Tag: Treehouse in the Shade

The VRChat Community Mourns the Loss of 1001, Creator of Treehouse in the Shade and Many Other Innovative Worlds

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Back in January 2019, I wrote about an amazing world in VRChat created by two users named 1001 and SCRN, called Treehouse in the Shade, which featured a user-operated control panel with dozens of shaders to control the environment around a treehouse:

Today, Ron Millar, the Chief Creative Officer of VRChat, wrote in an official blogpost:

Recently, VRChat lost one of its most prolific and talented creators. Earlier this week we were informed that 1001 had passed away. Needless to say we were all in shock and deeply saddened by the news. It hit me pretty hard. He was a close friend and someone I enjoyed spending time with in VRChat or chatting to on Discord.

1001 is best known as the creator/co-creator (along with SCRN) of Treehouse in the Shade, Bamboo Temple, Fluid Flow Studio, Music Visualizer, and other worlds. They have many friends in our community, and expressed their talent by creating amazing things in VRChat.

I met 1001 and SCRN shortly after they released “Treehouse in the Shade’’ in July of 2018. It was a collaborative effort and maybe one of the most startling worlds VRChat had ever seen — definitely at that time. It immediately blew my mind and I even made it my home. Not only can you change the shaders on the fly, but you can control them with an X,Y pad up in the treehouse! There’s also a jetpack that lets you fly through the raymarched shaders in real-time. So wild! I finally met 1001 and SCRN about a month later, in August of 2018. SCRN and 1001 had these incredible shader “creatures” they could manipulate in front of them as part of their avatars.

I can’t tell you how many people I took to that world. I spent a lot of good times there with friends, family, streamers, VRChat team, partner companies, and famous people. Deadmau5 hung out there with me a few times. One of his streams is 1001, mau5 and myself hanging out and talking about the world, flying around on the jetpacks, and chatting about maybe getting some of 1001’s shaders onto the mau5cube. I took investors and various VIPs in to see worlds he and SCRN had worked on. Everyone that saw it had the same reaction — they were blown away, and it would leave a lasting impression. It showed them what was possible. We even chose to use Treehouse in the Shade in our trailer and in our main marketing images.

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I hope you will take a little time to go explore worlds he had a hand in creating with his close friend and creative partner SCRN. We’ll be setting up a world row for a little while up at the top of the VRChat Worlds menu for everyone to have a chance to go experience for themselves. As a forewarning, some of the worlds are quite CPU/GPU intensive, and do not have Quest versions. However, if you can check them out, you will not be disappointed. We’ll also list all the world links below.

Here are the links to 1001’s worlds in VRChat from Ron’s blogpost:

Note that this is only an excerpt of everything that Ron has written about 1001; please go over to the official blogpost to read the whole thing, thanks!

VRChat Pick of the Day: Treehouse in the Shade

I wanted to share with you a wonderful world I have visited a couple of times on my recent forays into VRChat with people from the RyanSchultz.com Discord server.

Treehouse in the Shade is a world created by 1001 and SCRN, which demonstrates the power of shaders in Unity (which is the game engine on which VRChat is built). Shaders are scripts containing mathematical calculations and algorithms, which are specifically made to run on the GPU (graphics processing unit) of your computer. These programs draw the triangles of your three-dimensional models in-world.

The world is very simple. It consists of a treehouse in the middle of what appears to be a waving sea of grass. Climb the stairs and you will find a roaring fireplace (?!) and a large control panel, which allows you to select from dozens of shaders, which are then displayed all around the treehouse. Here are just five examples:

VRChat_1920x1080_2019-01-07_10-53-54.452VRChat_1920x1080_2019-01-07_10-54-48.903VRChat_1920x1080_2019-01-07_10-55-23.519VRChat_1920x1080_2019-01-07_10-56-29.254VRChat_1920x1080_2019-01-07_10-57-49.245

Still photographs do not do this world justice; you really do need to visit this place and browse through all the shaders! There’s something to please and awe just about everyone. It works best if you come with friends, and have one friend control the shaders from the treehouse, while the others wander around on the ground level outside to get the most immersive view.

A fan has posted a 13-minute YouTube video of an earlier iteration of Treehouse in the Shade, which gives you a much better look at the project and how it works. There’s also a jetpack you can rez and sit on to zoom around this world, which can be great fun!

Here’s a link to Treehouse in the Shade (this jump page will only work if VRChat has been run at least once on your computer). You can also search for “Treehouse” by clicking on the Search button on the VRChat user interface.

Note: This blogpost has been cross-posted to the VRChat Events Discord server, which is the best place to find out what’s going on in VRChat. (You can join using the link posted above.)