Rice Music and Performing Arts Center

About the Project

RUMPAC will house a three-tiered, 600-seat, European-style opera theatre with an orchestra pit for 70 musicians. "The opera house is a visual overture to prepare the audience to enter into the magical world conjured by the music, the story and the theatrical setting of the opera," said architect Allan Greenberg. "It facilitates a journey into the mind of the composer, in which the human voice gives breath to a living fantasy." Agile Lens has utilized virtual reality on this project from the earliest concept studies all the way through its now completed design (the project is currently under construction). This constantly updated VR model allowed the unique opportunity to evaluate the design at different stages, all while bearing in mind the human-scale experience of it. In concept design, the team utilized VR sketches and diagrammatic spatial models to determine the strongest overall direction in which to proceed. As the design developed, further options were built into the custom VR experience to determine ideal locations for aisles, seats, railings, catwalks, and lights. As the project neared completion, Agile Lens moved the project from the Unity3D visualization engine to Unreal Engine in order to better serve the photorealistic needs of the lighting and materials. In 2018 their work was a featured case study on Unreal Engine's website.