Because it was funny, and really big. I actually prototyped shapes and tested on my friends and family, A tie fighter like object was neat, humanoids were okay, the Rancor is just so large and unexpected. I think it worked well, the article on upload VR had gotten over 170k views making the best April fools prank I've ever done :D.

I would like to go back to the original set and add some more fun into it, update the shaders and such, just no time to figure out all that source integration stuff right now (working on a masters in Animation right now, so you know I got some good ideas). My Rancor Pit on my machine has the door opening and he's walking into the room, would love to get that out, but I don't think people are using it anymore. hehe

why a rancor? coulda put any number of things and all would fit better than a rancor, smh.

i haven't chagned this content at all, Maybe it's the difference from a destination or enviroment? I'm sorry I don't have my VIVE setup right now, we just moved and I don't have the space atm.

Hmm, i try to change this Area. Dont work. All is black. I wait many Seconds while Loadtime. Nothing. Hmm. Best reguards.

LOL really had me going when it suddenly appeared

The SteamVR environment is really limited. There is a max vertex count at around 65k, and there is no lighting, as well as weak performance of the other maps, I've seen someone get some reflections going on, but it was mirror like. The world ceiling is quite low too, I can't extend the bespin giant tube as far as I would like to, so I had to do a lot of visual hacks to try and get it to work.
I bake all my lighting and texturing in Maya using Arnold, save that resulting texture as a jpg and export my meshes to obj. There is a guide on how to setup your environment in steam VR.
An easy way to get it in is screenshot a 360 image in your application and then put that as your backdrop, not as good as the real environment tho. You could do a mixture of both.

Is it possible for me to load a scene from Unity as my background? This obviously doesn't look like a skybox.
If so, how do I do that?

I'm not sure what you mean. The environment is made for the SteamVR application which runs with the HTC Vive or an Occulus Rift. Here's a link to how you can customize your background (which is what this is, think of it like an image on your windows desktop, it's just a pretty picture you can walk around). Here is a link to how you can configure it, it's in a foriegn language, but shouldn't really matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz2FThacGNQ

I created the scene in Maya, Zbrush and Substance painter, and used Arnold to render. For more information on this scene check out this article on uploadVR https://uploadvr.com/rancor-cloud-city-behind-vrs-best-april-fools-prank-yet/

What engine is used to power this?

great work thanks : )

Same as others - scared the ever-living shit out of me (I may have screamed) not knowing it would be there. Aside from that, great model, and really cool. I won't be the nerd that points out the rancor was never on Bespin but I would love to see more Star Wars environments if you would be willing to make them!

Put on my headset, turned around and look in the face of a life sized Rancor. I nearly dropped my headset. Excellent April's Fools joke! (But please never do that again).

The Rancor model looks absolutely fantastic, glad it's still available (it's somewhat less scary if you know it'll be there). If you could do one with Darth Vader in it, that'd make my day.

Scared the sh*t out of me when it first appeared in the original catwalk.. Thanks for that :)

As april fools go, it was a good one

Looks fantastic! Please more!

When do u think the pit will be published?

YES THANKS A LOT!!