Professor Jeremy Bailenson is a leader in virtual reality (VR) research and the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. His Virtual People course, taught for over 20 years, examines the impact of immersive technologies on human interaction.
"I have been teaching about VR for over 20 years. While many students in my courses are experts at programming, very few know are skilled 3D modelers. Meshy was transformational in my class, allowing everyone to quickly build complex, low-polygon models to populate their VR worlds in minutes."
Jeremy Bailenson
Professor, Stanford University
By introducing Meshy to the class, he enhanced students' creative capabilities, allowing 190 participants to create 3D models directly from their laptops or tablets. Here in this interview, Professor Jeremy Bailenson and Portial Wang share their experience and insights on using Meshy in the Virtual People class.
What motivated you to use Meshy in the Virtual People class, especially for this large-scale project?
We were excited about using Meshy for its text-to-3D tool to help students create virtual replicas of physical spaces in VR.
Having enterprise accounts allowed us to facilitate an in-class activity with 190 students, where they were able to work collaboratively in groups at the same time.
We were also excited about the tool’s ability to control for polygon count, as rendering large complex models in social VR is costly and deteriorates the students’ immersive experiences.
How did the students respond to using Meshy for generating 3D models?
Students were incredibly engaged during our generative AI workshop lecture.
Working based on 360-photo references, in groups of around 10 students, students decided on what objects they would want to use in VR, and prompted the tool and iterated on the meshes and textures.
We were very impressed by the texturing on objects such as plushie toys and rugs as well as how well the tool was able to handle non-convex objects such as flower vases and cornhole boards.
One interesting approach some students took was to take screenshots of objects in the 360 photo, feed them into ChatGPT to describe the objects, and use the responses to help guide their Meshy prompts.
You mentioned being impressed with the quality of the models. Can you elaborate on what stood out about this?
We were excited to see students create complex models such as tennis rackets and tents that closely resembled the physical objects in terms of their textures and shapes.
The models also were created at a low enough polycount such that the process of importing and rendering the models into VR was smooth for students in networked social VR.
How do you see tools like Meshy influencing future VR education and research projects?
Tools like Meshy lower the barrier for individuals without formal 3D modeling training to generate objects that can be directly used in virtual environments.
In our class, this allowed students to collaboratively build out virtual replicas of physical spaces and relive shared face-to-face experiences in VR. With these detailed environments, our research team has been able to study the students’ VR experiences, particularly how the immersive experiences influenced students’ perception of others, social dynamics, and memory recall.
In the education space, we see the ability to create highly customizable 3D objects and personalizable virtual worlds empowering students and teachers in immersive classrooms. Similarly, in research, tools like Meshy allow for more extensive studies on topics such as creativity, memory recall, and social interaction, enabling researchers to explore the impact of VR on these topics in richer and more nuanced ways.
What advice would you give to other educators looking to integrate AI into their curriculum but might not know where to start?
Identify early on the components of the curriculum and teaching agenda that can benefit the most from AI integration. Design and iterate on the AI-related components, and coordinate with the support staff for troubleshooting if possible. Finally, as educators, embrace unexpected moments and adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges.
