Category: Development Journal S19

Mar 3

Our group: Vivian, Adham, Cassie, Nico

We started off with some brainstorming for our interactions and actions:

Initial Ideas:

• Throwing crumpled paper into a basket 
  • Implement points based on how far back you are → makes you move around
  • Obstacles (desk, etc.)
  • Crumpling paper
  • Classroom, library
• Putting food onto tray- cafeteria
• Washing face
• Taking care of plants
  • Zen
  • If you cut the plants they just float around
  • Twisting knob motion to speed up time → plants grow, lighting changes
• Drawing
• Slingshot
• Flipping coin into fountain
  • Something could pop out, you have to catch it

After deciding on the plant idea we enjoyed, we decided to go more into details:

Taking care of plants:

• Time
  • Lighting changes
  • Sun/moon
  • Plant growth
• Environment ideas:
  • Dorm room
  • Windowsill
  • Small cottage
  • Outside garden, fence 
• Interaction
  • Watering
  • Cutting
  • Picking fruit/flowers
  • Growing bamboo

With a solid idea in mind, we went ahead and designed our storyboard:

–Step 1–

Clump of bamboo in front of you

To your side: tree stump with watering can + cutting tool

Surrounding mountains and other bamboo

You’re inside a circle of rocks

Butterflies are flying around

It’s golden hour

–Step 2–

You have the water picked up

Water is gone from stump

–Step 3–

Bamboo is taller

–Step 4–

Replace water with axe

Now the water is back on the stump and the axe is gone

–Step 5–

Show the particles of the bamboo disappearing

–Step 6–

Now an empty spot of bamboo

Our storyboard:

Mar 10

Start to work on the particle system – create the effect of the water coming out of water can when user grab it and pour towards the bamboos.

In order to make the water fro watering can realistic, I changed the following parameters: start lifetime/ start speed/start size, gravity modifier to 0.3, hierarchy scaling mode. Under the emission box, I changed the
rate over time” into 200, and for the “force over lifetime” I adjusted Y into -3 and applies it into “world” instead of local. For the “rotation by speed”, I changed the angular velocity into 300, because I started it with 100 but that way in the game the speed the water moves will not be able to catch the player moving speed.

Mar 13

Today I worked on the particle system to make it on/off when an object is rotated at the certain angle – when the watering can face downwards the water particle system will be on and when it’s at the normal position the article system is off and the water effect won’t be shown.

I reached the goal by using the transform.enulerAngles and catching the Z angle input of the water can object. We have a boolean function called “IsPouring”, so I grabbed the particle system under it and I added the code if the angles are beyond the range then the the system stop, else the system play. And we call the function “Is pouring” under the “void update” to make sure it is running all the time.

There was a small problem when I practice the code – the particle system is alway on when it’s playing. So I assumed it was disconnected from its parent object, then I added the code “Print” on the IsPouring function to check if it’s connected to the watering can when the codes are running. It turned out to be that there’s nothing printed out in the console log, so I dragged the the particle system to the water can to make sure it’s under the component section (although the particle system is already a child of the watering can), and then it worked.

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Mar 15&16

Today I’m working on the interaction code that when the particle system is pointing at the bamboo the bamboo will grow (instead of grow when being pointed by the point ray); the floating effect of the rocks (to create the sense of zen in the environment) .

1. The floating rocks effect:

In order to improve the user experience and create the sense of ZEN, I added the floating effect:

I simply just grabbed a floating up and down code from unity community:

1. public float amplitude; //Set in Inspector
2. public float speed; //Set in Inspector
3. public float tempVal;
4. public Vector3 tempPos;
6. void Start ()
7. {
8. tempVal = transform.position.y;
9. }
11. void Update ()
12. {
13. tempPos.y = tempVal + amplitude * Mathf.Sin (speed * Time.time);
14. transform.position = tempPos;
16. }

2.Bamboo Grow when been pointed by particle system:

We finished this part by using OnParticleCollision to detect the collision between the bamboo and the particle system that has been attached to the watering can. In the beginning we decided to add the particle system collision detect in the Bamboo OG script, because the growing function is in the same script so it’ll be easier to call, however, even been put into different layers and been set as “only collide with bamboo”, the particle system will literally collide with everything. Then we tried to only write the particle collision detection code in the canfunction and call the bamboo grow function from a different script to make sure the two parts are not messed up with each other. So basically in the particle system we say once it’s collide with bamboo, then it triggers the grow function from the BambooOG script, and then it worked. The codes we uses are shown below:

Mar 17

Today I worked on the the mist effect and it will only be triggered when the sickle is cutting/colliding with the bamboo.

