Welcome

My name is Joan Llobera. Here you can find resources on my work and my hobbies.

Research

I am a Virtual Reality scientist. My research combines software engineering and behavioural experiments. Recently I have been working on bringing Physics-based Character Animation to Virtual Reality. A list of papers can be found here.

Courses

Between 2017 and 2020 I created and taught different undergraduate and graduate courses at ENTI, a university school associated to the University of Barcelona. You can find the materials for:

• A second year introduction to computer graphics here

• A third year introduction to the algorithms of character animation here

In 2021 I taught a course on physics-based character animation at SIGGRAPH, the materials can be found here

Thesis

• My PhD thesis(2006-2012) was supervised by Mel Slater and explored embodiment, social interaction and the creation of Virtual Reality stories based on interactive characters.

• My MSc thesis (2003) was supervised by Daniel Pressnitzer and explored the neural basis of auditory perception using psychoacoustics and magnetoencephalography.

Open Software projects

I have contributed to two significant software projects in the past.

• An implementation of Behaviour Networks for Unity3D to be published when I have the time.

• A framework to create Physics-based Interactive Characters in Unity3D. A first version in Physx called Marathon Environments. Later, it was succeded by Modular Agents a more mature framework based on MuJoCo, developed with Balint Hodossy.

Startups

I have created two companies.

• I founded Timepath (2014-2018) as an attempt to materialize my vision of VR experiences based on embodied social interactive characters created through role-playing.

• I co-founded IZI Record (2020 - present) to materialize an idea to transform mobile-based video creation into a social activity, in the context of recording live music.

Hobbies

When I have free time I like making music and writing short stories (examples coming soon). When I had more free time I also explored shooting short movies and writing movie scripts. Occasionally I also spend time doing photos.

In 2011 I participated in the creation of an interactive art installation.

In 2020 I directed a videogame prototype that worked in mobile phones and VR headsets. It was implemented by a group of last year students at ENTI.