Kitty City

Kitty City is an interactive Augmented Reality experience installed at the New Mexico Museum of Art — Vladem Contemporary in Santa Fe, inspired by Judy Chicago’s iconic artwork. As Lead Developer at the VAST Lab, I spearheaded the technical pipeline to translate stylized 3D feline character models, blend shapes, and locomotion animations into Unity for passthrough augmented reality on the Meta Quest Pro and Quest 3.

Press & Critical Reception

The installation received extensive international coverage celebrating the opening of the $20.2M Vladem Contemporary outpost:

• The New York Times — “In Santa Fe, a New Museum Brings the Local Art Scene Up to Date”
• The Art Newspaper — “New Mexico Museum of Art adds contemporary art outpost”
• Yahoo Travel & Leisure — Exhibition highlight and museum feature

Technical Pipeline: Rigging & Maya-to-Unity Automation

Exporting complex multi-joint character rigs with squash-and-stretch controls required a custom Maya Python/Qt toolchain to bake FK/IK constraints into clean skeletal hierarchies before engine ingestion. Learn more about the DCC automation on the Maya Python & Qt Tools project page.

Spatial Anchors & Physical Alignment

To enable virtual cats to navigate gallery benches, archways, and pedestals naturally, an exact 1:1 digital twin floor plan of the Vladem Contemporary exhibition space was constructed. Meta Spatial Anchors were pinned to physical architectural datum points, ensuring persistent, drift-free room alignment across multi-day museum operations.