At first I was thinking about attaching the particle system (the mist) to the bamboo script, so whenever it is detected that the bamboo is colliding with the sickle (the sickle is hitting the bamboo ), the result of which is to destroy a GameObject (a piece of bamboo), the mist particle system will be triggered to play. However, this design has two significant difficulties: one is that OnParticleCollision is really hard to be repositioned in the “instantiate” to make the mist effect only be shown on the specific piece of bamboo that is hit by the sickle (since there will be a lot of bamboo grow out of the OG bamboo); another difficulty is that since at the same time the game object will be destroyed will the child function on it has been trigger, they effect will not be shown at all because the moment it’s triggered, its parent also dies so the mist has nothing to show on.

Taking these conditions into consideration, I tried to created a new mist script just for the sickle and it’s separated from the bamboo function so we don’t have to reposition the particle system for each specific bamboo. At first I tried to detect the dillion of the particle system by “OnParticleCollision”, however it turns out to be super hard to be detected accurately since there are millions of small particles and it almost collide with everything. Therefore I switched to detect the collusion of the sickle – once the collision of the sickle hits a game object, the particle system (mist) that is attached to be sickled will be triggered. The coded are shown below:

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Group members: Adham, Cassie, Nico, Vivian

March 3

planning/storyboarding – see Nico’s post

March 10

This past weekend I started to build up the environment. I started out by messing around with the terrain builder, as part of our plan included having the bamboo garden surrounded by mountains. This was relatively straightforward and fun to play with, though there were a few differences from when I went from using my laptop (I have 2017.3) to the PC in the classroom.

When I made a perimeter of mountains, however, placing the camera in the center made the mountains seem a little overbearing. To accommodate this, I placed a platform mountain of sorts in the center, with the camera on top of it. This way, it feels like the user is up in the mountains and gives a much more peaceful effect:

I chose to create somewhat jagged-y mountains because they reminded me of some of the mountains in China – rough yet mystical.

I also played around with the painting feature, and painted on flower details of the platform the user stands on. I got the texture from Grass Flowers Pack Free, and didn’t realize until I placed it in the environment that the flowers actually moved around, like they were swaying in the wind. I’m not sure if we will keep this effect or not, but for now I think it adds a nice peaceful effect, and could possibly be accompanied by calming wind sound effects.

To build up the rest of the environment I relied on other prefabs. To create the circle of rocks surrounding the user, I used rocks from LowPoly Rocks. I got the bamboo from Shuriken Set (which Nico found), the watering can and sickle from Garden Realistic Tools, the tree stump from LowPoly Trees and Rocks, and the skybox from Skybox Series Free. At the moment, this is what one view of the environment looks like:

We’ll have to talk more about how we want the bamboo to be represented and how close it should be to the user. Since there is a circle of rocks, it might make sense for there to also be a circle of bamboo rather than just a section of bamboo in front of the user.

March 11

During class we touched base on more stuff to do for the environment:

• Waterfall – found something in the assets store for this, Water Fx Particles
• Make log wider – this way it works with the gravity of the objects on top of it (before the watering can and sickle were falling off of the log for some reason…this was why)
• Make the bamboo closer to the user – less walking, limited space
• Prettier bamboo material
• Not have grass/flowers too high or else when objects fall you can’t see them
• Have a different color flower – right now it looks like hay

I also started looking around for some music and sound effects we could use. I found some nice sounds of birds chirping and leaves rustling in the wind, as well as a sound that could be good for when the bamboo is being cut.

Later in the evening Nico and I also worked on putting the script he had and the environment. This was really nice because it gave me a better idea of how the space looks and can be better designed when wearing the actual headset. We ended up scaling everything in the environment down so this would be easier to work with in the scripts, and so that the user didn’t have to walk as much. This actually ended up having a nice visual effect as well, since it somehow felt more like a canyon. We also talked about more things to work on with the environment:

• With the rock circle – make the circle smaller, with less but bigger rocks, and experiment with them floating
• Take flowers off of the mountains (I had accidentally painted these on, which wasn’t apparent until we scaled everything down)
• Add material variation in the mountains
• Add more bumps in the platform mountain the user stands on for terrain variation

March 12

Today I worked on making some of the improvements to the environment:

• Removed the flowers that were on the background mountains
• Made the rock circle into larger floating rocks, tilting at different angles and floating at different heights. I actually really like this effect, I think it gives an odd sense of power yet is still zen.
• Added in more bumps/raised terrain sections around the platform mountain that the user stands on
• Started experimenting more with the ground…put pinker flowers in the back and short green grass in the circle where the user stands. However, there is a kind of warp in color that happens when the user moves around their head, which doesn’t necessarily cause any issues but it might look slightly out of place. I’ll have to see what the others think.

