Under Paris is a short VR walking experience about descending into the secret catacombs under Paris and exploring the passageways of one area by flashlight.

It uses VR to try and capture the feeling of awe, sanctitude, and isolation of being deep inside the catacombs. I intentionally avoided adding any horror themes to the experience — this aimed to be a spiritual immersive experience.

The project was inspired by a New Yorker piece “The Invisible City Beneath Paris” and the book Underground by Will Hunt.

Lots of 3D scans

A few cataphiles who are much braver than me have made a hobby of uploading 3D scans of the catacombs to Sketchfab. This project draws heavily on the work of Emm and Benoît Rogez – licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Building this experience was an exercise in 3D scan cleanup and optimization for realtime use. The original scans are high-resolution and pretty messy. I used MeshLab and Blender to clean up the scans, remesh, fill holes, and reproject/bake textures.