Overview

Virtual reality (VR) is one of the hottest emerging technologies in the entertainment industry today. Millions of VR devices have been sold in the US alone, but most software developers have no formal training on the technology. This Professional Certificate program will teach you what VR devices exist, how VR technology works, and how to write software, often called VR experiences, for it.

You will learn effective 3D interaction techniques to use VR applications, how to write VR applications in WebVR and Unity 3D, and what features make a VR application successful. You will also learn the required mathematics for successful VR applications and how computer graphics are rendered onto a screen.

The final course in this program will allow you to apply the material learned in the previous courses to create your own VR app.

This program will provide you with a strong foundation to develop VR apps in all areas VR is used, including entertainment and gaming. This VR program also provides a solid foundation for people who want to develop augmented reality (AR) applications.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Computer Graphics

Learn to create images of 3D scenes in both real-time and with realistic ray tracing in this introductory computer graphics course.

Course 2: How Virtual Reality Works
Learn how virtual reality technology works by writing simple VR programs with WebVR.

Course 3: Creating Virtual Reality (VR) Apps
Learn the tools and techniques to develop your own professional VR app in Unity 3D.

Courses

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6 weeks, 5-7 hours a week, 5-7 hours a week
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Virtual reality is changing the way we interact with the world. But how does it work, what hardware is involved, and how is software written for it?

In this course, part of the Virtual Reality Professional Certificate program, we will explore the foundations of user-friendly virtual reality app development for consumers, as well as enterprise solutions. Both hardware and software aspects will be discussed. You will learn to evaluate devices necessary for virtual reality applications, what their differences are, how you write interactive applications for virtual reality, and we will discuss the most frequent problems you are going to need to solve to write virtual reality software.

In this course, you will explore the basics of virtual reality software through copying and modifying JavaScript to explore tradeoffs in VR application design. Extensive programming experience is not required.

By the end of this course, you will understand what is important for successful virtual reality software and learn how to write simple virtual reality programs themselves with WebVR.

This course is taught by an instructor with almost two decades of experience in virtual reality who leads the Immersive Visualization Laboratory at UC San Diego.
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6 weeks, 5-7 hours a week, 5-7 hours a week
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Build professional VR apps using Unity 3D, a powerful cross-platform 3D engine that provides a user-friendly development environment. In this course, part of the Virtual Reality Professional Certificate program, you will learn how to build a VR engine from the ground up, so you fully understand the entire rendering pipeline from 3D model to pixels in the VR display. We will also cover motion prediction, 3D stereo, lens distortion, time warp and other optimizations for a fluid, realistic VR experience.

You will also learn how to implement the most important VR interaction concepts such as selection, manipulation, travel, wayfinding, menus, and text input in Unity.

Unity is a GUI based programming environment, in which much of the programming can be done through dialog windows. It also supports scripts written in C#, which as we will show will allow for more complex VR functionality.

What you learn about VR programming in this course will help you write VR games, architectural walkthroughs, engineering simulations, 3D data viewers, medical training applications, and many more.