Here’s what the environment looks like at this point (sans bamboo – will add this in as a group tomorrow):

March 17

These past couple days were spent making finishing touches on the environment. The general consensus on the grass and flowers was that the color change was due to rendering, and was too distracting for the user. I found a blog post online about how to make grass using the tree building tool, but I was having a little trouble getting it to work. I also tried to mess around in the terrain settings, yet this was in vain as well. Eventually, the issue was resolved by adding grass by painting them as trees rather than as a detail – I ended up finding a grass model in a package from the asset store and using this. I also added bushes in the mountains to look kind of like trees to get some variation in the color in the mountains and to look more like those mystical yet peaceful Chinese mountains I was inspired by.

The last thing I worked on was the placement of the bamboo. The space the user is in is a bit limited, so the bamboo was going to have to be placed in a way so that the user did not have to walk much. I ended up placing the bamboo in a semi-circle around the user, so the user can simply turn around to view the other bamboo stalks that are available to interact with. I think this placement also gets the user to turn around and look at the 360 view around them, whereas a clump of bamboo in front of them would simply station their viewpoint in one spot.

Pre-development blog.

Hello friends
Our virtual reality is based on not a very everyday action, but it is done very very often – Watering the plants. We came up with this idea after we have met at the market place and one of the things that have inspired us was a man-eater plant from “Little shop of horror”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjook1I0V44
Here is the video of that plant 🙂

Our idea was to create a terrarium/greenhouse where the player would be placed and he/she will see a desk in front. So here is the storyboard.

There will be various seeds on the table, but if the person will choose a specific one, a man-eater plant will grow. Here are some pictures that really relate close to what we imagined as our environment

There will also be a man-eater plant at the back, but the person does not know about it unless he looks back 🙂
That is all for our idea, hope you like it 🙂

Development blog #2

Greetings!

Here is our development blog #2. We have created a work station and implemented interaction with objects. We have used the prefabs that were used in the “Steam VR” interaction example such as “throwable” script and of course the camera from it. It made it much easier since the camera contains the controllers. We created a working station which was taken from parts of the “Green house 3D” asset. We just took wooden parts and created a workbench and some shelves. After finishing with the work station and adding the “throwable” script to some cubes and spheres, we added a water jug and a pot and actually made the pot to hold objects (mesh collider), and now we can place the objects into the pot. We have also added the same scripts to the water jug. Now we were able to pick up the water jug and throw it (just for fun). After doing that we tried to add water particles to the tip of the jug to make it pour water. We have added the “Water FX” asset, but it had only rain. We have decided to change the area of the rain to a tiny area and make the source be the tip of the water jug. There were some problems with gravity and at that moment we have stopped 🙂

Here are some videos :

Development blog #3

Greetings. This week was the biggest move for us. We have finished the project and we have implemented a lot of new things and updated some scripts:
-Water from watering can fixed and now works only when can is tilted more than 45 degrees
-Added a seed interaction with the pot. When the seed is in the pot and is watered, it grows.
-Added some plants for the inside of the greenhouse
-Added more trees on the outside of the greenhouse
-Added a “small” butterfly 🙂
-Added a cage with a plant at the back
-Implemented sounds
-Added some throwable objects

Here is a short video of the project.

Everyday Theme:

• Find your glasses!

Scenario:

• Living with different people in the share house
• User (A person with blurry vision/bad eyesight)

Setting:

Bathroom

• Shower
• Shelf
• Sink
• Door

Layout:

• Rectangle

Storyline:

The user has just woken up and he is heading to the bathroom. The story begins from the point of him being at the door of the bathroom. Because he is sharing the house, he has three other housemates whom he is living with – all of them with some kind of vision problems (bad vision). There are four glasses lying around in the bathroom. Help him find the right glasses!

Original (blurry)

Four kinds of glasses:

1. Double vision
2. Zoom In
3. Zoom Out
4. Normal (clear vision)

The user will hear a voice when he puts on the wrong glasses like the following:

1. Double vision – “Wow…I’m seeing double”
2. Zoom In – “Hmm…this doesn’t seem quite right”
3. Zoom Out – “These aren’t mine”
4. Normal (clear vision) – “Finally, I see things properly!”

Storyboard:

For our project, we want to create an environment that relates to sustainability on campus. If someone passes by trash without picking it up, we wanted to challenge what happens in the “real world” where there are no consequences. In our alternate reality, we hope to have negative feedback so that the user/recipient is transformed, translating into different actions/reactions in the real world. We hope to use a Gazelle article written about recycling on campus to inform our interaction design.

