My Bonsai

Need a break, calm down, or find your zen? My Bonsai is a creative and meditative escape. A beautiful hand-tracked experience where you can shape, and grow your own bonsai trees. One you won't forget!

Comment

Inspiration

Story below written by Michał Wróblewski who came up with the idea and had an awesome and dedicated team of friends to bring it to life.

I can't wait for you to read the story below and play My Bonsai. It's more of a personal story, that's mixed with what you learn as a professional. Recently I got more curious to learn how to properly take care of plants, I've killed so many. My wife always overwaters and I burn them on direct sun. I started watching some bonsai videos because I also need to learn how to prune my plants. People are so scared about it. Funny thing about it is right after watching a video I revisited my favourite experiments made by Daniel Beauchamp (AKA @pushmatrix). He's a legend and my experimental hero. hand-tracked scissors

So it just strucked me, the hand tracking is so perfect to some chill gardening where you make something beautiful, not worrying about killing a plant you took care of for 4 years. So XRCC was a perfect opportunity to explore hand tracked interaction, procedural generation, and designing a chill experience I needed so much.

About a bonsai tree itself, it's a design challenge. For so long there's nothing but a few sticks. It doesn't have to be complex, simplicity is also beautiful.

"To make a beautiful one, just cut all the parts that don't look like bonsai"

Our team believes strongly that less is more. It was a perfect opportunity for that. bonsai tree

What it does

Prune, Shape, Grow, Repeat

My Bonsai invites you to a Japanese room to enjoy the process of growing a bonsai tree. The app was designed with hand-tracking only in mind. Early design choice was to avoid frequent maintenance and focus on making a tree whatever you like.

The kind of a tree that's included as a first one is an alien one with smooth surface, no leaves and beautiful flowers.

3 core interactions make the app:

  • Shape: grab the beautiful flowers - they let you bend the branches whatever you like so your tree can grow.
  • Prune: there are scissors that feel so good in your hands. Be precise not to cut the parts that you want.
  • Fast-forward time: There's a magical hourglass spray, so you don't need to wait 2 months for the next shaping and pruning session.

Make sure to take a screenshot after you're done and post it on social media.

concept of an hourglass spray

How we built it

Our team consists of experienced Unity professionals, the engine was a no-brainer. We also published titles on Meta platform, so we know what to focus on designing the experiences and making hard choices that always appear at a hackathon. We listed our priorities, and core parts of the experience - the foundations.

Challenges we ran into

Of course the list was much longer. For example one of the interactions I was hoping for was stiffening the branches with wrapping it around with a wire. On the technical side I missed to find a way to set limits and constraints on nodes of a branch. The other we barely missed was growing new branches when you prune - it was so close. The biggest challenge was working out the IK system with Unity's Animation Rigging package. It slowed me down on the crucial parts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. The first one was validating the idea while networking. I love this part of the event. Thanks everyone I had the opportunity to talk XR. Also thanks to everyone who stopped by to check how is it going.
  2. I was the proudest with Pawel when we finished doing scissors on Saturday evening. We did so many iterations testing, adjusting, stabilising hand-tracked scissors snapped to your fingers. It felt soooooooo good.
  3. The creative moment finally happened with 3 branches connected to a tree. That was the critical milestone of our project on the hackathon.
  4. Finishing with a compelling and complete experience. Smaller in scale than we thought, but the reactions of may participants around showed us WE DID WELL!
  5. We had so much fun meeting new people.

What we learned

  1. For me and Paweł XRCC was the first hackathon we did as a participant, making a project from start to finish.
  2. I also learned different approaches from other teams I had time to speak to. More focused on better understanding users.
  3. Sleep is important, not something new, but it's hard to take care of it.
  4. There will be failures, don't worry about them.
  5. Offer help and advice, ask for the same.
  6. Mentors will bring fresh perspective and unusual advice based on your time left.

What's next for My Bonsai

We'll strive for improving in two directions:

  1. Polished core interactions. There's still room for improvement on core interactions. I'm very inspired by how well hand-tracking feels as a user.
  2. Making a MR experience that you can open and run in a few second. So fast it's a no brainer to launch it. Directly from MR into MR, using your own mapped table. Resuming where you left off.

After we finished the last version it was easy to notice what the app needs to be a complete experience. Our notes will help us prioritise.

It's a zen app while you're designing, but when you're proud of something you did with lots of effort - it's time to show off. So being able to invite someone to your gallery, pat your favourite bonsais and have a special pot for the favourite one.

We see the app on the store, showcasing great MR with high-quality polished interactions that are natural as breathing.

Built With

  • c#
  • handtracking
  • ik
  • meta
  • presenceplatform
  • procgen
  • quest
  • unity
  • vr
  • xr
Share this project:

Updates