Younique: XR for Immersive Cultural Art Exploration

#Virtual Reality #Gaussian Splat #Experience Design

Project Overview

Cultural art practices often face barriers to engagement due to geographical, financial, and educational constraints. Younique, an Extended Reality (XR) system designed to offer an immersive experience for exploring Ikebana, the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement. The system prioritizes user experience by offering an intuitive, self-guided, and seamlesscultural exploration journey.

The project has since been open-sourced to encourage ongoing collaboration and development, further expanding its reach and potential.

Contributions

By integrating 3D Gaussian Splatting (GS) for hyper-realistic virtual environments, OpenXR-poweredhand-tracking for natural interactions, and Augmented Reality (AR) Quick View for revisiting and sharing creations, Younique bridges the gap between virtual and real-world cultural engagement, highlighting its potential to enhance cultural art practices and expand XR applications.

Contributors

Mackenzie Li, Grace Mai, Vera Wu

Our GitHub Page

360° video captured directly from the headset – Scroll to explore

Backgound

Cultural art practices offer opportunities for enrichment, creativity, and preservation but often face accessibility barriersdue to geography, cost, and resources. Traditional learning media, such as books and videos, struggle to conveythe nuances of hand-on practices, leading to limited engagement. Innovative approaches are needed to democratizeaccess while preserving authenticity and depth. XR offers a promising avenue for enhancing cultural learning through hands-on, immersive experiences.

However, XR systems face several challenges. Users often find virtual environments disconnected from their everyday lives, hindering initial engagement. Additionally, digital UI elements or controller-based interactions can disrupt immersion, while the absence of mechanisms for revisiting the experience reduces its long-term impact and cultural reach.

Our Solution

‍Younique is a hyper-realistic XR system designed to deliver an immersive Ikebana creation experience, contributing to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and cultural engagement in the following ways:
Streamlined Environment Reconstruction Workflow: We present a hybrid GS-to-VR pipeline that creates ultra-detailed, interactive home workshop settings, grounding virtual experiences in reality to make cultural art practices more relatable and immersive.
‍Guided Flow Through Intuitive Interactions: We developed intuitive, controller-free interactions that closely mimic real-world Ikebana actions. These interactions are complemented by environment-integrated interfaces designed to minimize distractions while providing sufficient guidance for users to confidently engage in the creative process.
‍AR Integration for Revisiting: We introduce an innovative use of AR quick view to save and revisit digital creations, bridging XR experiences with everyday devices and enabling users to share and revisit their work easily.

Recreating the Ikebana Experience in the Virtual World

Static 3D GS Environment
3D GS (Gaussian Splatting) is a radiance field rendering technique that utilizes dense collections of overlapping 3D Gaussians to generate continuous, realistic visuals with optimized performance. By rendering non-interactive elements, such as furniture and decor, with 3D GS, the system achieves photorealistic visuals while reducing computational costs, ensuring both high performance and visual fidelity.
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Interactive Objects
To enable interaction, select objects such as flowers, vases, and tools were manually extracted from the scene and optimized. High-resolution scans were processed using texture baking and quadric edge collapse algorithms to reduce computational demands while preserving visual detail. This optimization supports precise and responsive virtual physics simulations, allowing for realistic interactions within the immersive environment.

Guided Flow Through Intuitive Interactions

Hand-Tracking and Intuitive Interaction
The system relies entirely on hand-tracking. By prioritizing controller-free gestures, it reduces cognitive barriers, allowing users to focus entirely on the creative process of Ikebana without the distraction of complex controls.

‍Minimalist User Interface Design
To preserve immersion, the user interface is intentionally minimal, avoiding cluttered visuals or excessive technological elements. This streamlined design keeps users focused on their Ikebana creations rather than on navigating complex menus. By emphasizing simplicity, the system lowers cognitive barriers often associated with VR, allowing for a more intuitive and artistic engagement with flower arrangement.

Streamlined Guidance
An interactive instruction book serves as the primary guide, offering step-by-step Ikebana instructions through clear diagrams. Users can flip through pages using natural hand gestures, minimizing the learning curve and allowing them to follow the process at their own pace.
To further support learning, contextual tooltips provide brief, unobtrusive guidance when interacting with objects for the first time. These tooltips fade away shortly after appearing to prevent visual clutter. Additionally, a holographic 3D menu, seamlessly integrated into the workspace, enables users to adjust settings, save progress, and perform system-level actions without breaking immersion.
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AR Integration for Revisiting

The AR Quick View Integration extends the system’s impact by allowing users to save, revisit, and share their Ikebana creations beyond the virtual environment. This feature bridges the XR experience with the real world, enabling users to view their work in augmented reality on mobile devices.
After completing an arrangement in the XR environment, users can save their creation using the "Save to AR" option. This generates a USDZ file, compatible with Apple’s AR Quick Look, which is then sent via email or text for easy access. With this functionality, users can place their virtual arrangements in real-world settings, such as a table at home or a gallery space, offering a new perspective and deeper engagement with their work. Additionally, the ability to share USDZ files fosters collaboration and cultural dissemination, encouraging users to share their creations with others and connect with a broader community of Ikebana enthusiasts.

Below, on the right, is the Ikebana arrangement created within the virtual space. On the left, the same arrangement has been saved as a USDZ file and viewed in AR, seamlessly placed in the real world using an iPhone—without the need for any additional apps.