Some initial questions: how campus focused should it be? Should we create an environment that is a realistic representation of campus? Do we make the campus environment more abstract? When designing virtual reality experiences, how do we provide feedback to the user when they have reached the edges of our world? How should the trash respond when someone walks past? Do they rise and float in the user’s field of view? Is there some sort of angry sound that increases with time? What feedback is provided if the user puts the trash in the wrong compartment (plastic vs paper vs general like the campus receptacles)?

From this initial concept, we decided to just start building the piece in Unity to see what we are capable of accomplishing in a relatively short amount of time. We split up the work: Lauren and I will do the interactions and Ju hee and Yufei will build the environment.

After the first weekend, we had an environment built with a skybox and some objects. As a team, we’ve decided to change directions in terms of the environment…we want to build an abstract version of the campus. This will delay things as we only have a week left and the environment will take at least three days to build, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. I’d rather have less complex interactions and a more meaningful environment at the end of the day. Since Lauren has a very strong vision of what she wants the environment to look like, we shall separate the tasks differently. She and Ju hee will do the environment and Yufei and I will try to implement the interactions.

Here is the lovely environment that Lauren and Ju hee have built. It looks very much like campus! Yufei and I have just integrated the Vive and SteamVR system into the environment and are looking around the space. I wish we would have integrated it earlier as there are a few scale issues and the space is very very large, things that can only be seen through the headset. We shall have to implement a teleport system and rescale objects.

Yufei is working on the teleport system. SteamVR 2.0 makes it quite simple to add teleport! We just needed to add the ‘teleporting’ prefab and the teleport points. One thing we are struggling with is the level of the teleport system. It needs to be at player arm level and we’ve tried various combinations of levels of ground, player, and teleport points, but when we make it the same level, the player teleports lower for some reason. For now, we shall place the teleport points slightly above.

Yufei made the system into a teleport area rather than points. The arc distance of the raycast seems to be something we need to play around with to match a comfortable level for the player’s arms. For now we have made it 10 which makes it easy to teleport, but difficult to teleport to a close location.

We have spent a lot of time setting up our base stations unfortunately. Additionally, whenever we look at the environment through the headset and move our heads, the buildings seem to flicker in and out and sometimes disappear completely. A forum search reveals that we need to adjust the clipping plane which apparently means the region of interest that is the visible scene. We have adjusted the near and far parameters to 2 and 2000 respectively and that seems to work just fine! Additionally, the textures on the grass and floor seem very pixelly and stretched out so I’ve increased the tiling on their shaders.

Time to implement interactions on the trash! I’ve added the Throwable and Interactable scripts to all the objects. For now, there are cereal boxes, toilet paper rolls, wine bottles, cans from food, and water bottles. Yufei and I decided to delete the toilet paper rolls as why would one throw those away and delete the wine bottles as they have liquid in them and one cannot recycle glass on campus except in a few places. We also deleted the cans as one can only recycle metal in the dorms and we wanted it to feel like waste disposal when walking around campus. We did add a chip bag as we wanted something to go into the waste bin rather than one of the recycling bins.

Speaking of the bins, I’ve added labels to them. At first I used the UI text, but that made it be seen through all objects and it was quite blurry. To rectify the blurriness, I increased the font size substantially so that it was now bigger than the character size and I reduced the scale of the text object to the size that I wanted the text. Another forum search revealed that because it was the UI text, it could be seen through everything, so I have changed to the textmeshpro Text and the problems seem to be fixed.

I am testing the objects to see if they can be picked up but they are quite far from the player since they are on the ground. Yufei and I are continually playing around with the ground, teleport, and player levels to find something that works, but nothing seems to. We’ve tried putting the ground and player at 0 like it says to do online, but when we also add the teleport in, the teleport level seems to change a lot. I shall make the objects float for now as we are running out of time.

I am struggling with finding the right attachment settings on the scripts. Additionally, our binding UI does not work, so we seem stuck with the default binding of having an object picked up with the inner button on the controller. The object still doesn’t seem to be picking up.

I don’t know what I’ve done differently, but I can pick up one of the objects now. However, it doesn’t seem to stay in my hand so I’ve only nudged it. It acts like a projectile so it takes whatever velocity my hand gives it in the direction of the nudge. Not good!

Yufei has been working on the objects and says that we need the objects to have gravity for us to be able to throw them. She has also found the sound files. The problem is should we just place the trash on tables. I’ll play around with it and see how it looks…after all, it can just be like the D2 tables I guess. It doesn’t look that bad honestly, but Max comes to save the day by helping us find the right combination of ground, teleport, and player. Also, it seems like our room setup was incorrect which is why it was difficult to reach the floor. Either way, the system seems to work a lot better now and I also feel less nauseous now when testing since it feels more natural. I still need to find an arc distance that works. 7 seems best for now. I have also kept the tables as they are reminiscent of D2, but moved the objects so that they are scattered on the floor.

