02.28.2020 // First Meeting: Brainstorming Ideas
Our team met up on Friday, each with potential ideas developed since last class. Several ideas came up, some of which were further developing the 3D drawing idea, simulation of throwing glass, cooking food in a campfire, falling from the sky, pet simulator, backyard work, etc. While collectively brainstorming and developing ideas, we ultimately came to the idea of re-imagining the calculator interface in a three dimensional space.
As the project’s emphasis is on the mix of both the usual (everyday) setting and a sense of the alternate, we decided to have two settings for the project. The first, user’s spawn location, is an everyday setting, located in a person’s bedroom. The bedroom will be furnished with objects which an average person would possess – bed, drawer, bookshelf, etc. Non-textual elements – such as lighting and color – would be used to naturally direct the user towards the calculator.
An interaction with the calculator would teleport the user to the second, alternate, setting. This space would be where the calculator’s conventional interface would be re-interpreted in 3D space. In the meeting, we discussed portraying numbers and symbols as cubes floating through space. A calculation would occur once a user drags the cubes and combines them. The result of the calculation could represented as another cube of either a different size of color, to distinguish it to the other cubes, which drops from the sky. The background would ideally be dark, to create a clear contrast to the first setting, but the specific aesthetics of the scenes are in the process of development.
The calculator would function as a portal connecting the two different worlds. Hence, the user would have access to either worlds at any time through interacting with the object.
03.01.2020 – 03.13.2020 // Development Process
In one of the last class we had (in person), we decided to divide the responsibilities, allowing each of the members to work remotely. As we had two different scenes, it made sense for two people to be in charge of developing a scene each. (Keyin and Tiger – scene 1 (bedroom), Ben and I – scene 2 (calculator).
We needed cubes representing the different numbers (0-9) and operators. Text Mesh Pro was used to display these numbers. This also allowed access to the numbers when altering them through the script.
As the background of the alternate world was darker in color, a glow effect on the cubes was applied. This was achieved through using the Light Weight Render Pipeline which included a bloom effect.
For teleporting between two scenes, from Sarah’s suggestion, we decided to place the two worlds in a single scene and teleport the user’s position.
To provoke teleportation when the player clicked an object, I initially using Raycast, only provoked when user presses the mouse, and when the object pointed by the Ray was the desired object, the user would be teleported to an assigned location. The script was applied to the player.
From feedback, the script cold be simplified significantly by writing the script from the perspective of the calculator. There was another issue which arose due to the First Person Controller where the player was return immediately back to their default location after being teleported for a short period of time. Ben helped fix this issue through temporarily disabling the First Person Controller while the teleportation took place.
03.14.2020 // Second Meeting: Assembling all parts
The second meeting took place to put the scenes together on a single file. Teleportation and adjustments to visuals and shaders was made to finalize the project.