Attribute Spaces: Supporting Design Space Exploration in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Exploring the design space of configurations for objects in virtual scenes is a challenge within virtual reality authoring tools due to the lack of visualization capabilities, non-destructive operations, suggestions, and flexibility. This work introduces Attribute Spaces, tools for visualizing and manipulating object attributes in virtual reality during 3D content generation. Attribute Spaces enable designers to systematically explore design spaces by supporting rapid comparisons between design alternatives and offering design suggestions. Custom combinations of attributes can be grouped and manipulated simultaneously for several objects. The grouping supports the creation of custom operation combinations that can be used as tools to edit multiple attribute, as well as snapshots of promising design decisions for later review. In an evaluation of Attribute Spaces by 3D design experts, our approach was found to enhance users' understanding of their design space exploration progress and showed promise for integration into existing 3D workflows.