For the bins’ interaction, I planned to add tags to the objects and the bin. If the tags matched, if they were both ‘plastic,’ then it would be correct. I added the test for this condition inside the loop of the target hit effect script on all the objects, not realizing that the loop just checks for the target collider, not the possibility of the non-target collider. I modified the script to add two public wrong colliders for the other two bins. If it hits the target, I want the correct sound to play and the object to be destroyed upon collision with the bin. If it hits the wrong one, the incorrect sound should play and a message should pop up saying: “This object should be placed in the bin marked: “ + the tag of the object. Thus, for the chip bag, water bottle, and cereal box, their target collider is the bin they should be placed in and the wrong colliders are the two remaining bins.

I’ve added two audio sources for the incorrect and correct sounds. However, I keep getting an error in the debug log about there being more than 2 audio listeners. The culprit is strangely the player prefab? It has one attached as expected to the VR camera but it has another one which is strange because it’s a prefab and a Unity scene can only have one audio listener. I delete the one not on the camera and hope for the best. Now my sound works!

Now, the sounds work, but the destroy on collision and the message does not. There is a boolean variable for the destroy already on the script but it doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps since I modified it? I just make my own destroy method in the script and the problem seems to be resolved. I also need to adjust the level of the bins to be more natural.

I’ve also fixed the cat animation so that it goes from idle A to idle B to walk.

The environment still feels quite big. After you pick up an object, it’s such a chore to walk all the way to the bin on the other side. I’m going to play around with the position of everything in the environment to make it easier to move around. Additionally, I want to make it obvious that one should pick up the trash by featuring the bins quite prominently in the scene, as I don’t want to ruin the feel of the piece with instructions.

It’s now 1 am Sunday night, so I’m off to bed. But hopefully someone in my group or I can work on this Monday morning to implement the nice to haves:

• if you place something in the wrong bin, a message could pop up saying which bin to put it in, so it’s more instructional in nature.
• Having the trash have an emission or make a sound if you are within a certain distance from them
• Having some sort of reaction if you pass this distance without picking it up
• Having more trash and more complex trash

I am working on the message now, but seem to have issues with positioning the UI and not concatenating the tag to the message. If I can’t get it before class, I shall simply delete it.

Mar 3

Our group: Vivian, Adham, Cassie, Nico

We started off with some brainstorming for our interactions and actions:

Initial Ideas:

• Throwing crumpled paper into a basket
  • Implement points based on how far back you are → makes you move around
  • Obstacles (desk, etc.)
  • Crumpling paper
  • Classroom, library
• Putting food onto tray- cafeteria
• Washing face
• Taking care of plants
  • Zen
  • If you cut the plants they just float around
  • Twisting knob motion to speed up time → plants grow, lighting changes
• Drawing
• Slingshot
• Flipping coin into fountain
  • Something could pop out, you have to catch it

After deciding on the plant idea we enjoyed, we decided to go more into details:

Taking care of plants:

• Time
  • Lighting changes
  • Sun/moon
  • Plant growth
• Environment ideas:
  • Dorm room
  • Windowsill
  • Small cottage
  • Outside garden, fence
• Interaction
  • Watering
  • Cutting
  • Picking fruit/flowers
  • Growing bamboo

With a solid idea in mind, we went ahead and designed our storyboard:

–Step 1–

Clump of bamboo in front of you

To your side: tree stump with watering can + cutting tool

Surrounding mountains and other bamboo

You’re inside a circle of rocks

Butterflies are flying around

It’s golden hour

–Step 2–

You have the water picked up

Water is gone from stump

–Step 3–

Bamboo is taller

–Step 4–

Replace water with axe

Now the water is back on the stump and the axe is gone

–Step 5–

Show the particles of the bamboo disappearing

–Step 6–

Now an empty spot of bamboo

Our storyboard:

Mar 6

 After our group roles were self-assigned, of which I got the responsibility of scripting, I thought it would be important to start as soon as possible. Since I knew very little about C#, Unity, and scripting, I got to practice immediately.

The first goal for the day was to play around with some scripts from SteamVR and the online unity manuals. The first script I created was heavily dependent on what I found online. I assembled a script that caused an object to turn into a new prefab once it collided with a sphere. In order to make this functional I had to make sure the sphere and the cube both had rigid bodies and colliders. I also made sure that I could throw the sphere, by using the components from SteamVR, so that I could pick it up by using the back button of the remote. The prefab the sphere turned into was a cup from another asset pack. This was quite a hilarious scene but very beneficial because it taught me how to identify a specific prefab to use as a transformation and to prevent the same effect when touching any other named object.

