Using Tinkercad to create Matariki AR/VR Design

 

In New Zealand we have the Matariki Celebration coming up next month.   At our school we have a number of projects that we want to create for this celebration.   When considering this event we also need to take into account location variations such as ourselves in Taranaki celebration a variation of this with Puanga.

We used Tinkercad to create a students versions of the stars.   We wanted the students to create their own version of this group of stars and then project them into different locations and also look at the different grouping of the stars, the relative size of the stars and the different locations so that the group could be recognised.

This work plane from Tinkercad is a students representation of the group of stars.   This was the students first attempt to create this and is going to undergo some revision and reworking.   This version of the cluster also used a basic star shape before the students had the ability to modify and adapt the design.   A number of the students in the classroom had completed different versions of this group of stars.   One had introduced labelling into the design and had the names of each of the stars in Maori written underneath the picture.

Again the sharing of this project with the students had helped them create the ideas and think about different ways that they could use Tinkercad to show this design and how it then might be created.

Once the design was created the next step was to look at locations where the students could use the Tinkercad App to AR/VR the design onto a blank background.   Once this had been completed the students then took the image that was projected and applied a pic collage filter.

This is the design from one of the students (it is shown above) then projected onto the floor of the classroom.   The shapes that are created by the AR/VR image maker are the carpet from the floor and also the walls and the furniture into the classroom.

The students then attempted to look at a number of locations and different filters which they could apply and attempt to find that best that represents the constellation.

Some filters tend to make the design less dramatic and not stand out - and there are some experimenting to go and we are also looking at different filters, exposures and editing of the photograph to improve the presentation.   There will be a number of additional images for this activity uploaded on the Facebook page, you can locate that by clicking on this link here.