film is entirely visual, with no narration. Participants lie on their backs on the floor and watch the film on a VR headset, surrounded by a wall made of myco-bricks, which are bricks made from mycelium.