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The next project was to a script that would imitate the effect of bamboo disappearing when hit with a sickle. I used a capsule in place of the sickle and I made the movement occur by placing a public variable. The movement could be in any direction, it would just add that amount to the current position. The cylinder I attached this script to needed to have a rigid body and a collider in order have effect. I also made sure gravity was activated because whenever I hit it with the capsule I wanted it to fall back down to the floor. The large issue I found with this set up was that the cylinder could fall out of reach really easily and there was no way of reobtaining it.

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Realizing how easy it was to make effect occur on object I brought in several prefabs for similar experiments. I brought in a sickle and stacked bamboo cups (to imitate a bamboo shoot). The script that I created this time was a lot simpler. Whenever the sickle made collision with the bamboo it would simply destroy the object. This is very effective it making it look like the shoot was being shopped at different areas. If many cups were stacked then I believe it would be quite entertaining to see all of the fall down or have some separate effect. This could be played with a bit to obtain the desired result, I will have to discuss with the group a bit. Overall, today I have found a way to make tools able to be picked up and come in contact with bamboo shoots that could either be blown away or deleted.

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Mar 8

Today I started off by recreating a really crude representation of the environment. I did this so that I could start writing scripts that would be realistic of the area that the object will be placed in at the end. This are included a table, the 2 tools to be used (sickle and water can), and a patch of soil with bamboo.

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I worked relentlessly on the script responsible for the function of the watering can. My goal was to make a raycast that would detect the bamboo and then return then return it. I also wanted to make it so that the object knew when it was being poured and when it was not, this depended on the tilting of the object. Past a certain z rotation, as could be seen in the scene, it looked correct to be pouring water. I could not get the raycast to work (couldn’t even see the debug line that was supposed to show up) but I succeeded in making the program know when it was pouring.

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In the end I was very frustrated because the line wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to make the tilting of the can have any function. I placed a child object Particle System on the can when I thought the water should come from and then left the work for another day.

Mar 9

Today I work specifically on three scripts that I thought would be quite vital for the comfort and enjoyment of the final product. These three were: one that got the bamboo to be cut by the sickle, one that brought items back into range if thrown too far, and one that was responsible for the can’s particle system and detection of the bamboo.

I started off with the bamboo script. I ended up keeping it quite simple and basing it off a previous scrip that I talked about a few days ago. I made it so that the object that could cut the bamboo was not definite. A certain name for the cutting object could be listed.

I noticed a large issue with the script when I was trying to hit the bamboo. Only when the sickle was dropped on the bamboo would it make it disappear, this is because there were some problems with the interaction script from SteamVR. The Attachment Flags had to be altered so that the sickle could not clip through items. This also made the entire system a bit more realistic.

Next, I worked on the script to bring the items back from a distance. This took a lot of time but in the end I found out that you had to reset the rotation and the position of the item before bringing it back or else it would fly away. The final product looked very good. It would just drop back on the table once thrown too far. I also made it so that the distance it was being thrown and teleported back from could be altered. I found 2 to be good in the z and x direction. I attached this script to both the can and the sickle.

Finally, I tried working on the watering raycast issue but I ran out of time. I found out why the raycast debug line wasn’t seen though. I noticed that you could only see it in the scene editor. It was pointing the wrong way so I changed its direction (in a quite annoying method) and moved it up so that it aligned well with the nozzle (this required some testing since the scales are so messed up).

So much research, video watching, and web scrolling was required to get even here. It makes the final products feel so good when they work…

Mar 11

I noticed that it was difficult to know exactly when the watering can was pointing directly at the bamboo (causing it to grow) so I decided to add a pointer of sorts. Initially I tried to work with line renderers but this very difficult. It required the position to be continuously updated and the hit position (or end position of the line) could not be infinity. After not resolving the issue I found an extremely solution simply using a cube. I created a long thin cube oriented to way the raycast was and colored it orange just to make it more appealing and fitting with the environment.

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Next, I worked heavily on the growing of the bamboo. I found the growing-flower script from SteamVR and worked off that. I first made two different kinds of bamboo shoots, bambooOG and bamboo, which essentially are the stump the bamboo will grow out of and the bamboo that actually grows out. I did this because I noticed it would make the entire system easier. I could make solely the bamboo vulnerable to the sickle while keeping the bambooOG permanent. I added the growing script from SteamVR to the bambooOG.

