Creating an Easy VR Story

A story. And you: right in the middle. That’s the promise of virtual reality. This new technology is going to provide us with epic tales. Maybe one of them is going to be made by you.

Okay: Being an ordinary person with ordinary gadgets, you won’t create an action-packed VR motion picture. However, with the method we present here you’ll be able to create a kind of three-dimensional picture book that you can walk through while it is telling you a story. And it’s so easy that even your kids can do it.

What you will need:

• a laptop or computer
• a smartphone with the free CoSpaces app (Android or iOS)
• and a voice recording app
• a cardboard headset with a magnet switch

First you need a story. You can write it yourself. But, of course, you can use a story that someone else created. Short fairy tales, for example, are great material.
Do yourself a favor and start off with a simple, short story. It should:

• not be longer than 1–2 pages
• have only up to five different scenes/settings
• and not too many plot twists

Once you have it, chunk your story into scenes: A new scene starts when there is an important change regarding the setting or the characters.

Go to the free CoSpaces browser app on your laptop or computer. If you don’t have an account, you’ll have to sign up before you can create a new space for your story.

Now it’s time to build your first scene. Imagine how the setting might look like and how to position the characters. To bring your imagination to life, you have various possibilities in CoSpaces:
Change the background and lighting conditions of the scene. Drag and drop objects to the stage and adapt their properties to create the setting. Add the characters of your story. You can also make your own objects out of geometrical building blocks.

Probably there will be reoccurring elements in your story: different scenes might have the same setting or characters. Therefore it makes sense not to start from scratch for each scene.
Instead, you can duplicate and modify scenes you already built. For example, if the heroes of your story come back to a place they have been before, you can duplicate the scene you built and just change a few things. Continue duplicating, modifying and creating new scenes until you have created one for each scene of your story.

To get a narrator, you have to record yourself reading the story. For this, the sound recorder on your phone will do just fine. Just make sure, you create a single MP3 sound file for each of the scenes.

By the way: If there are several characters talking in your story, it’s a lot of fun to read it with assigned parts.

We’re nearly finished. Just go back to the CoSpaces space on your computer and add each sound file to the space it belongs to.

The deed is done! Now you can enjoy your very own VR story.

• Watch it in VR yourself: Open the CoSpaces app on your smartphone, log in and open your space in the app. You can now go to the VR mode by tapping the little headset symbol and putting the smartphone into your headset. To walk around in the scenes of your story, press the magnet switch of your cardboard headset and look in the direction you want to go. To switch from one scene to the other in VR, look at your feet and use the arrows on the ground menu.
• Share it: You can also share your story with your friends and the world through a sharing link.