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After trying to grow the bamboo I noticed 2 large problems. The first is that the bamboo would spawn way too fast because as long as the can was pointing at the bambooOG the growth would occur (so with every update). In order to resolve this I set a counter that would increase with every frame till 60 and then restart along with running the script. This meant that if the update occurred 60 times a second, then the bamboo would grow 1 per second. Next to tackle was the issue of the bamboo staying on top of each other after growing (and pushing the top ones up). The bamboo did not want to go any higher than 2 shoots tall, they continuously knocked the top one away. This occurred regardless of the position where you spawned the bamboo.

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While doing trial and error with spawning positions and checking/unchecking all the boxes in all the scripts attached to the bamboo, I came across something wonderfully beautifully. You can lock the position and rotation of the spawned bamboo shoots by altering their prefab’s rigid body. What I tried first was freezing the y position but then I realized how that was incorrect (all the bamboo would just fly sideways. Next I increased the mass (for more stability and bounciness) and locked the x and z positions. I came up with a wonderfully appealing result. The bamboo would grow in an amazing way that looked like the individual segments were balancing on each other. Even better was the fact that the bamboos could be interacted with by the can (spinning them and bouncing them up and down). Cutting them down with the sickle was even more relieving too because you could see them quickly destroy (without any effect yet though).

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Naturally, I could have locked the rotations and it would really look like the bamboo was growing straight up but I didn’t think the results was nearly as appealing. With this constant balancing, the used was way more pleased (user tested with Max) and wanted to keep making them grow because it was partially random too. I also realized that the used wanted to keep growing the shoots endlessly so I decided to attach segment to the bamboo script that would release the freezing of the rigidbody when a certain height was reached (public int). The final step would be perhaps to make the bamboo disappear after a while once their height of x position was at or lower than ground level (to prevent cluttering).

Mar 12

Today I made finishing touches to the coding. The first thing I worked on was making sure that the segments at the top of the bamboo sprout would fall off after a desired height and eventually disappear after some time on the ground. I did this by making two functions, one that took off all the restraints at a desired height (before when I did this there were still some problems) and another that waited a period of time to delete it.  The first function was relatively simple but the second one required a counter. I tried using WaitForSeconds() but apparently that can only be use in a enumerator. I suspected update to run roughly 60 times a second so I made a counter based off that.

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The next part I worked on was cleaning up the code of the teleporting-an-item-back script. I noticed that this code was not originally very lenient on placement. The items had to be close to the origin of the environment. I fixed this simply by changing some of the math operations. In the end everything worked wonderfully! The next step is to combine this with the environment!

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Mar 17

Today was the final day. We all grouped together to make sure everything was working and to make sure that the last day of project development could go successfully. When I came in there were still some issues with the colliding of the water and the execution of the growing commanded. After three of us worked on the code for a while we finally got it to work. The large issue had to do with layers. In the end the terrain had to be placed in a different layer along with the can because the water particle system was constantly colliding with it. We go the physics and action to work efficiently. The environment looked good and the objects worked well.

I was thinking of making an enchanted forest virtual reality, but my data got deleted due to an unexpected computer reboot and I saw some of the presentations of projects in class. I was thinking on what virtual reality to create since there already was an enchanted forest, and I have came up with a lovely idea to make a beautiful sunset valley. Inspiration for this was a very well-known game “Legends of Zelda: Breath of the wild”. Here are some screenshots from the game:

So I have used some asset from the asset store to get the terrain modifier tool and used a preset terrain. I’ve added some textures and meshes to make it look like a forest valley in the mountain area, to make it look like in the game.

When I first started brainstorming I had one goal set in mind. Creating a space that is peaceful, and has the ability to make others feel peaceful. There were several elements, but one of the main element was color.

The following colors were the colors I wanted to use in my space:

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When I was using glitch before there was a project that I have created and wanted to have a related new project

This is the image of the former project

While the former work consisted of one object, I wanted my first project to consist of different spheres. I wanted each spheres to represent source of life. My first planning of the project was to keep the basic form of the egg with the plant growing from it. However I also wanted to show the never-ending sky. These were some elements that I was planning on adding:

• One egg shaped object with a tree growing out of it
• To spheres with tree
• Human figures floating around the spheres
• Cloud
• Bubbles

I also wanted the space to almost be dreamy. I didn’t want the space to look too real. I wanted the viewer to be confused and think about what exactly is happening in the scene. To do that I have decided to get rid of gravity. Because we are so used to gravity, I believed, getting rid of it would make the space more dreamy. Also I wanted to implement of idea of being able to exist in different dimension.

This was my initial sketch of the project:

However, as I started building the models there was some modifications made. I wanted to change the spheres to cubes instead. When I used the spheres it almost looked 2-Dimensional. Also I wanted the use to see the 3-dimensional objects. So instead I created a cube with two open sides. The open sides would show what is inside the cube. I wanted those cubes to almost look like small houses, or small show rooms. It was going to be a showroom of life.

I also tried putting human figures into my space, and found it hard to find a human asset that suited with the atmosphere and the color scheme. Instead, I found animal asset and used three different animals. I used three different animal models: Pig, Sheep, Cow. These animals are the most common animals that we can see. They are not exactly pets, but us humankind would not have been able to do a lot of things without them. I have placed these animals in different cubes. But I wanted these animals to not be placed comfortably, so I have chose to have them stuck in between walls.

To make the bubbles, I found a bubble asset that came with animation and the texture. However, I ended up creating the bubbles myself and only using the texture. The biggest reason why I decided not to use the animation in the asset was because the bubbles would pop. In a space without gravity, the bubbles were not supposed to pop.

I also added trees to the cubes. They grow different directions. Which, I believe, emphasizes the disarray of the space. The space looked like world had an explosion and all these elements just started flying around.

These are the images of the space I created:

I want to make an environment that portrays fear; i feel like in VR environments fear is one of the strongest feelings that it could show since it shows a reality you are not familiar with and thus with the freedom of the digital world, so many things could be expressed.

Fear;

• Something chasing you
• Slenderman forest
• Abandoned shack
• Night time
• Monsters
• Alone
• Scary sounds
• Zombies

I want to work further on the zombies idea; inspired from the game Call Of Duty Black Ops Zombies.

I found so many helpful packages on the assist store that can complete the environment i have in my mind,

Packages;

• Zombies
• Shack
• Night sky
• Zombie sounds
• Terrain
• Fire
• Rain
• Fog
• Winter terrain?
• Rain sounds?
• lamp

Its a bit hard finding the perfect lighting, on the zombies and the shack to make it visible and at the same time have it dark enough to add to the scary theme.

The package of zombies has animation embedded in it and i tweaked the animation of the zombie to what i feel to be most effective and suitable. I also included a zombie in the side mirror of the shack and behind the main zombie as well, this adds to the feeling of being surrounded and trapped

I found zombie sounds and i put it on loop as well

Hesitant with where to have the main camera begin facing, the zombie at the door or anywhere else in the shack and have the player discover the zombie at the door?

My project inspiration comes partially from a show called the man in the high castle, and partially from real life. The show is set in a world where the Axis powers won world war 2. There was a scene from the show set in Berlin, where a Nazi commander was addressing people in a massive auditorium building, and that scene really gave me a feeling of grandeur. I looked into that building, and it turns out that it is a building that the Nazis have really planned to build in the centre of Berlin once they won the war. It is called the Volkshalle.

Here are the depictions of the building in the show, and the plans for it from real life: 

The structure was supposed to be massive, at around 400m tall and with a diameter of the dome alone at 290m x 290m, intending to seat 150,000 people. I intend to simulate the feeling of standing on the podium.

I started with creating a cube as the building. However I quickly realized that the surfaces on the cube face only outwards, so you cannot display texture on the inside. So I decided to go with 6 planes instead. The dome and the stands, however, proved very difficult to replicate. so instead, I decided to recreate the feeling of the volkshalle rather than a direct re-build. I thought about what made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2akYIfxYbbE this scene so powerful. I determined that it was the scale of the building, the size of the crowd, the organized chants by the attendees, and the flags hung around.

I first created a simple but very large podium inside a massive hall. Then I added in some people using models from the asset store. However, a massive problem appeared. I needed a massive crowd, and the more people I added in, the more laggy the program got. It reached a point where even the macs in the classroom could not handle it, and would take 10 minutes to do even a simple operation. So I decided to use a rectangular prism instead of a model of a person to reduce the number of polygons Unity needs to render. This still caused some lag, however it was significantly less than with the people models, and I was able to create a larger crowd.

I then added in the flags. They are massive, with a logo on them. I did not want to use Nazi symbols, so I decided to go with the Abstergo logo instead, which is a very cult-like organization form the Assassin’s Creed games. The flags are just an image added onto a material, which is added onto planes.

I then added in audio. I decided to use the same chants used in the man in the high castle. I tried as much as I can to avoid Nazi symbols and phrases, however I could not find freely available audio that replicates the feeling I was going for more than that.

I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results, I needed to enhance the feeling of grandeur, so I added in statues. Next came what turned out to be one of the most unexpectedly time consuming tasks of this project, building the .apk and .app files. They took hours upon hours just to build. Nonetheless, here they are:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_7CXnfyNDD8YYHU6DY34HaKu92zkeUsy?usp=sharing

and a three-slide presentation about the project:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WhcUUHWOIPkWwEs96qrND2xbYrVSrcErzguMZYEdjr0/edit?usp=sharing